We need more than anti-ageing creams

The next time you reach out to buy that anti-ageing product, bear in mind that it’s just a label developed mostly by men in suits who think women over 50 are past it.

Those men, running the major beauty corporations, have “aged you out” of the makeup market, according to Andrea Q Robinson, pictured, a woman who worked in the business for 40 years.

That’s why, she says, we don’t have the opportunity to buy cosmetics geared towards the texture and colour of menopausal skin.

“The only products they are spending big bucks to market to you are ‘wrinkle creams’. Sorry ladies, but it’s true,” she says.

And the beauty counters brimming with a huge variety of slick looking items that promise “to combat crows feet, bags, and sags” are all “smoke and mirrors”, she warns.

Most of the major beauty corporations own or license several brands in a wide range of price points, competing against themselves. For example the L’Oreal Group also owns Maybelline, Lancome, Ralph Lauren, La Roche-Posay and others, while among the many in the Estee Lauder camp are Bobbi Brown, Clinique, Tom Ford, MAC, and Smashbox.

They make slightly different claims for products which are the same ingredient. The only real difference? The price.

Robinson, who has just written a book called Toss the Gloss: Beauty Tips, Tricks & Truths for Women 50+ can deliver the truth because she has held prime roles in her career, including president of Tom Ford Beauty; chief marketing officer of Estee Lauder, beauty editor at Vogue, and president of Ralph Lauren’s fragrance brand.

In her part memoir, part how-to-guide, and part industry exposé she tells the reader: “I’ve tried it all, I’ve seen it all. I know too much. Think of me as your personal cosmetics guinea pig. In the name of beauty and many many jobs in the beauty industry, I’ve tried everything out there: Lotions, makeup, injections, spas, lasers, you name it.”

And a face-lift as well, it emerges.

This after she reveals that “Botox and fillers were a lunchtime or after-work procedure with me every three to four months”, just like getting her hair highlighted.

While Robinson’s years in the industry puts her in a prime position to advise older women about “tossing the gloss” and the gloop – she says less is more – her mission to “help women look like and be themselves, only better, over 50” falls a bit flat when she refuses to disclose her age.

That would be fair enough, if she were recommending cosmetic surgery as “an acceptable option – just be smart about why, when, where and with whom to choose it”.

However, it would have been a big help for readers, if they can afford such an outlay, to have seen her before and after pictures, in her “guinea pig” role. And for us to know her actual age, in the light of the pitch she takes, about growing old comfortably.

Aside from all that, her book is entertaining; it captures the zeitgeist in that it’s a clever pitch towards older women nowadays, more concerned about looking as vital and sexy as they feel as they live longer and more independent lives.

Eleven of the 12 chapters each have their theme: cosmetic bag essentials; skincare; use of concealers, primers, and highlighters; foundation; blushers; tanning; eye make-up; lipstick; hair; neck and hands; and cosmetic “tweaks”.

But perhaps the author’s belief that “at this point in our lives, our beauty routine should be more strategically focused on the right products and the right procedures in the right places” speaks volumes about how beauty runs much deeper than the crevices of ageing faces.

Toss the Gloss: Beauty Tips, Tricks & Truths for Women 50+, Seal Press, €17.50