Beauty

SENSIBLE CARE: BOTOX YES, NIBBLING FISH NO

by Kalinka van Hählen

Last week, Minister Schippers of Health received a list of over thirteen hundred unnecessary healthcare actions from the NFU, an umbrella organization of eight academic hospitals. The NFU aims to reduce nonsensical care and thus lower healthcare costs. Keeping healthcare costs low is of course very attractive: it saves a lot of time and pain in the wallet and increases your leisure budget. Don't you think all those nibbling fish visits, eyelash extensions, and lactic acid injections cost a lot on an annual basis? I made a list of truly sensible healthcare costs, small wonders you can have done to look chic, cool, beautiful, well-groomed, and as young as possible. Based on my own experience, so it's real.

1. Eyebrow shaping and tinting

Bushy brows are hot, I know, but they mainly look good when you're named Salma Hayek or Cara Delevingne. For ordinary mortals, untamed eyebrows usually look plain old messy. Anyone who has ever had their eyebrows shaped knows what it can yield: you immediately look incredibly well-groomed and much younger. And you can get by with less makeup. I absolutely hate unnaturally thin lines, especially at the inner corners of the eyes, it even makes my face look a bit drag queen-ish, but you don't have to get rid of that. A good epilator just tidies things up a bit.

2. Gel polish

Really, all your clothes look better and seem cooler with neatly polished nails. I find gel polish a blessing: you don't have to mess around with polish this way and coat that way to have to repeat the routine after two days because of chips, cracks, and dents. Just get a nice color applied and you're free from all that hassle for at least two weeks. I have my nails done at a salon where they use CND Shellac, a brand that has good colors. My favorites right now are Sun Bleached, a very cool pastel yellow that surprisingly combines well with a lot of clothes, Wisteria Haze, a lavender blue/lilac that you really have to rock now, and Oxblood, a classic, dark oxblood red that is my winter favorite.

“Don't you think all those nibbling fish visits, eyelash extensions, and lactic acid injections
cost a lot on an annual basis?”

3. Botox

No one sees it, so I'm having my coming out here, but I have Botox in my forehead. Just a few drops, but Jesus (that's appropriate here, after all, a miracle has been performed – by Marguerite van Randwijck of Doctors At Soap, you may know) what a difference it makes for the vertical trench that had settled between my eyebrows. I frown a lot – grumpy nature, you can't help it – so I got a deeper and more prominent groove between my eyebrows. I was really annoyed by it: it made me look much older and more tired than I actually am. Now I'm my own medium-aged and dead-tired self, but you can't see that anymore. I look rested and younger. Really, magic.

4. Haircut and coloring

Once I dyed my hair alternately henna red or raven black, but that was a look that had its day when I approached thirty. From that moment on, it made me look older, not cooler, so I gradually went back to my own brown until I had dyed myself back to my own brown and saw no difference between the dyed part and the regrowth – what regrowth? That was a few years of bliss: I just had a fantastic color of my own and didn't have to do anything about it! And then I got gray hairs. That looks so colorless on top of the head and makes it look very pigeon-like, so I'm back to dyeing now. I'm getting my own brown back and my hairdresser is cutting a bit more swing into my long hair, making it look thick (it's thin) and full.

5. Makeup

Don't skimp on makeup when cutting healthcare costs. Good foundation, mascara, and lipstick do a lot. For me, the Sephora Mineral Compact works well, which now has to come from abroad again, and with M.A.C lipstick in the matte bright orange-red Lady Danger or matte rose-red Relentlessly Red, I even look tip-top on lesser days. And for mascara, I just got a new one that I'm completely enchanted by, because I have long fluttery lashes like never before: L’Oréal Paris False Lash Wings Sculpt.