I don’t have a clear reason but I’m writing this comment through tears. I’m 62, happily single (divorced) but wondering how that might work or not as I get older. I've always been told things like, “you don’t need makeup, you’re beautiful without,” and I’m actually content with my appearance, but I do often feel invisible - and dismissed. I’m watching my own beautiful mother fade. She’s 92 and in remarkably good health. She looks much younger than her years, but her memory is going and she’s very tired. Invisible and dismissed takes on a whole new meaning when I think about her and many of the other elderly people who live in retirement & assisted living communities. There has to be a better way.
This is such an interesting concept. I’m a gel-manicures-for-life kinda girl. I wear some makeup, but not a lot. What’s interesting though, is I will watch makeup tutorials like it’s nobody’s business 🤷♀️. There’s this weird tug and I’m constantly intrigued. Having an 18 year old daughter, I can say for certain that beauty conversations are hard, and they have been for a while. The programming starts so early. Elise, we need a young adult version of OOB…for tweens and young teens so we can get ahead of the programming.
I so relate to all of this. Last weekend, for the first time, I went to a rave, and as part of my jungle-cat-themed costume, I wore these very uncharacteristic, long matte-black press-on nails that left me ... obsessed.
The way they felt, the fun of the click clack, the unusual angles my fingers and hands had to take to do basic things. It felt like an identity shift of sorts. I left them on for a day or two after (albeit trimmed shorter) just for fun.
My late friend Cindy Joseph (of Pro-age Revolution and BOOM fame) often talked about the importance of differentiating between makeup for fun and makeup for "fixing" or age-camouflage. And there really is a huge difference.
She also talked about the dreaded (and sometimes welcomed) disappearance factor, and how to navigate it.
After her cancer diagnosis, a few months before she got too sick to work, we were getting ready to record a video and blog series together. The final episode was called "The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Woman."
To honor Cindy's wisdom, I wound up recording that series after she left this earthly plane, and for whatever reason, never got around to recording that final episode, but you're making me think that perhaps I should. Hmmm.
If anyone wants to see the episodes I did record (in partnership with BOOM), you can find them here, along with more about Cindy's pro-age philosophy, which I really do think has launched a global movement.
Meanwhile, thank you for exploring this and so many other important subjects in such beautiful depth. And for helping all of us see ourselves in new and glorious ways.
I think the key is that when it stops being fun that’s the time to stop applying and have belief in your visibility just the way you are. Yes, I do think that when I apply makeup now in my early 60s I do it for me and to be visible to myself. It’s still fun and I feel with or without makeup I’m showing up as myself either way.
My lower liner travels when it's time to renew my botox, but I never had words for it! Ha! in all seriousness, I totally relate to your article. I am 47 and, like you, feel more SEEN and RADIANT than ever. In my 20's and early 30's I never really thought of myself as attractive, but now, I see beauty in my reflection and I work on sharing my light with the world. And more importantly, I finally feel like I added value in my own life.
I think we can decide to get off the ride at any time in our life by choosing to luxuriate in our sense of beauty & sexiness & pleasure, whatever that may look like for us. And after many years of judging other people’s choices as not feminist enough, I have arrived at accepting (as best I can, I still catch myself) the joy any self expression brings to my fellow sisters. 💜
On being invisible: At 48, I have definitely noticed a change in the last 6yrs or so. —In one way it’s nice, another it feels so strange. And it’s not a good feeling to feel that way by your partner, which I increasingly do. On another note I grew watching my grandmother paint her fingernails. They were always painted in a coral shade, shiny and smooth-perfect. Myself—short bare nails I pick at—I just can’t bring myself to paint them except on special occasions.
What a beautiful share on some of my favorite subjects!
I have some reflections as a 55 year old who's decided to age naturally and who's also in the beauty industry.
I was raised on a hippy commune in the seventies, where everything trending in the wellness industry now, was a way of life, then.
Feminism and questioning societal standards where it concerns "The Man" was also ingrained in me and I had no women modeling traditional beauty values to me in my home.
However since I was a young girl I was fascinated with beauty and beauty products.
I even created a beauty consciousness ritual based on mirror work and meditation in 1984!
Ultimately I forgot my magic, entered the muggle beauty world, and was named the top Esthetician in the USA in 2016.
Now, after remembering my mission and quitting injections, peels, retinols etc, I teach women how to use beauty energy to restore their radiance and experience age freedom without inflammatory treatments, procedures or injections.
So this is the context in which I share my thoughts on your post.
1. The one beauty appointment I keep is a powder dip nail appointment! I LOVE the way my hands look and the sensory clickity click that my nails make on various surfaces. I am a content creator, and since I often demonstrate facial massage with a bare face and off the shoulder tank top, I LOVE the way having my nails done helps me feel finished, the way a great jacket does.
My hands are a fine instrument and my nails are like the frets.
Does having my nails done also signal to others? Yes, it tells other people that I'm wealthy enough to sit in a salon twice a month during the daytime--though that's not why I do it!
Also, I adore my nail techs who are a married Vietnamese couple and I am so honored to be their client and participate in their success.
Interestingly, before I made videos for a living, and while I was under the spell of Botox etc, I didn't have my nails done.
It's also helpful to remember that any type of painted nail is an adornment, and body adornment is found in every ancient and modern culture.
If you like the look, can afford the time and money, and your hands aren't suffering, then do it! If it's the patriarchy making you damage your natural nail and waste your money, so you can fit in with others, don't do it.
2. Your recent foray into more wearing and learning about makeup wasn't to start attracting more male gaze-- you got turned on to a whole, new type of beauty experience and that sounds SO LOVELY!
From finding a new scent, to learning a new technique, you got to take advice and learn from other women and its this type of community that we as women crave and that's actually CENTRAL to beauty. Women waiting on and adorning other women is built into our system and it wasn't always just our mothers and grandmothers that we were learning from, but our tribe, and that as we find new community, sharing beauty experiences and advice is a part of that.
That's why its so painful for some women whose entire friend group starts modifying their faces. The need to fit in and to look similar to our tribe runs DEEP.
I hope you continue to experiment with beauty and beauty products and realize that playing with color, shadow and light on your face, is not different than any other canvas, if you are being fed by the creativity and sensual experience.
3. You said it! You are visible to yourself and that's why you don't feel invisible! It's my opinion that the majority of pain that women are feeling, around aging is the pain of being invisible to ones's SELF.
Think about it-- we stop looking in the mirror as much past our youth, and especially if we distain mainstream beauty. Then we decide to look again, we are shocked to see our mother staring back at us.
The other HUGE issue that no one is talking about is that we all have an inner, mental image of ourselves that acts like a thermostat. If you haven't looked at your own self-image recently, you are invisible to yourself, which in turn affects the way that other people respond to you.
Good news, mental images are how you reprogram your self image, and so the act of looking at yourself in a physical mirror together with an inner image ( imagination) that's coded with feelings, can dramatically improve your visibility both to yourself and others.
You see its not what you just what you look like that other people are responding to. People respond to your energy, and your energy is communicated through how you dress, how you adorn yourself, and how you feel in your body.
Aside from attracting a mate-- looking beautiful/radiant/attractive to other people can be marvelous and have a million perks.
It has no bearing how old we are or if we are participating in mainstream, consumerist beauty.
I'm 55 with a natural face and a soft, mid-sized body and I love how other people can feel inspired and visually stimulated by my appearance/energy.
We are literally coded to love human faces as a species.
Ironically most of what is being presented to us as the mainstream aesthetic is actually creating real invisibility due to the homogenization of facial features, so I think that will be really interesting to see that play out in the next decade.
It will be those that have the most unique features that will be the most attractive due to their rarity.
This makes me think of my mother, Cindy Wingo, a master painter. She'll be 70 May 10, and when asked why she works with paint, she often says something like, "Well, as we age, the color drains out of our physical bodies-- cheeks no longer rosy, skin a pale pigment, our hair goes white.... But my paints keep me visible, filled with the color I still feel in my spirit." How cool to consider that what makes me visible isn't my body herself, but my body of work-- children, gardens, works of art, acts of love... With each passing year, I do feel more "root," than I do "branch."
I'm going to research tubing (?) Mascara and go watch my first makeup tutorial ever. I'm not shure why I never thought about an online research about beauty.
Somehow I feel too much stress around fashion/ beauty these days. It was way more surprising in my teenage days! Everyone could have moments of surprising beauty. Now it seems often invisible, cause there is no space left for life to happen!
This piece resonated with me and inspired me to look back on my womanhood journey. I have a fancy, designer-loving ma yet I try to be me, have my own style sometimes with good knock offs. I don't connect with dresses. As a writer I prefer sweatpants. When I go out I put on makeup and something funky but not too youngish (I'm 60). My neice's baby shower and my daughter's bridal shower are coming up and I will probably be the only one not wearing a dress. "Pulling out threads" as I search my closet. I'll figure out something.
Thank you for sharing the picture of you and your mom. I hope it's framed and sitting prominently somewhere.
I grew up with my Dad/brother so I never got into makeup until university. I learned from the Lisa Eldridge YouTube channel and bought my very first foundation at 21 years old! I ended up getting a bit obsessed for a few years, buying all sorts of makeup in every shade imaginable. Eventually though, I went back to my roots. All I wear is mascara and eyebrow pencil (sometimes a clear lip gloss). Makeup has never really been "my thing" and I ended up feeling somewhat un-feminine for a while because of it. I've accepted it now and embrace my chosen natural look.
I really resonate with this. I've aways kept things simple, including also having short, naked nails. As I'm preparing for my book to come out, I've also been exploring ways to up level my look and have been playing around with/learning more about make up and also considering my nails. I got gel nails once and found the damage to be challenging, but I can see how having them for a longer period of time could be fun. Thanks for the inspiration.
I don’t have a clear reason but I’m writing this comment through tears. I’m 62, happily single (divorced) but wondering how that might work or not as I get older. I've always been told things like, “you don’t need makeup, you’re beautiful without,” and I’m actually content with my appearance, but I do often feel invisible - and dismissed. I’m watching my own beautiful mother fade. She’s 92 and in remarkably good health. She looks much younger than her years, but her memory is going and she’s very tired. Invisible and dismissed takes on a whole new meaning when I think about her and many of the other elderly people who live in retirement & assisted living communities. There has to be a better way.
This is such an interesting concept. I’m a gel-manicures-for-life kinda girl. I wear some makeup, but not a lot. What’s interesting though, is I will watch makeup tutorials like it’s nobody’s business 🤷♀️. There’s this weird tug and I’m constantly intrigued. Having an 18 year old daughter, I can say for certain that beauty conversations are hard, and they have been for a while. The programming starts so early. Elise, we need a young adult version of OOB…for tweens and young teens so we can get ahead of the programming.
I so relate to all of this. Last weekend, for the first time, I went to a rave, and as part of my jungle-cat-themed costume, I wore these very uncharacteristic, long matte-black press-on nails that left me ... obsessed.
The way they felt, the fun of the click clack, the unusual angles my fingers and hands had to take to do basic things. It felt like an identity shift of sorts. I left them on for a day or two after (albeit trimmed shorter) just for fun.
My late friend Cindy Joseph (of Pro-age Revolution and BOOM fame) often talked about the importance of differentiating between makeup for fun and makeup for "fixing" or age-camouflage. And there really is a huge difference.
She also talked about the dreaded (and sometimes welcomed) disappearance factor, and how to navigate it.
After her cancer diagnosis, a few months before she got too sick to work, we were getting ready to record a video and blog series together. The final episode was called "The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Woman."
To honor Cindy's wisdom, I wound up recording that series after she left this earthly plane, and for whatever reason, never got around to recording that final episode, but you're making me think that perhaps I should. Hmmm.
If anyone wants to see the episodes I did record (in partnership with BOOM), you can find them here, along with more about Cindy's pro-age philosophy, which I really do think has launched a global movement.
https://boombeauty.com/blogs/boom/pilar-face-to-face-with-pilar
Meanwhile, thank you for exploring this and so many other important subjects in such beautiful depth. And for helping all of us see ourselves in new and glorious ways.
You should do a podcast with Violette!!! 💕💕💕💕
I love that you are feeling seen 💕
I think the key is that when it stops being fun that’s the time to stop applying and have belief in your visibility just the way you are. Yes, I do think that when I apply makeup now in my early 60s I do it for me and to be visible to myself. It’s still fun and I feel with or without makeup I’m showing up as myself either way.
My lower liner travels when it's time to renew my botox, but I never had words for it! Ha! in all seriousness, I totally relate to your article. I am 47 and, like you, feel more SEEN and RADIANT than ever. In my 20's and early 30's I never really thought of myself as attractive, but now, I see beauty in my reflection and I work on sharing my light with the world. And more importantly, I finally feel like I added value in my own life.
I think we can decide to get off the ride at any time in our life by choosing to luxuriate in our sense of beauty & sexiness & pleasure, whatever that may look like for us. And after many years of judging other people’s choices as not feminist enough, I have arrived at accepting (as best I can, I still catch myself) the joy any self expression brings to my fellow sisters. 💜
On being invisible: At 48, I have definitely noticed a change in the last 6yrs or so. —In one way it’s nice, another it feels so strange. And it’s not a good feeling to feel that way by your partner, which I increasingly do. On another note I grew watching my grandmother paint her fingernails. They were always painted in a coral shade, shiny and smooth-perfect. Myself—short bare nails I pick at—I just can’t bring myself to paint them except on special occasions.
What a beautiful share on some of my favorite subjects!
I have some reflections as a 55 year old who's decided to age naturally and who's also in the beauty industry.
I was raised on a hippy commune in the seventies, where everything trending in the wellness industry now, was a way of life, then.
Feminism and questioning societal standards where it concerns "The Man" was also ingrained in me and I had no women modeling traditional beauty values to me in my home.
However since I was a young girl I was fascinated with beauty and beauty products.
I even created a beauty consciousness ritual based on mirror work and meditation in 1984!
Ultimately I forgot my magic, entered the muggle beauty world, and was named the top Esthetician in the USA in 2016.
Now, after remembering my mission and quitting injections, peels, retinols etc, I teach women how to use beauty energy to restore their radiance and experience age freedom without inflammatory treatments, procedures or injections.
So this is the context in which I share my thoughts on your post.
1. The one beauty appointment I keep is a powder dip nail appointment! I LOVE the way my hands look and the sensory clickity click that my nails make on various surfaces. I am a content creator, and since I often demonstrate facial massage with a bare face and off the shoulder tank top, I LOVE the way having my nails done helps me feel finished, the way a great jacket does.
My hands are a fine instrument and my nails are like the frets.
Does having my nails done also signal to others? Yes, it tells other people that I'm wealthy enough to sit in a salon twice a month during the daytime--though that's not why I do it!
Also, I adore my nail techs who are a married Vietnamese couple and I am so honored to be their client and participate in their success.
Interestingly, before I made videos for a living, and while I was under the spell of Botox etc, I didn't have my nails done.
It's also helpful to remember that any type of painted nail is an adornment, and body adornment is found in every ancient and modern culture.
If you like the look, can afford the time and money, and your hands aren't suffering, then do it! If it's the patriarchy making you damage your natural nail and waste your money, so you can fit in with others, don't do it.
2. Your recent foray into more wearing and learning about makeup wasn't to start attracting more male gaze-- you got turned on to a whole, new type of beauty experience and that sounds SO LOVELY!
From finding a new scent, to learning a new technique, you got to take advice and learn from other women and its this type of community that we as women crave and that's actually CENTRAL to beauty. Women waiting on and adorning other women is built into our system and it wasn't always just our mothers and grandmothers that we were learning from, but our tribe, and that as we find new community, sharing beauty experiences and advice is a part of that.
That's why its so painful for some women whose entire friend group starts modifying their faces. The need to fit in and to look similar to our tribe runs DEEP.
I hope you continue to experiment with beauty and beauty products and realize that playing with color, shadow and light on your face, is not different than any other canvas, if you are being fed by the creativity and sensual experience.
3. You said it! You are visible to yourself and that's why you don't feel invisible! It's my opinion that the majority of pain that women are feeling, around aging is the pain of being invisible to ones's SELF.
Think about it-- we stop looking in the mirror as much past our youth, and especially if we distain mainstream beauty. Then we decide to look again, we are shocked to see our mother staring back at us.
The other HUGE issue that no one is talking about is that we all have an inner, mental image of ourselves that acts like a thermostat. If you haven't looked at your own self-image recently, you are invisible to yourself, which in turn affects the way that other people respond to you.
Good news, mental images are how you reprogram your self image, and so the act of looking at yourself in a physical mirror together with an inner image ( imagination) that's coded with feelings, can dramatically improve your visibility both to yourself and others.
You see its not what you just what you look like that other people are responding to. People respond to your energy, and your energy is communicated through how you dress, how you adorn yourself, and how you feel in your body.
Aside from attracting a mate-- looking beautiful/radiant/attractive to other people can be marvelous and have a million perks.
It has no bearing how old we are or if we are participating in mainstream, consumerist beauty.
I'm 55 with a natural face and a soft, mid-sized body and I love how other people can feel inspired and visually stimulated by my appearance/energy.
We are literally coded to love human faces as a species.
Ironically most of what is being presented to us as the mainstream aesthetic is actually creating real invisibility due to the homogenization of facial features, so I think that will be really interesting to see that play out in the next decade.
It will be those that have the most unique features that will be the most attractive due to their rarity.
This makes me think of my mother, Cindy Wingo, a master painter. She'll be 70 May 10, and when asked why she works with paint, she often says something like, "Well, as we age, the color drains out of our physical bodies-- cheeks no longer rosy, skin a pale pigment, our hair goes white.... But my paints keep me visible, filled with the color I still feel in my spirit." How cool to consider that what makes me visible isn't my body herself, but my body of work-- children, gardens, works of art, acts of love... With each passing year, I do feel more "root," than I do "branch."
I'm going to research tubing (?) Mascara and go watch my first makeup tutorial ever. I'm not shure why I never thought about an online research about beauty.
Somehow I feel too much stress around fashion/ beauty these days. It was way more surprising in my teenage days! Everyone could have moments of surprising beauty. Now it seems often invisible, cause there is no space left for life to happen!
This piece resonated with me and inspired me to look back on my womanhood journey. I have a fancy, designer-loving ma yet I try to be me, have my own style sometimes with good knock offs. I don't connect with dresses. As a writer I prefer sweatpants. When I go out I put on makeup and something funky but not too youngish (I'm 60). My neice's baby shower and my daughter's bridal shower are coming up and I will probably be the only one not wearing a dress. "Pulling out threads" as I search my closet. I'll figure out something.
Thank you for sharing the picture of you and your mom. I hope it's framed and sitting prominently somewhere.
I grew up with my Dad/brother so I never got into makeup until university. I learned from the Lisa Eldridge YouTube channel and bought my very first foundation at 21 years old! I ended up getting a bit obsessed for a few years, buying all sorts of makeup in every shade imaginable. Eventually though, I went back to my roots. All I wear is mascara and eyebrow pencil (sometimes a clear lip gloss). Makeup has never really been "my thing" and I ended up feeling somewhat un-feminine for a while because of it. I've accepted it now and embrace my chosen natural look.
I really resonate with this. I've aways kept things simple, including also having short, naked nails. As I'm preparing for my book to come out, I've also been exploring ways to up level my look and have been playing around with/learning more about make up and also considering my nails. I got gel nails once and found the damage to be challenging, but I can see how having them for a longer period of time could be fun. Thanks for the inspiration.