Taking joy in living is a womans best cosmetic, says New-York-based makeup entrepreneur Cindy Joseph. However, she adds just a touch of applied color to that joy with her line of cosmetics, Boomsticks! By Cindy Joseph. The three easy-to-carry tubes in her collection emphasize glow rather than cover up. And they are based on her quarter century of experience as a makeup artist and model.
I was in photo studios all day, every day for twenty-five years, and nobody asked me to model, says Joseph. Then I turned 49 and I cut off the last bit of dye from my own hair. I was then approached, on the street, to model. I didnt go get it; they came after me. So the industry was clearly looking for women who could represent my demographic.
Joseph began representing, in a big way. After an adult lifetime of being the wind beneath the wings of young pretties, suddenly Joseph found herself in the spotlight as the newly desirable key demographic and an advertising industry darling.
The jobs came pouring in, over eleven years, she says. I would first go to a go-see and there were three or four silver-haired women; now I go to a go-see and there are more like twelve to twenty. So its definitely changed, and I think the reason being is that we are the healthiest, the wealthiest, and the biggest generation. Weve got money to spend. And were still buying the things that weve purchased our whole lives.
Women in their sixties are redoing their wardrobe every year, and traveling the world and looking for new things. We really are living like we did in our 20s, 30s and 40s. And the manufacturers recognize that. They say, okay, lets start advertising for them, and representing them accurately.This new cultural attitude is what inspired Josephs cosmetic line, which she created to accentuate a natural glow and minimize the clutter of a makeup bag. But for her, whats most important about the makeup is what its not. Its not about fixing, changing, or covering up, she says. Its about bringing out, revealing and enhancing the natural beauty and health of your skin. Its creating a look that a woman gets when shes at her height of pleasure. It could be dancing, laughing, or romancing. When a woman is turned on and passionate about what shes doing, and shes having fun, her skin takes on a glow, a sheen, a radiance and a color, and these three little Boomsticks create that same look. They dont call attention to the makeup. They call attention to a womans natural healthy glow.Her philosophy is not just about the mere acceptance of getting older; its about the confidence of completely owning the aging. I decided to find the properties of my body, skin and hair as a positive thing, she says. We find photographs of Georgia O Keefe standing in her studio at 78-years old, with the light breaking across her face, making her wrinkles stand out even more. We think its beautiful, and we hang it on our walls. We pay hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for these images, like the old Native American woman leaning over the potters wheel, with her wrinkly hands and her wrinkly face. We put them on our walls. But when it comes time for us to have that look, we get a little nervous. It has to do with being noticed and valued. Women want to be noticed and cherished and valued for their entire lives, not just up until they are thirty or thirty-five. So if we value ourselves, and we find the qualities we take on as we age as positive and beautiful and fascinating and wonderful, other people will experience that as well. Thats because people experience you the way you experience yourself. So if you are cowering and hiding and trying to cover the gray hair and putting a bunch of makeup all over your wrinkles and getting your skin pulled, first off, you are not going to fool anybody. People can see how old you are, no matter what you do to yourself. We know how old Joan Rivers is. We know how old Sophia Loren is. So my viewpoint is: embrace it. Celebrate it. Have fun with it. If you are going to have silver hair, have the most beautiful silver hair you can create. If you are going to have fine lines on your skin and wrinkles, smile! Make them look as good as they possibly can! Moisturize them and celebrate it.
Joseph feels that if any generation of women can pull this off with confidence, its hers. We are the ones who reinvented every decade of our lives, she says, and now that were in our fifties and sixties, were reinventing those decades as well. Were behaving the way no previous generation had ever had. Were becoming yoga teachers and running marathons. We havent just given up and retired; were not just sitting on the front porch knitting. Were really living our lives as actively and as passionately as we always have.Of course, the attitude often comes with time and practice, and Joseph reminds her peers that it is just that: attitude. I have tremendous compassion for [baby boomers], because I am one of them, she says. Growing up in a society that tells us that as we age we lose our value, its very confronting: the silver hair, the crows feet, the loose skin. But the viewpoint that those things are bad is only that. Its only a viewpoint. So I say take some time and take a look at what you want to decide, because its just a decision. All those beliefs, all those thoughts, all those ideas are just make believe. Our society and people made them up. So we can change our minds about it just as easily.For more information on Boom! cosmetics, go to www.BoomByCindyJoseph.comAbout the author: Ron Sklar is a New-York-based writer who contributes to a variety of blogs, websites and publications.
