Field Trip: Sephora

I stood in the middle of Sephora and had a private little breakdown.  I thought I was prepared for this. I had done all my homework, studied which skincare product really worked, which ones made false claims, and even found a website that convinced me that everything I wanted to put on my face was going to give me cancer.(The same site suggested that if I didn't put anything on my face, I was going to get cancer, too, so I thought since I have no choice about that, I'd rather go without wrinkles.)  I learned to check for the percentage of retinol in a product, and I found a place in Canada that offers Retin A with two Viagra pills thrown in. (I'm still trying to figure out that connection.) My desk was full of sticky notes listing product recommendations, prices, and benefits. I was prepared to buy. But nothing prepared me for Sephora.

The Makeup Borg

The young staff dresses in all black, and moves stealthily through the aisles packed with shiny, high-end cosmetics, speaking in hushed whispers to one another through lavalier mics and earbuds. They're the Makeup Borg, I decided, and started to get a bit nervous.

I looked around. There were hundreds of choices in each category. I started to fumble for my sticky notes. A young male Borg approached me, sidling up to me like he was about to dish some really good dirt.  "Are you finding everything okay?" he asked, quite confidentially.

This stuff isn't cheap. I don't want to make any mistakes.

"I'm finding everything confusing," I admitted. I told him what I was looking for. "I never expected there would be so many choices," I said. "This stuff isn't cheap; I don't want to make any mistakes."

The young Borg patted my hand, and whispered something into his collar, never once taking an eye off me. "There," he said. "I'm a manager here. I just got someone else to go...manage things...for me. I'm going to help you personally."

I was genuinely grateful. I had entered a world that made no sense. I needed a product to exfoliate and oxygenate my skin, yet oxygen is apparently bad for my skin, so I would need a good anti-oxidant. I had to keep my face sparkling clean, and at the same time, protect it from the dangers of soap and water. Well, heck. No wonder I was getting wrinkles. I was exposing my face to air and water. Excuse me for being a mammal!

How my face is like the desert: a sales tactic.

"Uh-uh," David, my young Borg, wagged his finger at my nose. "They're not wrinkles," he said. "Your eyes are under-hydrated. They're cracks, just like you see in the desert. Add a little moisture, and poof! They fill in. Gone. Just like that. We have something that will do that for you."

He led me to a wall so brightly lit with lights and mirrors that I could barely see the products on the shelf over the glare. David spread his arms dramatically. "Peptides," he said. "They help restore collagen to your skin. Caffeine plumps up the cracks." He whispered in my ear. "Every bride in Silicon Valley marches down the aisle with this under their eyes," he whispered. 

"Every bride in Silicon Valley marches down the aisle with this under their eyes."

David saw my eyes narrow in on something: a tiny vial, about two inches high, with a $96 price tag. "When you get into peptides," he said, "you start to talk about some money. They're harder to make, but they work. And a little goes a long way."

"Is that just the sample size?" I asked. "The full size bottle is $96, right?"

David eyed me sideways. "Let's look at retinol," he said, guiding me by the hand.

I was ready for this. I'd tried some lower-priced retinol products. Low-cost retinol products don't list the amount of actual retinol it contains, and I found  there's not enough in there to make any difference. High-powered retinol made my face peel.  I didn't want to get into prescription strength--not yet.  After all, I only have "cracks."

Fortunately, David picked a tiny bottle from the bright shelf that matched one of my sticky notes. SkinCeuticals Retinol 1.0 Maximum Strength, he assured me, would do the trick, if I were careful and used it very sparingly, and maybe only once every other night to start. It went in the basket.

If you want to view paradise...

As David experimented with various foundation primers, foundations, concealers, and eye shadows,  I was starting to think of him as less of a Borg and more as the Willy Wonka of cosmetics. He taught me that it was pointless to spend extra money for a foundation that delivered Vitamin C, A, and an SPF factor if I already had a primer that did the same thing.  He bristled at the very thought of me going out in public with anything less than and SPF of 15.  

David selected eye shadow colors for me, and offered logical reasons to choose a creamy Benefit shadow over a matte powder. He took things out of my cart and replaced them with others; a once-favored product suddenly getting a disdainful glare when he found one that would be even better for me--and less expensive.

"Close your eyes," David said mischievously.  I felt myself covered with a cold, refreshing spray.

"God, what was that?" I felt the droplets running down my face.

"Toner!" David said with childlike delight. "I use this every day. It will set your foundation. I don't know why every toner doesn't come in a spray bottle.  I'll make you a sample. You'll see."

I made a note to try to find out why toner now goes on last, as a finishing spray, rather than right after cleansing, as I had known all my life. David had disappeared to make a handful of eye cream samples, toner samples, foundation samples, and primer samples.  Even if I didn't buy anything, I thought, I have enough product to last for a month for free. 

The tally

All right, folks. Here's what I spent at Sephora. This was for getting started, and it was worth the extra to have someone who really knew what he was doing select the right products for me.  Now that I know what they are, however, I think I'll buy them online for about half the price.

SkinCeuticals Retinol 1.0 Maximum Strength night cream.........$58.00

Sephora 5-piece makeup brush set in a case..........................$35.00

Smashbox High Definition Healthy FX Foundation....................$38.00

Amazing Cosmetics Concealer..............................................$42.00

Benefit Creaseless Cream eyeshadow...................................$19.00

CoverFX Skinprep Foundation Primer & Anti-Aging Serum.........$45.00

Hourglass Eyeshadow duo...................................................$38.00

Total:..............................................................................$275.00

The bad news: It was $275. For my face. I'm still recovering from the shock.

The good news: I can still use my Maybelline eyeliner, blush, eyebrow pencil, and mascara that I started using when I was fourteen.

The better news:  I can buy this stuff much cheaper online, and I will.

The best news:  David was right. This stuff really.works. People started making positive comments right away.

Well, I knew it would be expensive. And I've only just begun. Sephora was really like a visit to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, and if you're not careful, you can end up like one of the bad golden ticket winners. But with careful thought, and a good skeptical attitude, you can go home with a lifetime supply of samples.

Next, a visit to the hairstylist.

Oceans of Potions

I should have spotted the fine lines when they appeared. Bit by bit, all the skin around my eyes crinkled up, building on each other as though a game of Risk was sprouting on my face. But  I didn't see them.  What I didn't realize, was, along with the trade routes growing across my face, my eyesight was failing. To quote my middle schooler, oh, snap.

As soon as I got a lighted 5x mirror (which I highly recommend doing) I saw the problem..  I had heard about anti-wrinkle products and filling products, thanks to the context based advertising on Facebook that constantly shoved the information at me based on my age tag.  But what really works?

Topical or Injection?

Okay, first of all, I'm not injecting anything into my face.  Especially not if it has a "tox" suffix. Last time I checked, "tox" was a Latin root for "poison."  "Bo" is the first part of "Bovine."  Cow poison. In my face. Don't think so. I read a lot about hyaluronic acid, and collagen injections, too, and though that seemed promising, it's still the combination of needle + face.  I was especially grossed out by the idea of taking fat from my butt and injecting it into my face. Don't middle aged women try to hide our butts? Why would I want to wear mine on my face? Who thinks of these things, Doc Brown from "Back to the Future"?

All right, so it's all about topical lotions and potions. My first lesson:did you know that if you pat your wrinkles around your eyes, the wrinkles disappear for exactly the length of time it takes for the girls in the mall kiosks to sell you the product they just patted on you?  Amazing how that works.  It was a harsh reminder that there are still snake oil salespeople out there, and now, they're preying on us and our wrinkles.

How Things Don't Work

For as long as I can remember, women have been whispering about secret formulas for wrinkle prevention and removal. Older ladies whispered to me about solutions of mashed bananas, and somebody's  mother told me the secret to keeping wrinkles away was the collection and topical application of menstrual blood. (She was in her fifties and didn't have a line on her, but I could never look her in the face again.) Some neighbor ladies made masques out of mud and honey, others put vegetables on their eyes.  Just writing that, I realize it sounds like I grew up on some unexplored Polynesian island instead of a suburb in California. But I swear, it's all true.

"Applying injectables on your face and expecting it to fill wrinkles is about as effective as taping an aspirin to your forehead when you have a headache."

In the world of 21st century cosmetics and skincare, I can tell you  now--not much has changed. Trickery and obfuscation is key--they almost all include ingredients that sound an awful lot like things you've heard really work--like hyaluronic acid, collagen, and retinol.  And you know what? Most of them really do work--if you have them injected. Applying injectables into your face and expecting it to fill wrinkles is about as effective as taping an aspirin to your forehead when you have a headache. "Put the knife under your pillow and it'll cut the pain in two!" Yeah, thanks, Prissy.

But all is not lost. There is something that really works, if you're dedicated, and have more than a bit of spare change for the upkeep. Read about my experiences with retinol in my next post!

Den of Antiquity

It started, in all places, in an Egyptian museum of antiquity. I was taking my 11-year-old son, Jacob, to a class on ancient games, led by the museum's young director. As he was walking around to the groups of kids and adults learning the game of Senet, he knelt by my son.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" he asked Jacob. "Are you beating your grandma?"

I looked up sharply. "I'm his mother," I said, a little more irritably than I'd intended. It was not the first time I'd been mistaken for Jacob's grandmother, and, understandably, at 47, I do have friends who have grandchildren. But this, I decided, right then and there, was going to be the last time anyone made that mistake.

Taking Stock

What about me was making people think I was a grandmother, when, in fact, I am a senior writer for a very hip high tech company in Silicon Valley? It was time to think like Clint and Stacey on TLC's What Not to Wear.   I had just lost 30 pounds on Weight Watchers, didn't that make me look younger?  Well, no. That made me look thinner.  Truth be told, my weight loss left the first unmistakable traces of "turkey neck" that had previously been filled in by fat.  And my proud new jawline? It was wavering, not perfectly straight, as it had when I was twenty-five. Okay, so not everything is an upside.  But what could I do?  I decided to find out.

"Though I was still on solid foundation, I was definitely a fixer upper."

Eyes, Hair, Lips, Figure

A good, no-nonsense look at myself made me realize I needed a complete renovation. Not that there was anything wrong with me as I was, it's just that as time went by, parts of me had gone out of style, bits of me needed a fresh coat of paint, and though I was still on solid foundation, there was no doubt about it. I was a fixer-upper.

What I had been doing to myself over the years had worked. I didn't smoke, drink, abuse drugs, lay out in the sun, or fall victim to vampire fads. I knew how to apply makeup--for a seventeen year old. I knew how to dress professionally--in 1995.  I understood I was an "Autumn"--but still thought I could get away with the same shades of magenta I forced my hapless bridesmaids into, and I believed,  to the bottom of my heart, that pastels made me look younger.  They did. I looked about four years old. With wrinkles, like those poor kids with Progeria, that premature aging disease. No question about it--this overhaul was going to be major--and expensive.  

So I needed to figure out a way to do it without that magic $5000 gift card my fellow fashion train wrecks are awarded on "What Not to Wear."  

Come with me now, as I figure it out, slowly chip away at the "old" me, and hopefully emerge with that all-important curb appeal.  I don't claim to be much of a teacher, but I can write, I can listen, and I can make recommendations based on experience. So let's learn together. 

What's your 360 mirror telling you?