If I Knew This 30 Years Ago

The whole beauty thing has never come easily to me. My mother was of the ‘lippy and blue eye shadow’ era – need a say more? Tips and hints weren’t really passed on; instead, I have had to learn about beauty as I went. So here are the things that I wished I learnt a long time ago.

• It’s a myth that having every expensive potion makes you beautiful – It just makes you poorer and the manufacturers richer. If you can afford expensive products then that’s fine but half the trick of the products are how they make you feel. The smells and textures smell and look expensive. If the cheaper products do the trick for you then you’re not actually missing out.

• It’s a myth that beauty is only skin deep – You could have the most flawless skin with eyes to melt the most harden but have a mouth like a sewer and plotting your next murder then you won’t be seen as a really beauty but a nut job.

• It’s a myth that you don’t need a beauty routine or it will take all morning – the important bit is to have a routine that suits your skin type and situation.

• It’s a myth that your diet doesn’t matter – You get out what you put in, how good or bad your diet is reflected directly in your skin.

• It’s a myth that the more makeup you put on the more beautiful you look –  makeup doesn’t look better the more you put on, quite the opposite – make up should enhance the good bits and detract from the bad bits. Troweling it on with a brickies trowel and you’re not only looking fake and plastic but also not doing an awful lot of good to your skin.

• It’s a myth that you can look like the models in the magazine – Striving to look like a perfect model isn’t beauty. Be realistic and work with what suits you. Be you.

• One thing that isn’t a myth – The real key to real beauty is accepting oneself.

Of course, I was probably told all the above by my mother when I was a teenager but being a typical teenager I didn’t think my mother knew what she was talking about. As a devoted mother to a teenage daughter who equally thinks I don’t know what I am talking about half the time,  I will carry on the legacy and tell the above to her.  She, of course, will not listen but will realise in about 30 years time that the glamorous granny in the corner might actually have known a thing or two.