40 Whatever

That's So Cougar: Walgreen's Beauty Purchases

 

Yesterday I went to Walgreen's for two items:

• Olay Definity Color Recapture anti-aging UV moisturizer + sheer illuminating coverage ($29.99 and they keep it under lock and key near the Baby Phat perfume)
• a Ped Egg ($12.99, the kind with the handle so I "don't have to bend over.")

When your almost 40, you can spend almost $50 at Walgreen's on two items without batting an eyelash. You tell yourself that at least you aren't spending $150 on face cream at a department store, and then $30 for swirly tinted moisturizer seems justified.

I had bottles of sparkly green and turquoise nail polish in my hand but decided to put them back.  I also gave my kids some Chips Ahoy cookies as we entered the store so they would let me browse in peace, but they were too fascinated by the press-on nails (and toe nails WTF?) to bother me.

—Stefania/CityMama

30 whatever face and bod, 60 whatever claws: Don't let your hands give you away

Our girlfriend and 40 whatever reader svtwinmom DMed us this article along with a note that said she fears her 40 whatever hands look like Sarah Jessica's. 

We've seen our friend's hands (we had a lot of time to examine them carefully at a recent fondue party) and we say, "Honey, you got nothing to worry about."

But it did remind us to wear our gloves while washing dishes and to keep an extra bottle of hand lotion next to our computers.

And P.S., Sarah Jessica (age 44), work it, girl. We'd kill for your bod. And high beams lights.

Hooray for eye creams [embracing the cliché]

I was raised by a mother who lovingly took me up to the Clinique counter on my twelfth birthday for my "computer analysis" (remember that plastic hunk of junk and those sliders?) to determine my 3-step skin care program (soap, toner, and moisturizer).  By the time I was in my teens, I had graduated to Erno Laszlo's Sea Mud soap (the stuff that turned your sink black) + 30 splashes therapy. Needless to say, the importance of taking care of one's skin was taught to me at an early age.

Over the years I haven't strayed much from my original cleanse-moisturize routine, in fact, as I approach 40 I have recently begun to use Sea Mud soap again mainly because it smells like the 80's and that makes me giddy.  I haven't used toner since practically searing the skin off my face with Sea Breeze toner in 1981 (who else remembers the acid burns?), but I still moisturize everyday and have a bathroom cupboard full of potions and creams to soften and smooth every part of my upperbody from forehead to shoulders. (My stomach and thighs remain butter-soft due to a nice padding of fat.) But nothing is more important to me than a good firming, anti-wrinkle eye cream.

I would forgo my favorite facial moisturizers (Guerlain Orchidée Impériale cream and Clinique Super-Defense) and everything else in my moisture arsenal to be able to keep my eye creams, of which I use three on a regular basis:

• Guerlain Super Aqua Eye Serum (apply first, night and day)
• Pond's Age DefEye Anti-Circle Anti-Puff Eye Therapy (over the Eye Serum during the day, a great eye cream if you have dark circles or puffiness, and who doesn't in the ay-em?)
• Guerlain Issima Success Eye Tech (over the Eye Serum at night)

As I've said before, I wear cheap shoes so I can buy expensive cookware, and I would lump eye creams into that category, although the Pond's is a steal. I'm not one to go running for Botox and am too much of a control freak to ever consider surgery, but I can stave off the crow's feet for as long as I can.  I don't mind getting older, just don't want to feel older. I'll win the fight... until I start to lose it.  Like the battle I'm losing with my ass.

—Stefania/CityMama