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Tuesday 22 September 2015

On being an "older" beauty blogger


 


My name is Get Lippie. I'm 45, and I’m tired.  I’m tired of “older” being beauty industry shorthand for “ugly”.  I’m tired of being nagged about my age by the products I use.  I’m tired of constantly reading the same old (ha!) messages all the time which imply that the only quality women have worth venerating is “youth”.  I’m tired of toothpastes and deodorants, and foot creams and handcreams, and shampoos and lipbalms, and practically everything else on the planet using the message: “don’t get old, you’ll be worthless (bitch)” to create panic and stimulate demand for products.

 As I get older, it (the messaging) enrages me more.  Because it’s a lie.  I repeat: It. Is. A. Lie.  When I was younger, I was terrified of old age – turning 30 was horrific for me, I was “officially old” according to the adverts, and the media I was consuming, and I spent the last couple of years of my twenties alternately panicking at the thought of being over the hill, and raging about how “unfair” it was that we have to get “old”.  I was a fucking idiot.  Two years of my life wasted panicking about an arbitrary deadline imposed entirely about someone else’s idea of how women “should” look.  Young.  And worrying that being over thirty (and worse, being over thirty and single) is to be a waste of flesh.  We use old in the beauty industry and media to scare people, to create panic,  to force people not into making peace with their age, but to worry about it.  And as the end result of that fear, that worry and that panic created by the beauty industry itself is (besides, of course, them offering the “cure”) is to make women hate themselves.  To remove the comfort of liking the skin that one is in.  Worse, to make being comfortable in your own skin seem … incongruous.  Eccentric.  Insane. Freaky.

Women start to panic about being old in their late teens.  I see it on Twitter/Instagram and Facebook all the time, young, beautiful, intelligent, humorous women worrying about turning 20/25/30/35 whatever, “this time tomorrow, I’ll be old …” because all the messaging we have in the media is that to be old is to barely be a woman at all. It’s depressing.  And heartbreaking. And infuriating that these women are both beating themselves up over an arbitrary number, and writing off the hundreds of women they know who are older than them as “worthless”, however inadvertently.  Anti ageing products fuel this panic in younger women, and infuriates some of us elderly bitches to boot.

Older women are not ugly, or worthless or useless.  We are, however, invisible.  Oh yes, there’s Jane Fonda, and Helen Mirren. Well, yippee! Bully for them.  But for every Jane Fonda or Helen Mirren or Judi Dench, there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, oh sod it, MILLIONS of … ordinary … women in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and even beyond who will never be Jane Fonda, or Helen Mirren.  Don’t even want to be those people.  Don’t care about them.   There are millions of us, but where are we properly represented in the beauty industry?  If you’re not under 25, or haven’t had the genetic blessings (and good cosmetic surgery) to still be considered a (freak!) sex-symbol in your sixties, then you don’t exist.  We use teenagers without a line on their faces to sell wrinkle-cream to older women, then photoshop the hell out of the pictures because even being young, increasingly, isn’t good enough, you also have to be pore-free, line-free, and smooth, smooth, smooth like an egg, only without the personality.  The more we make the images behind the products unreal, the less people will believe the claims for your product.  I am never going to look like the woman in the advert because I used a £35 facecream, and I don’t care how much science went into the pot. I never, ever will.  And don’t use a sixty-something “sex-bomb” in a patronising attempt to appeal to “older” ladies because I won’t look like them, either.  My mum might though.

I don’t want to be younger, I want to not be scared of getting old.  I want my products to stop feeding that fear.  I want adverts to stop telling me that "old" women need to be less like themselves to be acceptable.   No face cream (or deodorant, or toothpaste, or even bloody foot cream for that matter) is going to stop me being the age I am.  I want to be the best me I can be.  I’m happy looking like me, for all I resemble an over-stuffed sofa with a smacked arse in place of a face.  Frankly, the younger, thinner, and inarguably much better-looking me was an even bigger pain in the behind than I am now – I don’t think I’d like her that much these days, and I really didn’t like her all that much at the time, now I come to think about it.

Ageing is a process.  We’re all of us getting older, right from the day we’re born. It’s inexorable.  You’re going to be “ Let’s make the inevitable products required to make ageing less of a chore (because it’s tiring enough just being old without added worry about looking old), and make the message behind them positive, not negative. 

 Beauty doesn’t need a time limit.

... and breathe ...


This post: On being an "older" beauty blogger originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

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Monday 15 April 2013

Beauty Blogger Problems ...

1)  Not having a laptop for three weeks will severely curtail your ability to post regularly.

2) Getting a new laptop with a vastly different keyboard layout will severely curtail your ability to write cheeo  ochersn coheerentlee proper.  Innit.

3) Forgetting where your camera cable is will severely curtail your ability to post photos.

4) Standing on samples kept in your jeans pocket will make your bedroom look like an episode of Dexter:

Found my cable.  It was where is usually is.  I am an idiot.
 Still, Lanolips Apples was (is?) such a lovely colour!  

5) Coming to the end of a six month spending ban is surprisingly stressful - WHERE DO I START OFF BUYING ALL THE THINGS AGAIN????

6) Use of the phrase "chemical free" in a press release is still fricking infuriating. It induces rage. Oh, and I will never feature a product if a PR suggests that I am "jumping on a bandwagon" for picking up on the fact that it's a nonsensical phrase.


7)  I'm getting tired of being asked to write articles for brands so that I can potentially "win" products to try.  Why do companies do this?  I don't mind not getting samples, but I don't want to spam my own blog with articles about products that I've not tried just on the off-chance that I'll win something.  What do readers think about these kind of articles?

8) Ditto "guest posts" from brands and or SEO agencies.  I don't read 95% of the press releases I'm sent (even the ones for the products I do feature!), so I'm not going to use the blog as a place for you to publish them!  How do readers feel about pre-written features from brands, rather than written by myself?

8a) Let's not even discuss that both of the above are attempts to boost a brand's SEO at the expense of my own, shall we? It's a con, and I'm not interested, I'm afraid.

9) Feeling guilty that I've just whined about getting emails at all. Sorry!

10)  Trying co-washing was a big mistake. Dear hair, I'm very sorry.

Now, what have I missed, and, does anyone know how to get bright red lanolin stains out of carpet? 

This post: Beauty Blogger Problems ... originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper
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Monday 12 November 2012

Dear Evans Clothing & Hermes ...

 (Warning, not really a beauty-related post, it contains intense self-deprecation, a bit of a rant, and some stupid acronyms.  If you want something a bit fluffy, might be best to look elsewhere today.  Also, it's very long.  Might be best to read something else.  No, seriously, nothing to see here. Not really.)

Dear Evans and Hermes,

Your two companies are a match made in hell, and you need a divorce.  I'll explain why later, but for now, let me tell you a tale of woe ...

Let's get one thing out of the way, I am fat.  There's no two ways around it, I'm a fat person.  I'm not particularly bothered by it (and I'm less fat than I used to be these days, anyway), I'm fairly pleasant looking from the neck up, I've got a cracking rack - we shall not discuss my mid-section, lest it get bogged down in complaints about my recent kidney problems - my thighs don't bother me in the slightest, but from the knees down it's nothing but grief.  I've written about my feet, and the constant pain I'm in, before, and about how shoe shopping is possibly my least favourite thing to do in the entire world.  

However, there is only one thing on the planet that ever reduces me to hot, salty, snot-bubbling tears of inchoate rage and sheer impotent frustration in seconds flat, faster than shoe-shopping, and that is boot-shopping.

For, underneath the blubber that a lifetime of worship at the temple of the goddess of lard has created on my frame, I have tiny bones.  My feet are a size four and a half, five at the most, and I have the handspan of the average pre-teen.  I'm not very tall, either.  Boots, even Duo of Bath (who I once travelled across the country to visit when they had only one store, only to find that the only pair that I could fit into made me look like a midget pirate.  Not a good look for an accountant, frankly) find the concept of small feet/big calves hard to deal with.  As do I, frankly.  I often see women larger than myself  (I'm a size 18 at the moment, down from a 22 recently, and soon to be a 16, thank you, Slimming World) wearing boots quite happily, and I am reduced to frothing with searing jealousy that THEY can wear boots, and I, thanks to the Enormo-Calves of Doom (E-CoD for short), cannot.

I used to have a pair of boots.  All-elastic, they were, with a block heel, and I loved them.  I loved them, even though they had a tendency to roll down throughout the day, and I'd end up wearing elasticated ankle-warmers.  I need elastic in my boots (something Duo boots tend not to contain much of), to cope with the sudden change in size between my relatively slim ankles and the aforementioned E-CoD.  I've tried on boots in bigger sizes - say, size eight - and managed to fasten them with no problems whatsoever, but I can't cope with padding boots up to four sizes too big, I wouldn't be able to walk!

Writing this, I'm aware, suddenly, that my ideal pair of boots is essentially a thick-soled pair of flat shoes, with a squareish toe-box, and a leather shin-pad, finished off at the back with what is, essentially, a black compression bandage.  Hmn ... sexy ...

Actually, maybe not that bad:


Anyway, "how does this involve Evans and Hermes?" I hear you cry.  Don't worry, I'm getting there. Simply put, the thing is that I want to wear boots.  I'm tired of only being able to wear trousers and shoes.  It's dull, and I'm frumpy as a result.  I want to add skirts to my wardrobe, and not freeze to death (even thermal tights only do so much).  I was invited to be a guest speaker at a blogging conference this weekend, alongside some fashion bloggers - more about this later on in the week - and I wanted to wear something ... snazzy.  I discovered a dress I'd bought some time ago in the dim and distant recesses of my wardrobe, found myself a little sequinned jacket, and knew what would finish it off nicely ...

... Boots.

I am an IDIOT.  Having recently lost a bit of weight, I thought this year would be the year of boots.  Correspondingly, I ordered myself a pair from Evans, at 12:49 on Wednesday 7th as their next day delivery costs only £5.  Never have I been made more aware that you get what you pay for - or, as in my case, you don't, actually, get anything that you've paid for.  Naively, I thought ordering something to arrive via next day delivery would allow me to get the boots to finish my outfit in good  enough time to try them, and decide whether or not I wanted to keep them.

I am an IDIOT (and I'm bored of writing this now). So anyway, the upshot is that the boots never arrived.  In fact, at the time of writing, they still haven't arrived.  Apparently, (according to their website) Hermes tried to deliver at 1524 on Thursday 8th, at 1949 on Friday 9th, and 1800 on Saturday 10th (long after I'd asked Evans to cancel the delivery, by this point).

Yeah, right
Hermes are lying. Or their courier is, rather.

How do I know?  MrLippie was home at all those times, (I was only home for the Friday "visit") and no one knocked on our door, rang our bell, or even ... left a card to say they'd called. UPS left a card to say they'd tried to deliver to someone else in the building, and, all the rest of our post arrived, so clearly, other companies know how doorbells work.

I spoke to Evans on Twitter last Thursday who put their customer service team onto what happened (who thanked me for my comments on Facebook - at least *read* your complaints, please), as, according to the Hermes website, all my complaints, requests and queries have to go through the company I made the order through. And, I have to say that I've been patronised by one particular Evans employee ever since.  Two people have dealt with my complaint, one has been fine, and the other one  ... well. I'm not going to go into it much, but suffice it to say that every email from Evans customer services made me feel worse about having placed my order with them, rather than better.  Yes, I've been angry. Yes, I've broken out the caps lock. But when the initial response to your complaint isn't even addressing your complaint properly, well, it's simply not good enough, frankly.

Evans are sorry, apparently, that I "feel" like no delivery has been attempted.  Well, Evans,  I'm sorry that your courier company have lied not once, not twice, but (at the time of writing) three times, both to me, and to you.  They've cost you a customer.  And I suspect I'm not alone - my twitter followers are full of horror stories about Hermes and their "delivery" service.  I, for one, am refusing to shop online with anyone who uses them. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you.  Fool me three times ... we are done.

I wore yoga shoes to my event.  Thanks, Clarks ;)

Share your home-delivery nightmare stories here, I'd love to hear them.


This post: originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper
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Monday 21 March 2011

Public Beauty

 I don't know about you, but I'm a bit squeamish.  Also, I like to keep my beauty routines strictly between me and the bathroom mirror (for the purposes of this post, my blog doesn't count, mmkay?).  So, when I spotted a booth - and I use the phrase lightly - offering tooth-whitening for the bargain basement price of £135 in my local shopping mall, I was a bit horrified.


Ok, a lot horrified.


A shonky booth made of posters of unattainably white teeth, promising superb results in an hour or less, right between a set of escalators, and the entrance to Tesco for maximum footfall doesn't strike me as the best place in the world to get your teeth seen to.  Now, I'm not saying they were cowboys (I didn't catch the name of the company), but ... what if something went wrong?  


Tooth whitening, whilst it's taking place is not sexy, it's not comfortable, and it can be a little painful - would you want people desperate to get at the Krispy Kreme stand, or going up the escalators looking on whilst you have your mouth clamped open?  Really?  You're so vulnerable in the chair, would you want to be gawped at?

I've noticed that fish pedicures are becoming more commonplace in shopping centres too - please don't get me started on those.  Putting aside my issues with feet for a minute, I can't help thinking that fish pedicures are a bit ... cruel to the fish.  But, why would you want to get your feet done openly in a shopping centre?

Anyhoo, I'm digressing a bit, and possibly being a little hypocritical because I have had beauty treatments in department stores, but things like manicures, and eyebrow threadings only.  Treatments unlikely to need medical attention if things go wrong, in other words.  The reason it costs so much in a dental surgery is that you're paying for professional attention, and follow-up, things you're unlikely to get in a shopping centre.


Am I wrong?  Would you be prepared to undergo the indignity for the chance of prettier teeth?  How far would you go in public to be "beautiful"?


This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.
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Wednesday 26 May 2010

The Appliance of Science

“To not be afraid of one’s beauty is truly the rarest occurrence. To find it, is the most valuable gift”


Words of wisdom there. I found them written on the side of a facecream I’ve just committed myself to using for the next six weeks. But more about these wise words shortly.

Someone asked recently how do you know you’re trialling something properly, and how do you make sure you’re being fair to the products? I have to admit that when it comes to skincare, it’s a difficult question to answer.

It’s easy to know if a makeup item works, you know pretty much straight away whether it’s going to be an item you’ll use and cherish, or if it’s something that is just going to hang around like a supermodel in your cosmetic drawer, gorgeous, but yet slightly useless and having a knack for making you feel guilty for not appreciating it more.

With skincare, it’s a lot harder, who is to know, really, that it’s the wonder serum that you tried that’s made you glow, or the moisturiser you’ve been trying that’s truly smoothed you out instead of a couple of early nights or a slightly healthier diet?

Ultimately I try to use new skincare for at least a month before I form an opinion of it, and so it irons out any temporary wrinkles (sorry) in diet and lifestyle that might be making a difference. But still, in the end, most skincare reviews, in my experience anyway, tend to boil down to “I like using it, it makes my skin feel nice”, basically.

However, this skincare trial I’m doing at the moment is slightly different, my face has been scanned, and I have a collection of slightly sinister (and very scary) mugshots to prove it. I’m to use the creams religiously for six weeks, then go back and be scanned again to see if there are any differences and what the scale of the changes actually are. I’m pretty excited to be taking part!

The creams I’m using are from the SKIN.NY range, and the opening quote in this post is from the packaging. As is the below:

“The SKIN.NY woman is not afraid to be beautiful. She knows who she is and expresses herself down to her every step, breath and word. She personifies quality and wants the best of everything in her life including her skincare.

The SKIN.NY woman was born before this skincare range. It was her who demanded its creation.”

Pretty puke-making stuff! If I’d read that before I’d agreed to take part, I might have thought twice about it. Leaving aside the logical error in the second paragraph – come on, how many toddlers do you know who are demanding face cream at £55 a pop? – I don’t think a cream can make you beautiful. There, I said it. It’ll definitely make you look less knackered feel more moisturised, but … make you beautiful if you’re at most passably attractive (in a dim room) in the first place? I don’t think so. I’m not holding my expressive breath on that one …

The products also contain warnings (the first on the moisturiser, the second on the eyecream)

Warning: You will have beautiful skin after using this product.

Warning: your eyes will be big and bright after using this product.

Shame there was no “Warning: you may belm gently to yourself in a bemused fashion every time you read the box” written on it. I ask you.

Seriously, do we have to have this guff written on it to justify an expensive purchase? How does reading statements like this on your products make you feel? The worst part is that this cream has been clinically tested, and has a lot of fairly rigorous peer-reviewed scientific papers behind it. I haven’t read them, of course, but you know, there’s graphs and stuff on the little leaflet, and I’m an accountant, so I like me some graphs. It doesn't need guff like this if you ask me, but then, I'm scared of my beauty apparently, so what do I know?

But, all that aside, I’m keeping an open mind, I’ve used it a couple of times so far, and I like using it, it makes my skin feel nice. So there.

The Fine Print: Products mocked in this article were provided as part of the clinical trial process.  The author reserves the right to wish this had never been written should she wake up looking like Ava Gardner in approximately 28 days time.
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Saturday 20 March 2010

(Not Quite) A Hair Disaster ...


Was at the hairdresser yesterday, and this is the fruit of their labours.  It's beautifully shiny, and I love how they dried my hair, although it dropped quite drastically on my rainy walk to the tube, but ... well, I did NOT enjoy my salon experience all that much.

I've mentioned before that I find trying new hairdressers a bit stressful, particularly when it comes to colour, and yesterday's experience wasn't one that'll have me beating a path back to to this particular salon's door, I'm afraid. During the initial consultation, the stylist ignored my requests not to make it too dark, and completely dismissed my suggestion that maybe she could mix two shades, (the sample swatch was a really "flat" brown, and my hair has a lot of red in it, naturally, and I wanted the colour to reflect that).  Then, she called over another colourist with the express purpose of having two people telling me I was wrong.

Nice.

The rest of the colour process was fine, two colours  were mixed and it was pretty uneventful (except being repeatedly called "hunni", which drove me nuts, "Are you alright, hunni?" "Do you need a magazine, hunni?" "I'll just be another hour with this other customer, hunni, okay?" Seriously I could practically see the heart-shaped dot over the i), and after the least relaxing, and actually quite painful rinse-out - seriously, I spent the entire thing in a flinch, and I LOVE having my hair washed! - I went over for the blowdry, with another stylist.

And I loved it! She asked me if I wanted something bouncy, and she did a wonderful job, just what was needed.  My hair was glossy and full of body, bounce and shine.  Simply perfect.

But ... the colourist then came over, and pronounced "See! Not too dark at all! We knew what we were doing all along!".  Well, actually, it is too dark - and it hasn't escaped me that it would have been darker still if I hadn't put put my foot down -  it's just not as dark as I was scared it was going to be.

But I was feeling thoroughly patronised at this point, so when she went on to point out the virtues of me not ever using permanent dye again (in that special voice people tend to save for the elderly, the insane or the foreign, you know the one I mean), I'd about had enough. I know I'm not trendy, I know I'm not young'n'funky any longer, and  I know I've made a few jokes recently about being senile, but I am not ready to be treated like an elderly maiden aunty who has just asked for a violet rinse in Toni & Guy ....

I didn't complain, because, really, how do you complain about being patronised by someone half your age?  And what would the salon have done anyway? My hair, actually, is fine, I just hated every moment of the experience!

Here's a pic to exmplify how much darker it is than usual:


Like I said, it's not bad, it's just ... not what I wanted.

So, can everyone tell me about their hair disasters please, so I don't feel too much like Morticia's granny any more?
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