The day I turned 40, I was struck by a ray of confidence—I could do and say anything and it carried weight. This is obviously some cult secret that the world had been keeping from me. But… and it’s a small but…I feel a bit left out. The world of ‘beauty’ still decidedly belongs to the young ’uns, the trend makers. Millennials are ageing. Gen Z is now making spending decisions. And us 40-year-old-suddenly-confident ones—we want to sit at the cool table too. Oh, just me then? Cool, cool, cool.
Yes, I do want to try everything that comes with an invisible disclaimer: Not for 40-year-olds and above. So I spent three weeks trying out Gen Z and millennial beauty trends to see how I would personally deem each of them 40-appropriate. From rainbow hair to faux freckles, it was about moving beyond contouring and deep diving into a world of doughnut foreheads and halo eyebrows. Look up the latter—they’re no-go zones. I’m not going to use injectables to create a doughnut shaped impression on my forehead, and I don’t have the patience to draw an oval connecting my eyebrows. Because I have a life.
Scroll through the gallery for my experiments:
Photographs: Imaxtree.com/2019 (Backstage), Instagram
