Charla Krupp - How Not to Look Old: Fast and Effortless Ways to Look 10 Years Younger, 10 Pounds Lighter, 10 Times Better

FORGET

AGING GRACEFULLY

All right, Im just going to come out and say it. Aging sucks. As my generation of women hits forty, fifty, sixty, we are for the first time discovering things about our faces and bodies that we never noticed before. Icky things such as age spots, crows-feet, gray hair, chin hair, marionette lines, saggy boobs, spider veins, bunions need I go on? I dont think so. You know what Im talking about. The question is, What are you what are we going to do about it?

Were going to fight aging and were going to look great doing it.

Whether its by our sheer numbers (seventy-eight million strong the largest demographic group in history) or our sheer chutzpah, we baby boomers are pros at shaking things up as we hit each decade. We know how to do this. From rock music in the sixties, to Me Generation therapy in the seventies, to the Lets Get Physical fitness boom of the eighties, to the spa fad of the nineties, to the green movement of today, our generation has no problem rewriting the rules to suit our needs as we move past lifes milestones. Now that we are going to live to be a hundred, our mission is to reinvent retirement and the golden years. Although we havent nailed that yet (for some of us, retirement is still a ways away), we already know that were not going to just stand there like a bunch of Willy Lomans and accept our gold watch with a thank-you and a smile at the retirement party (if we even get the watch or the party). Neither are we likely to be sailing into the sunset spending our retirement playing golf or tennis, or sitting around the pool with a cocktail in hand.

What else arent we going to do?

Were not going to grow old gracefully (or gratefully).

Were not going to celebrate our wrinkles (youve got to be kidding).

The last bullet point on page 3 is where this book comes in. How Not to Look Old is the boomer manifesto: a comprehensive plan of attack on aging, all those little beauty and style tweaks that you can (and should!) do to look younger and hipper and still show up for work the next day. Younger and hipper is a concept Ill use a lot, so lets just say Y&H from now on. As opposed to looking like an old lady (OL for short). The chapters in this book are organized from head to toe, from Cut Some Bangs to Step into Sexy Heels. This master list of to-dos leads to even more things you can do to get gorgeous. If you go chapter by chapter and cross off the to-dos as you go, you will look ten years younger, ten pounds lighter, and ten times better. Maybe even more than ten years younger. At the start of each chapter, youll find the words Look X Years Younger, which show the approximate number of years this to-do will set back the clock. Dont add all these up, or youll be back in the womb! Instead, use the number to gauge the visual impact youll get from doing this to-do.

Ever wonder why some fifty-year-olds look like theyre forty and others look like theyre sixty? Today everyone wants to look ten years younger than they are. Forty is the new thirty, fifty is the new forty, and so on. Looking younger is not all about lucky genes. It takes work. But if you do too much work, the comments youll be hearing will not be, Wow! You look fabulous! but rather, Wow! What did you do?

This book is not about extreme makeovers. I have nothing against plastic surgery. In fact, I have personal experience to share (see chapter 6). But I dont think plastic surgery guarantees that youre going to look young. You might not have any wrinkles after a face-lift, but if you look like you had work done, youre obviously old enough to have a face-lift! So who are you fooling? A face frozen in time is the face of a Woman Who Has Had Too Much Work Done. As fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi recently said to me, I think plastic surgery is the most aging thing in the world. If you want to look seventy, boy, get a face-lift. Get your lips done.

Another reason why theres no chapter on plastic surgery is that many of us just dont have time for downtime. Instant gratification is part of our DNA. We want fast fixes. Thats why theres also no mention of the fact that diet and exercise are essential to looking younger and staying healthy over the long haul. There isnt a woman alive who doesnt already know that. Eating salmon and doing yoga are good things to do for sure, but they wont give you the instant results that the to-dos in this book will. We want results. Real results. Visible results. Other antiaging books tell you to run a bath, light a candle, chant and practice acceptance. Not this one. Ive tried all that and guess what? It doesnt work!

Were not going to join the Women Who Have Had Too Much Work Done club (like our mothers and their friends).

Were not going to look old.

What works is going to the dermatologist and, if necessary, making her or him your new best friend. From Botox to fillers to peels to lasers, there are so many noninvasive options in our beauty arsenal these days. To find what works best, Ive called on my friends some of the best beauty and fashion pros in the biz to share their secrets throughout this book. Not ridiculous, over-the-top ideas, but advice we all can put to use. I know they are the real deal many of them have worked their magic on me. And even though most live in New York City, as I do, their suggestions apply to all types of women, and encompass all price points.

At this stage, we dont take kindly to spending $350 or even $35 on a wrinkle cream and then finding out six to eight weeks later that those little lines bleeding off the top of your lips have not disappeared. In my former years, I was beauty director at Glamour and editor in chief of the late beauty Web site eve.com, and Ive made a career out of being a beauty guinea pig. Theres nothing I wont put on my face in the name of beauty. Magazines are packed with advertisers products, and were inundated with commercials and ads, but how do we know what really works? At the end of most chapters, youll find my Brilliant Buys, the results of my heavy lifting. I personally tested more than one thousand beauty products, most of which had already landed on best of beauty lists in the major magazines. I am a very tough customer. To make the cut, my Brilliant Buys had to (1) deliver results, (2) be user-friendly, (3) look good enough to keep on the bathroom shelf, and (4) not be insanely expensive. Somewhere along the line, we learned that the more money we spend, the better the results will be. Im here to tell you that that is simply not true. Some of the best cleansers, moisturizers, mascaras, foundations, and shampoos can be found at Target.