All the gear, no idea

on beauty

In my mid 20s I took up surfing. A few friends were living in the southwest and on a trip to visit once we did a surfing lesson. When I tried to get to sleep that night I felt physiologically in a wipeout, tumbling through the sea. The experience seemed to alter how my body fit together, my sense of what it could do (and not do).

I wasn’t very good at surfing. I was rarely able to jump up to a standing position when catching a wave, but it didn’t affect my pleasure. My friends and I would paddle out beyond the waves, and I was quite happy just to lie on my board, my hands stroking the water. At first I hired surf boards and wet suits but soon this felt unsatisfying, I didn’t want to look like a tourist, so when I got an unexpected bonus I bought my own. I had a Roxy wetsuit and after intense deliberation I chose a board. I cannot remember the brand. Having my own board came with complications. I had to buy a board bag and a soft rack for travelling with it by car. I needed board wax. I needed a rash vest. I needed a waterproof pouch I could put a car key in. I needed all the gear.

But it turned out that having all the gear did not make me more successful at surfing, gear did not convert into me getting the idea. One Boxing Day in South Shields I dragged my family to the beach so I could surf in highly unsuitable conditions – brash waves with no peel – and absolutely Baltic water. I simply just got very wet and cold. Eventually I sold the board and the wetsuit on eBay and I’ve not surfed since.

I am reminded of my attempts to become a surfer when I look at all the beauty paraphernalia I have acquired. I have all the accoutrements needed for a good skin. Apparently the foundation for this aesthetic holy grail is plenty of sleep, plenty of water and keeping your skin nice and clean. My fidelity to these three things has long been strong but I honestly fail to see how it’s shown up on my bodily exterior. All the failures of skin that I need to ‘target’ persist – dark circles, dullness, dryness, large pores, collagen loss, fine lines, breakouts etc. So I implement the next line of defence: skincare products. Double-cleansing, liquid exfoliators, milky toners, serums, drops, moisturisers and a fleet of retinols that I’ve never got the hang of. Is this working? I ask as I layer on various potions. I honestly have no idea. I get a flare up and smother myself in creams to ‘reinstate’ my skin barrier, as though I have weak flood defences.

With skincare failing I call up the third line of defence: makeup. Primers, concealers, foundation, highlighters (and things that do all four), bronzers and blush. Pops of colour for my lips and eyes. And for me at least, the most indispensable: mascara, which along with eyelash curlers, are the only things that I can discern as making an immediate and visible improvement in how I look.

More recently I’ve moved into beauty gadgets. I’m 48 now and life is showing up in my face. I have an LED mask and a ZIIP Halo, and I go through cycles of using them consistently. I’ve no idea if the LED mask does anything but the Halo does – a just about legible tightening that in the right mood I might even say made me more snatched – and even so I falter out of the habit. Still I subscribe to Beauty Pie, I accrue SpaceNK rewards, I watch makeup tutorials and buy up Sali Hughes’s annual list of Best Beauty Bargains, all in the hope I can achieve great skin, arrest my signs of ageing (ACAB except for getting old) and confidently apply a full beat.

So it was in a moment of weakness that I received an email inviting me to accept an ORBIT makeup mirror from Luna in return for a mention. Baby’s first sponcon. Unbeknownst to them I’d actually looked at buying one. It’s strangely difficult to find light-up mirrors that aren’t supremely ugly – this one has a sleek metal frame. I thought to myself, if only I could apply my make-up in proper good lighting I will get it right – I’ll have gear that will help me get the idea. I said yes.

Putting on my makeup has become more challenging in recent years. During the pandemic my eyesight started to deteriorate, and I now wear reading glasses. I have to put my makeup on without them and then when I check what I’ve done with my glasses on I’m often horrified. What seemed like ‘gorgeously blurred, glowy skin’ without my glasses on is revealed to be cakey and uneven, as though applied by a pair of paws not the nifty collaboration of fingers and brushes. Or throwing caution to the wind I don’t put my glasses on to inspect my work and when I leave my flat and get on the bus or train or in an uber towards wherever I’m going I get out my compact to apply lipstick I look at myself and think wow, hello Grotbags!, a TV witch from my childhood.

Being a woman in midlife can make you feel like you only have two options. The first – if you can afford it – is to halt and reverse ageing, get tweakments and surgery, a flat-out rebuttal of your physiological reality. The second is to adopt the (occasionally smug) but noble pose of ageing is a privilege, I LOVE my wrinkles, I LOVE my grey hair. I can’t get in line with either of these (at least for now), instead I find myself gazing into the mirror asking how the fuck did I get here, with the stubborn but fading residue of my child-self clinging for dear life to the façade of my ageing body.

The ORBIT’s mirror part is mounted magnetically so you can manoeuvre the position of it in all directions as though it’s a really high-end suitcase. I’ve used it for several days now and feel confident that I’m not going out with my highlighter, bronzer and blusher applied so strangely that my face looks like a collapsing Battenberg cake (regrettably I speak from experience). But for the love of god please head my warning – if you get one, do not, under any circumstances use the little magnetic magnifying mirror add on. Nobody, especially not a woman in midlife who did not start to use SPF soon enough, needs the dissociative horror of seeing their skin up that close.

For now I’ll continue to hover between having all the gear I need to bring out the best in what I’ve got (aesthetically speaking), and trying to master the art of accepting what I do not have – youth, for example, or natural flair for achieving ‘a radiant, flawless base’. Kind of like the serenity prayer but for looksmaxxing.

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Some bits and bobs

My best pal Rebecca Perry is absolutely smashing it – her debut novel May We Feed The King just won the Waterstones Debut Novel of the Year prize, and it has been longlisted for the Booker Prize. I am hooting with pride and excitement for her. If you’ve not read it yet, dooooooo!

I’ve got a workshop and some teaching coming up. First is an 18-week memoir course for the National Centre for Writing – this is largely self-led, I set reading and assignments and offer you feedback on your work over 18 weeks, alongside great online discussions with other participants. There’s a little taster of course here. Then I’m doing a one-day workshop at the Durham Books Festival in October, I’ll share the details when the programme goes live next month. I’m also excited to join the panel on 13 August at Foyles Charing Cross Road for this event celebrating Joan Barfoot’s incredible novel Gaining Ground – I adored this book and you should buy it for the end papers alone which are beautifully illustrated with vegetables!