Life Is Not a Reality Show (20 page)

Of course it’s always easier to go barefaced if you have great skin. And having great skin has a lot to do with what you put into your body. I do believe that limiting junk food and eating healthily will benefit your skin. I took special vitamins for my hair, skin, and nails when I was in my twenties. I do recommend a good multivitamin. And don’t smoke! Look, I’m not a doctor, but most people who smoke tend to have drier skin and hair. One more reason to quit!

Don’t get your hopes up too high about all the creams and potions and lotions you can buy to miraculously transform your skin. Take all the claims with a grain of salt. Nothing’s going to turn back the clock ten years; I’m sorry. Some products can make your skin look healthier and more vibrant, but it’s a matter of finding the right ones for you. Once again, there’s no substitute for trial and error. Skin is very individual, and what clears up one person’s acne can turn someone else’s entire face red and inflamed. Obviously your dermatologist can help, unless she’s intent on pushing some super-expensive line of products that she sells in her office. Maybe what she’s selling is great, but don’t be pressured into buying something you can’t afford, because there are effective, lesscostly alternatives.

Same goes for the department store. I can’t believe young girls who will shell out a week’s salary for a little jar of face cream. Your skin care regimen does not have to be that expensive.

And this will be familiar too: less is more, even when it comes to skin. My mother very much had a less-is-more approach. Talk about low maintenance—she used nothing but Nivea on her skin her whole life and didn’t have one wrinkle!

These days there are so many kinds of skin products with all sorts of ingredients and supposed benefits. It’s temping to get a whole variety of them to target every possible flaw from every possible angle. But you have to be very careful piling on treatments. Some of them will cancel each other out and, worse, you could end up with really irritated skin. So don’t go overboard. I use a line called Verabella on my skin. I love their products so much I teamed up with them.

Now I won’t spend $200 an ounce for a skin cream, but I do go to a higher price point for my skin care than I necessarily do for my makeup. Makeup is here today gone tonight, but your skin is forever. You can still get good products at a drugstore. Whatever your beauty budget is, I would make skin care a priority over face paint.

Makeup is one of the most fun things about being a girl, isn’t it? Oh my God. After I get my hair done in the morning, or whenever, I like to sit on the counter in my bathroom with my feet in the sink. That way I can get really close to the mirror. I prop up a book I just love,
Making Faces
by Kevyn Aucoin, who was a genius. I flip through it and think,
What am I going to look like for tonight?
I cannot recommend the book more highly—not only for all the different looks, but for all his great tips.

As you might imagine, all my makeup and tools and everything can take up a lot of space, and as you know, I’m not an organized person—whereas Mauricio is a neat freak. So when we renovated our new house, he had the bathroom designed so that the vanity would have the two sinks, one for each of us, and in the middle between them he had the marble counter cut out and lowered to create a space for my stuff, so it would be out of his way. It works better this way!

Recently I got a question on Twitter from someone who asked me, “Who does your brows?” I answered, “I do them myself.”

So then someone else weighs in and sends a message like she’s outraged. “There is NO WAY you shape your eyebrows yourself. Why don’t you just be honest about it?”

Uh, what could I say? The truth! “I am being honest about it,” I said. “I shape them myself. Really, it’s not that hard!”

Even though I do have several skin products, when I travel I pare it way down. Unless I’m going for longer than five days, I just take a heavy moisturizer. For longer trips, I pack all my products, but then I have to check them in my luggage, and I always worry they might be lost.

I also bring a little spray bottle of Evian when I fly to spritz my face on the plane, to make my skin less dry. And another tip I learned from my sister Kathy: as soon as I get to the hotel, I lay out a hand towel on whatever space I have in the bathroom and line up all my beauty products so they look pretty and organized in a clear working space. I need a neat area to work in because, as I might have mentioned, I am not an organized person, and pulling myself together can be a lot of work sometimes. I need all the help I can get!

One of my absolute rules is I never go to sleep with my makeup on. I don’t care how late or crazy my night is; that makeup is not staying on my face. During the day, all kinds of pollution ends up on your face. So if you don’t take your makeup off your skin absorbs all that and makes it look old or can cause it to break out. Get it all off there and give your pores a chance to breathe.

I use Verabella cleanser to wash my face. I don’t want heavy soaps that make my skin feel stretched and dry. I like something that is gentle but does the job. And then I put on my gels and creams. My husband can never get used to how long it takes me to get into bed.

Getting real suntans is just not my thing anymore. I used to sunbathe years ago, and I love to be out in the sun, but I don’t like baking in it now. Recently I was in Cabo, in Mexico, and I thought I’d let my guard down and get a little color. But I ended up with a little sunspot on my cheek. I thought,
That’s it. I’m never doing that again
. It’s fine to be out there relaxing in the shade, but why be working on a tan when you can just get a fake one and save your skin? I used to use tanning lotions by Clarins and Lancôme, and I still think they’re good, but now for convenience I just either have a girl come to my house to spray me—it takes under five minutes—or run up to the booth and get sprayed.

Eye shadow: MAC (Satin Taupe), NARS (all colors)

Mascara: L’Oréal Voluminous Full-Definition and Carbon Black Voluminous

Eyeliner: Make Up For Ever waterproof liner for inside the eyelid, Hashmi Kajal kohl eyeliner (available on eBay)

Eye Makeup Remover: Andrea EyeQ’s Makeup Remover Pads, Oil-Free and Ultra-Quick

Concealer: Bobbi Brown (in Sand), Dermablend Professional Cover Creme

Tinted Sun Block: Laura Mercier, Proactiv

Foundation: Make Up For Ever HD Foundation

Blush: The Balm

Lip Gloss: Trish McEvoy, L’Oréal, MAC Viva Glam 5

Lip Balm: Burt’s Bees

Skin Care: Epicuren, Verabella

Face Wash: Cetaphil, Verabella

Toothpaste: Colgate whitening toothpaste

Breath Mint: Altoids

Body Lotion: St. Ives with Royal Jelly

Sunless Tanner (bottle): Clarins, Lancôme

My nighttime routine drives my husband insane! By the time I get to bed, he’s been sound asleep for thirty minutes! He’s said to me, “You think you could shorten your routine a little bit?”

I say, “If you want me to look good, this is the way it goes! It’s work!” Ha-ha!

I am not lazy about my manicures and pedicures, though. Whenever I see women who are really put-together, they always have one thing in common: nice manicures and pedicures. To me it’s such a shame when you see someone who looks very nice, you know, the clothes, the purse, the makeup—but then her nails are chipped. It just kills the whole deal.

So I always make a point to keep my hands and nails looking as perfect as possible (though I otherwise don’t give my hands any attention, because they’re past hope. I did not get my mother’s hands; I got my father’s, and let’s just say I’ll never be a hand model. I have learned to accept the fact that I just don’t have nice hands. Period. End of story. Good hair, bad hands. Ha-ha!).

I usually do my nails in a natural tone, unless I’m trying something out, but I have fun with the colors on my feet. For the summer, I’m into sparkly, bright colors and in the fall I like deep purples. I’m neurotic about getting germs so I take my own tools to the salon. But I don’t go to the salon all the time, as you know, and certainly not every time I have a chipped nail!

Every woman should be able to do her own nails, and don’t tell me you can’t! I know it’s hard to do the right hand if you’re right-handed, and vice versa, but you just have to learn to do it yourself! DIY is a beautiful thing!

I always say that I’m a juicy drummette—you know, the tiny but meaty part of a chicken drum. That’s me—I’m five feet three inches on a good day, I have big boobs, and I carry my weight in my stomach. I’m a drummette!

People say, “You can’t be fat when you’re a size 4!” You’d be surprised. I have a small frame, but my weight goes up and down, and I can get chubby easily. I’m not saying I’m fat, just that I have my problem areas. I’ve always tended to gain weight around my middle, and by now, four kids later, we’re talking muffin top.

When I say that everybody laughs and says, “Oh please, you don’t have a muffin top!!”

Listen, you don’t know it because I won’t show it! That means I’m doing my job!

I love fashion, but being stylish and well-dressed is about much more than picking the coolest things off the rack. As much as I adore clothes, handbags, shoes, jewelry, hats, and so on, I have to be selective—in fact, downright strategic—about what I wear because my body isn’t perfect by any means. Not everything looks good on me.

I wasn’t into fashion when I was younger. I was kind of a tomboy, so I didn’t care so much about what I wore. But Madonna came on the scene when I was about fourteen, and that’s when I started playing with fashion. I had to have the lace and the gloves with the cut-off fingers, all that stuff. It was ridiculous! When the movie
Flashdance
came out, I had to have the sweatshirt with the neck cut at an angle and falling off my shoulder. I cut up every sweatshirt I owned!

Then as I got a bit older, I took to copying what my sister Kathy did because I thought she had good style. But she dressed very mature for her age, wearing things like Chanel suits at twenty-five. That was elegant, but too mature for me, so I’d copy her but play with it. Maybe make the skirt shorter and wear a hat.

I’ve learned a lot about fashion and style since then. And the older I get, the more I learn. But one principle above all stands the test of time. The absolute most important rule of style is: wear what looks best on your body.

So simple and yet so many people do not seem to grasp it. Camouflage your flaws and highlight your assets. Cover your worst features and show your best. Simple.

For example, I’m not going to put on a pair of really low-rise jeans that creates a monster muffin top that will knock your socks off! But I can get away with showing my legs.

All through this book I’ve been emphasizing confidence, and I do believe that I’m a confident person. You may feel it’s a contradiction for me to criticize parts of my body—but I don’t. I can be a confident person and not like certain things about my body. I know my flaws. I don’t love them and am not gonna parade them around for all to see, but having some imperfections is just life. It’s part of accepting who you are and being confident anyway.

My middle has always been my problem area. I’ve had four kids, and I’ve never had lipo or had my boobs done, and that’s just the way it is. I’m very grateful to Miracle Bras and Spanx! But I still have to be diligent about finding clothes that work with my body.

Jeans are actually a perfect illustration of what I’m talking about—and what it takes to
do
what I’m talking about. The concept of dressing for your body is simple, but finding the garments to fill the bill often isn’t. With jeans, it’s like a science. You have to do a lot of research and probably try on a million pairs before you find a few styles that are exactly right for you. I have found three and only three brands of jeans that work for me: Paige, J Brand, and Adriano Goldschmied. When low-rise jeans were all the rage, it was terrible for me and my stomach, and now the higher-rise style is coming back to cover the muffin top—yay! Except that now the top part of the stomach is getting squished. See what I mean? It’s a complicated science! I’d love to wear boyfriend jeans, but they make me look like Humpty Dumpty—an egg with legs. I’m not going to fall into that trap!

Flare legs are flattering on me because they balance my upper body. I have kind of big boobs for my size, and flares are good for someone who’s short and curvy. Skinny jeans look fantastic on someone who’s tall and thin. Occasionally I’ll wear them, always with heels, but I don’t think they’re my best look, and I always put a longer jacket over them.

I don’t know what your body type is, so I can’t tell you exactly what will look best on you. Set out to discover what’s best for your body and stick with it.

And if you find a pair of pants or something that makes you go, “God, this looks really good on me!” then of course buy it, but don’t stop there. Buy multiples! Try different colors of the same great piece. It’s like finding gold, so rake it in. If they’re good quality, then you’ll have something that makes you look hot forever.

I recently found this pair of black Alice + Olivia pants that made my body look much better than it really is. Those pants made me look like I had work done on my body. So I went back and said, “I need them in gold, I need them in white…” They’re staples that I’ll wear and wear and wear. Another suggestion: when you find your perfect pair of jeans, buy at least two pairs, so you can wear one with heels and hem one to wear with flats.