Looking older isn’t always about your age, but rather little beauty mistakes adding years to your look.
Forgetting about hand care
Women spend a lot of time taking care of their facial skin care regimen but may forget about their hands. Your hands face the sun, water, household cleansers and daily wear much more than your face does.
As you age, your hands can become thinner and dryer. Veins and tendons become more prominent. Age spots and brittle nails can occur. Even if your face looks young and healthy, your age can sneak up on you if you forget about hand care.
Moisturize right after washing your hands, apply broad spectrum sunscreen to the back of your hands daily, wear gloves while doing household tasks and keep your nails trimmed and maintained. This will help your hands stay softer, healthier, and more youthful.
Hair stiffened with strong-hold spray
Trying to freeze every piece of hair exactly in place will give you an unnatural helmet shape that ages you.
Youthful hair is characterized by its flow and the way it moves. Stiff styles with little movement will call attention to thin or dry hair. When you move, your hair should swing and sway with you.
If you tug your hair around your face trying to hold a style in place, it frames your face with a harsh angular shape that emphasizes wrinkles and discoloration. Switch to flexible- hold working sprays and light texturizing mists to hold styles in place without freezing your hair in position.
Wearing worn-out shoes
It’s not just about style; the shoes you wear have a say in your posture and gait.
Cushioning and support wear down over time, altering your balance and putting you at risk for poor posture and discomfort. You may begin to walk more slowly and tentatively or slouch to ease the pressure, making yourself look older than you are.
Wear comfortable shoes that fit properly and have good arch support. When shoes lose their comfort because they’re too worn, it’s time to get rid of them. Wearing footwear that hugs your feet just right and provides ample support means you’ll stride with less effort and more poise.
Matching lipstick directly to outfits
Matching your lipstick shade to your blouse/jacket used to be considered high-class dressing. Now, it just looks painfully old-fashioned.
Matching your lip color to your outfit creates a harsh, graphic contrast with skin. Skin tones will immediately appear drained and lifeless against an exact color match.
Contemporary, youthful style calls for quiet contrast. Wear cool colored clothes with neutral, warm toned lips or pair a bold berry lip with your nude or neutral wardrobe. Relaxing this rule will soften your complexion instantly.
Slouching and rounded shoulders
You probably weren’t born with bad posture. For most people, poor posture is the result of many years of sitting hunched over desks and computers, tilting your head down to look at your phone, and weakened back muscles.
Rounded shoulders and a collapsed chest can make you look shorter, less confident, and more drained than you may actually feel. Â It can prematurely age you by several years.
The good news is that small changes in your posture can have a big impact. Simply roll your shoulders back and down. Try sliding your shoulder blades toward your back pockets. Keep your head over your shoulders.
Perform this with every stretch and exercise that you can, in addition to stretches and upper back/abs exercises to help you sit up taller and look more vibrant.
Over-darkening and squaring inner brows
Sketching in heavy, angular, rectangular inner halves of brows to replace naturally thinning brows makes a face look rigidly angry.
Downward-angled strokes near the nose have a way of dragging the eyes down and making brow bone hollows more noticeable.
Inner brows naturally taper out softly where they begin and slowly become more dense as they reach the arch.
By switching to pencil strokes that mimic natural hairs or a tinted brow gel, you can achieve added volume, bypassing the harsh outlines that can age the upper face.
High turtlenecks to hide the neck
Don’t rely on high-necked tops as your go-to garment to hide excess sagging skin or sun spots on the chest. It actually frames the neck, calling more attention to it.
When necklines are made of rigid material, they can compress the neck, giving it a shorter look and a bulky impression below the jaw.
Opt for scoop, V-neck, or gentle boatneck styles to visually lengthen your neck. These open necklines will direct focus up towards the collarbones, leaving a light and youthful frame around the collar.
Neglecting to trim hair regularly
Our hair gets dryer and more prone to damage as we age. This is why split ends and breakage can become more apparent as you get older.
By neglecting to trim your hair after a while it can start to look thin, frizzy, and limp even if your hair is in great condition. Trimming your hair helps keep it shaped, reduce damage, and leave it looking thicker and healthier.
Unsupportive or stretched bras
Putting on bras that have stretched out bands or don’t fit your cup size correctly allows your bustline to sink lower on your body, effectively making your waist shorter and changing your posture.
Allowing your bust line to collapse down towards your stomach creates folds in your clothes that make your silhouette look crushed, aging the shape of your body.
By simply wearing well-fitted, lifting underwear, you can immediately lengthen your torso and change how your clothing hangs off your body for an instant taller, thinner, and youthful posture.
Walking with rigid posture and stiff arms
Walking with your feet wide apart, slouched shoulders, and barely moving arms is an unconscious safety technique that you’re adopting to feel more stable. However, it makes you appear physically weak.
By not allowing your upper body to rotate with your spine, your movement appears strained and you look tentative.
Simply swinging your arms comfortably, relaxing your knees, and opening your chest will allow you to move gracefully once again. It will announce to others that you’re confident, strong, and full of energy.
Lining lips past the natural borders
Trying to make your lips appear fuller by lining far outside the natural border of the lips creates a ring that feathers and bleeds around the mouth.
Cream liners often sink into these tiny ridges, bleeding into the vertical lines around your mouth and making wrinkles stand out.
Lightly contour just on the Cupid’s bow and center of the bottom lip with a lipstick color that matches your natural lip color.
Leaning on one hip while standing
You probably find yourself putting most of your weight on one hip while standing in line at the grocery store or chatting with a friend. You may even do it without thinking.
But when you continually stand on one hip, you create unequal pressure on your hips, lower back, knees and ankles that overtime can change the way you sit or stand. It can also cause one shoulder to rest lower than the other, roll your pelvis forward and cause you to stand in a twisted position. And you may appear tired, stressed or older.
Next time you find yourself standing around, shift your weight evenly on both feet. Avoid locking your knees, gently tighten your core and let your shoulders relax so they rest evenly on top of your body.Â
Bulky reading glasses that cause shadowing
Large, heavy frame reading glasses are often chosen by people trying to disguise under-eye circles or crow’s feet. However, this style attracts attention to your whole mid-face area instead.
Big glasses perch on top of your cheeks creating dark shadows that drop down when you talk or laugh. Heavy bottom frames also pull down high cheekbones and exaggerate lines under your mouth.
Frames that fit close to your face with the outer corners slightly lifted will have an eye-lifting effect on your whole face.
Heavy dangling earrings
Heavy earrings elongate your earlobes, pulling down the actual holes in your ears along with the skin surrounding them.
Droopy earlobes that hang under large metal earrings add years to your face and emphasize loosening skin around your jaw.
Switch to supportive earring backs or choose lightweight hoops, ear cuffs, and studs that sit higher on your earlobes to keep skin perked up around your ears and jawline.
Heavy powdering to eliminate skin glow
Using translucent powder to constantly blot your skin throughout the day wipes out any natural glow.
It’s okay to minimize shine, but powdering the forehead, nose and chin so much that they appear completely matte will make your skin look dusty and dry.
Healthy skin has some natural luminosity as light bounces off of it, but dull, dry skin absorbs light and will look flat and papery by comparison. Replace your compact powder with oil blotting sheets to maintain your makeup without sacrificing your skin’s natural glow.
Dark, opaque nails on thinning hands
Deep burgundies, stark blacks and dark plums highlight dark spots, visible veins and fine lines on backs of aging hands.
Dark shades provide a high-contrast border next to pale or thin skin and draws attention to loss of volume in fingers.
Soft rose golds, warm nude colors, sheer pinks and creamy milky whites brighten the hand and reflect light, giving fingers a lengthening effect and hands a fresher, more hydrated appearance.
Full-on dark neutrals
Sticking with head-to-toe navy, black, or grey outfits, thinking they’re universally flattering and timeless, actually drains the color from your complexion.
Dark fabrics near the neck cast cool shadows upward, highlighting under-eye hollows and uneven skin pigmentation.
When you choose lighter, more vibrant colors such as ivory, blush, warm tan, or jewel tones to wear near your face, you’re essentially bouncing warm light onto your skin, making it look more radiant.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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