Finding a good concealer is getting more difficult. At least for us baby boomers.

This is an understatement, but this aging thing is certainly a problem. What I really mean is that I constantly reinvent the wheel lately. Life is getting more and more complex.

Take my under eye circles for example. A few years ago I wrote a post about the new concealer I found. You can read it here. I waxed on eloquently about its attributes, not realizing that in less than five years my complexion would change once again. My concealer no longer works, except for the broken capillaries on my leg.

What’s Happening to My Skin

In addition to the wrinkles and sagging skin, it seems I use fewer cosmetics. I’m learning that wearing less looks better. Many of the formulas were not made for older skin anyway.

They tell me that the outer layer of my skin is thinning, even though I still have the same number of skin cells. All the while, my pigment cells are decreasing, so my skin gets paler and more translucent.

This is why I now wear a sunless tan on most days. Pale skin looks pasty to me and every pound I gain looks like I gained five. I perfectly understand why our president and most politicians wear sunless tans.

For more info on how your coloring changes, the following blog post has a great explanation. You can read it here.

Then there are the blood vessels that feed my skin and which get more fragile while the connective tissues decrease. This is getting ugly.

They also tell me that the oil glands in my face produce less oil, and that’s why my face is drier. So I apply hyaluronic acid to my face daily. It sucks in the moisture my skin needs, but I wonder how long it will work, too. You can read about my skincare routine here.

In addition, I apply retinol. Retinol reminds skin cells to behave as they did when I was younger and healthier, It minimizes wrinkles, thickens skin, controls acne, strengthens blood vessels (so there’s less breakage and discoloration), and fades sun spots. Lately, I noticed that it takes more to do the same job.

So all of this seems to no longer work as well. Lately, my concealer doesn’t work at all, and my skin gets dry and itchy far too easily. It could be my hormones, but they are stable because my doctor checks them at least once a year. I am on bio-identical hormones.

Why I No Longer Wear Concealer

While my concealer should be the answer to erasing under eye circles and combating the look of fatigue; if used incorrectly, it also makes me look older. Too much makeup around the eye area highlights wrinkles and lines.

Careful about its application, I used my finger to melt the concealer into my skin. If I piled it on without blending it in, it settled into my fine lines and wrinkles. I looked for lighter and lighter weighted textures until I realized in the end that nothing worked well any longer. It seemed to just sit on the surface. Instead of making me look younger, it only made me look older.

A few years ago I ran across a makeup artist named Cindy Joseph. She now has her own makeup line.

She said, “Allow the character in your face to be your beauty. Adding texture to texture just makes more texture. So if you want to get rid of wrinkles, putting makeup on them is just going to make them more so. A young face is more like a blank canvas so you can paint colors and textures and all that stuff. But when you get older and you have character and wrinkles and age spots and all that stuff going on, just let it be there. You know, you’re not going to trick anybody. You’re not going to fool anybody.”

I don’t have to give up my foundation yet, but I guess that day will come too. In the meantime, I just keep adjusting my makeup routine to fit my situation.

You can read about more tips from Cindy Joseph here. The video at the end of the post really convinced me.

So what concealer do I use now? I took Cindy Joseph’s advice and I don’t wear concealer at all. I just use my foundation to cover my circles though it doesn’t do the job as well as concealers used to do. I make sure, though, that a primer is mixed with my foundation. It helps with the application.