That’s the lesson I learned yesterday. I was at a beauty launch, where we had to have our photo taken, a photo that was then loaded into a computer and analysed for underlying pigmentation and broken capillary issues. It’s kind of like a skin x-ray. Or looking at a photo of your evil twin. My pigmentation photo was bearable. Yes, there was some mottling. But I have been obsessed with sunscreen most of my life, so the sun spots that are lurking beneath aren’t as scary as they could be - they’re pretty much what you’d expect from living in such a sunny country as ours. Although, the tops of my ears did come up a very dark-brown - so that’s our take-home tip of today: don’t forget to apply sunscreen to ears as well. The other interesting thing was a huge ring of white around each eye … I change eye creams a lot, so all I can put this down to is the UV-shielding effectiveness of my huge black sunglasses. Next came my vascular photo. Traumatising. I knew I had a tendency for rosacea and broken capillaries. I didn’t know how deep-seated it was. Basically it looked like someone had got a photo of me and dotted and doodled on it with a red texta.
Not exactly the image you want to take with you when you are next off to see the perfect-skinned Cate Blanchett up on the big screen. It was the film Elizabeth and, granted, she did wear a ridiculous amount of powder makeup (not to mention a crazy assortment of headwear - those wacky Elizabethans). But you could still see how luminous she was underneath it all. I know, every beauty writer uses the word luminous to describe Cate Blanchett, but it’s the perfect fit. All beauty writers have a certain case of skin-envy when it comes to Cate. And today, for me, it’s a little more severe than usual.
