September 12, 2018 • 38 mins
Val Monroe on self-image, confident aging, and what everyone should do when they look in the mirror.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Sometimes I think when I get up in the morning
and I go to the bedroom and I look at
the mirror, you know, one of my eyeballs, it's gonna fall.
You have no idea what's going to happen every day
when you wake up after a certain age. But again,
you know, if you feel self compassionate, it's going to
be a lot easier. Hey, guys, thanks for listening. This
(00:29):
is You Turns, a podcast about change, all kinds of change,
external and internal change, because shift happens. I am Lisa
Oz and I'm Jill Herzig, and today we are actually
going to talk about aging self image. Let's let's put
a nicer term on how do you make it nice?
(00:52):
I mean, there's really is there is there like an
all right, screw it, let's just talk about agent. Let's
do it. We're here with Val Monroe, a longtime friend,
so excited that was an expert in beauty culture for
years and years. She was the editor of the beauty
director at Oh the Oprah magazine and a very different
kind of beauty director. I have to say, I come
(01:14):
from magazine, so I know all kinds of beauty directors.
Um and she was the fabulous exception to the general rule. Um.
Millions of people read her followed her asked bell column.
I was one of them, um, and just so thrilled
to thank you and thank you. Plus were to be
hearing congratulations, guys, thank you. We're excited. Yes, we're we're
(01:40):
just kind of plunked in the middle of our you
turn and talking about it. We were intimidated by you
coming that we put makeup on today. Oh no, you're
both so beautiful. I keep saying that all these women
you know, who always say, oh, I was afraid, you know,
to meet you, are afraid to see you because I
thought you'd be critical the way I look. And I
got out a lot when I was an active beauty director,
(02:02):
and I was always saying, you know, just like be
yourself with me, please, you know. But that's when they
came to the Hearst building because I was just going
to Jill and I were talking about this. When you
work in publishing, you can't even go through the door.
They will turn you away at the door if you
don't come with your perfect hair and your perfect nails
and your high heels. And there was something about working
(02:24):
in publishing that actually made me a little crazy. I mean,
I used to say to people when they ran into
me on the street, and I could instantly see that
adjustment in their face when I was in my work mode.
You know, it's kind of like what you're talking about.
I just wanted to say, this is just a costume. Um. Conversely,
like I would walk by people on the weekends who
(02:45):
I worked with and saw regularly, and they would not
recognize me at all. I could virtually wave at them
and they just be like, who's that crazy lady with
the bags under our eyes? I don't know that one.
I mean, it just yeah, So it really, it really
was this costume, and I can't say that that was
you know, I didn't enjoy the dress up part of
(03:06):
it the way I think some people do, and I
especially didn't enjoy the fact that it puts some people
on edge and made them assume that I was holding
them to some kind of standard, which I was not.
So that's very hard to get around, I think, because
it's not you holding them to that standard, but it's
themselves so and to the point of, you know what
you feel like when you walk into, for example, the
Hearst building, right, I actually have worked word at Candy
(03:27):
Nast too, and I think it's it was worse at
Condy Nast, and the elevator was difficult, brutal, brutal place
you had to survive that every morning even started carnivorous
beasts just the you know, we used to call it
elevator eyes, which is just the up and down, both
because the eyes go up and down and because it
(03:49):
happened so often in the elevator and just made you feel,
you know, I don't know, three inches tall and three
ft wide and you know, just not good. That's such
a shame because I think when that happens, it's likely
unconscious on the up and down person's part um. A
friend of mine at the colleague of mine at the
magazine once pointed out to me that I did that.
(04:11):
I was completely unaware of it, and I'm sure I
was making some kind of judgment, but I wasn't conscious
of it. So, um, do you think you were just
trying to take somebody in in some way? But I
don't think that's really an excuse. And where I was
taking when I was doing it with a woman, I
was taking her in in many ways, you know, as
as a competitor. Probably is judging her on her even
(04:36):
her class. You know, those kinds of distinctions that I
think we make unconsciously hard to turn that off. It's
very hard to turn that off, especially when you're in
a in a community or a context where it's almost
expected of you. And you know, as I said earlier,
you know when you walk into say the hers building
or counting a spelling that that um judgment is largely
(04:57):
self imposed because you honestly don't know what other people
are thinking of you, even when they're looking you up
and down the elevator. UM. I think the key to
getting past that is to encourage compassion for yourself up
to a point where it won't matter anymore. And you know,
I say that kind of blithely, but it's it's hard
(05:18):
to do what it's possible to do. Yeah, So that's
it's self compassion you're talking about, which is something that
that's coming up for us in conversations. Part of it
is too. I notice just a trick I do when
I'm feeling incredibly judged, like in an elevator where it's
they up and down, if you just smile at that person,
(05:38):
it breaks the tension and then it gets them out
of their head of whatever they're thinking about you, and
they don't want to think those things about you, and
they suddenly like have a connection with you, and you're
both then you're both getting out of your own heads
and into a relationship that just helps me a lot.
So that actually, I think is one of the main
key components of self compassion. But but what I suggest
(05:59):
is not is that you not only do it with
other people, that you do it with yourself. Because one
of the things that I feel so passionate about is
the way we look at ourselves when we look in
the mirror, because we're taught from the time we're basically
infants that when we look at our reflection, we objectify ourselves.
And if you think about self objectification, what that is
(06:19):
is you're looking at your image through the eyes of
someone else you believe is judging you. It's a third person,
basically a second person. Right, lots of people in the
room when you're standing there in the bathroom, there a mirror,
there are and that's that's often why women feel that
a mirror is not their friend. And if you can
learn to look at yourself in a way that um
(06:42):
that decreases at least decreases the self objectification. You'll see
that your feelings about yourself are really, really different. So
I wrote a little piece about this when I was
at the magazine because somebody had sent me UM a
photo of me look with UM. I was at a
party and I was faced face in conversation with that
gorgeous creature, Mrs David Bowie, right. And as I looked
(07:07):
at the picture, as I described it, you know, I
felt as if I had just opened a bouquet to
discover that the flowers were like a day old and
she looked to me like an outrageously beautiful orchid, hothouse orchid,
you know, in full bloom. And I looked like a
parking lot daisy at the end of the day. So
I went over to the mirror in my office and
(07:28):
I looked into my own eyes for a little bit,
and I kept looking until I actually saw myself, and
then I said high sweetie, and all of that judgment
and objectification went away. So when I was talking, when
I would talk to groups of people about this experience,
it wasn't very helpful, I don't think, in a way,
because it was all about my own experience. I had
(07:50):
no way of helping them do it for themselves. It's
a very hard thing to do. If you've ever tried
looking into a mirror into your own eyes for any
length of time, it's difficult. And I discovered, um, this
teacher at Barnard, her name is Tara Well, who has
done studies on what she calls mirror meditation, and she
(08:11):
encourages her subjects to look at themselves in the way
that I did, and then has tracked how they feel
about themselves. She tracks her self esteem, she tracks their objectification.
Does she have them speak to themselves. You don't have
to say anything, You just have to You have to
be able to confront the feelings, whatever feelings come up
when you look at yourself. That's something that I wrote
(08:32):
about when I wrote this piece. And I was almost
embarrassed to write about what I felt because it because
it's so intimate. Um. But if you can, if you
can actually sit there and do that, and in a way, um,
you're befriending yourself in the way Lesta, you just spoke
about trying to befriend be friends someone in and there
(08:53):
you know your your whole experience about who you are
as you present yourself to the world shifts in a
way that's very I don't like to useus work, but
it's very empowering. Yeah. Okay, So when I was a kid,
leased to go in the closet with a mirror and
light turned off, I have to stare in it. So
I'm still a little nervous by doing that because there's
(09:14):
remember the game of Bloody Marry, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,
Bloody Marriage. You never played this game, Oh my gosh,
so too much staring into the mirror. It's possible your
family made it up, the whole town. It was a
scary game, and only Lisa play. No, no, no, I didn't.
I wouldn't play. I don't know. We just did variety,
we bore. But the mirror isn't the place that bothers
(09:38):
me so much. I'm okay with him because you always
a just whatever. And that's it's I recognize myself in
the less and less as I get older, but it's
still me. Where I don't recognize myself is in my
cell phone. That is so much harder to look at,
like when I'm on Skype with you know, if you
talk to someone on I don't even know who that
(09:58):
person is I don't want to talk to them because
I have to have a little image of me coming
up and I'm scraping them that I hate and I
can't staring into those eyes aren't go isn't gonna help
me at all. So I don't know why anyone I
would want to look at like a terrible photo of themselves,
because that's what that is. I mean, it's like, you know,
so don't look. I mean, you know, that reminds me
of what I said to some of my friends when
(10:20):
they would say, you know, like oh I hate my
neck or I hate my chin, or I hate my eyes.
I would just say, well, look at something else, you know,
go to the museum and look at a van. Go
you know. I mean that works up to a point
because if if if a body part is making you
feel really uncomfortable, and I say, you know, like, just
do whatever you want, do whatever you can to make
(10:40):
yourself feel better about it. But I always encourage one
to do them the self, you know, the the de
objectification first, because whatever you do after that is going
to feel a lot better, no matter what you choose.
I I once wrote a line we had something when
(11:00):
I was an editor Glamor magazine, which was called the
It's Okay List, which is exactly what it sounds like,
a whole list of things that really are just freaking okay.
Don't worry about it. And I remember, I think maybe
the best contribution I ever made was only believed the
skinny mirrors. So that's my that's my word of wisdom
to you, Lisa. Don't believe your phone. It's it's like
(11:20):
the equivalent of a fat mirror, you know. It is
the selfie the selfie obsessions. I just don't get, never trust.
I think twenty maybe I could get this. It's terrible
for everyone. It's terrible for twenty year olds because what
you see is not real, and it's presented as what
is real. And so we look at these images and
(11:41):
we think, oh my god, she looks so much better
than I do, when we don't know what she actually
looks like. I mean there, um, I keep thinking of
that of the of Jane Fonda at the What's at
the Oscar Systey when she looked like a Barbie doll, right,
So so um, I say, more power to her. She
she was having fun, you know, she looked. I mean
(12:03):
that the choice of that particular image I found somewhat
jarring because I do think she's a feminist. But um,
but but the problem with it is that I think
so many women look at that and thank god, she's eighty.
How did she how does she look like that? Well,
I've seen her in person. She doesn't look like that.
That's a costume, as you were saying, Jill, you know,
(12:23):
it's a costume, and it's a very sophisticated one, because
it's not you know, she doesn't put that together. She's
got experts putting that together for her. And so what
we're presented with on television, you know, with selfies, were
presented with all these images that aren't that don't really
reflect what people look like. So there's this other reality
that we're now comparing ourselves to, even younger women who
(12:46):
are asking more and more for procedures because they think
that's what they should look like and it's not. It's
not possible. We will come back to this after the break. Yeah,
(13:11):
if we're a break. We were talking about, well, Jane
Fonda for one enter beautiful but produced appearance. Um, I
want to ship here's a tiny bit and talk about identity, right,
and and and how when we feel like our appearance
is a big part of who we are and then
that changes, Um, how do we grow into that evolving
(13:36):
sense of self? With great difficulty? I had to say, so, UM,
I'm going to go back to you know, UM, at
the risk of sounding like a one note song, I'm
going to go back to self compassion because, um, you know,
as we get older, things start to get loose and
fall off, and you know, we have to deal with
(13:59):
the back on. We can do that if we if
we have things to do. Um. I actually, you know,
sometimes I think when I get up in the morning
and I go to the bathroom, one of my and
I look in the mirror, you know, one of my eyeballs,
it's gonna fall. You have no idea what's going to
happen every day when you wake up untain age. But
but um, but again, you know, if you feel self compassionate,
(14:21):
it's going to be a lot easier. So UM, I
was thinking about, UM, my nineties three year old mother,
who is She lives on her own, you know, she's
very independent. Um. But I'm watching her as she's dealing
with all these you know, kind of one loss after
another with her friends, you know, or with her physical
(14:42):
attributes and um and what what is um? You know?
Supporting her through this is her ability. Her resilience comes
from self compassion. Basically, it's about, you know, feeling good
about herself in spite of all of the things that
that are happening to her. And I think the older
(15:03):
you get, the more and the more lost there is.
You know, there's a feeling at least I've experienced this,
potentially feeling betrayed by my body. You know that I've
I've relied on for my identity because fortunately, you know,
I have gotten good feedback about it. And suddenly I
think there's no feedback, or there's feedback I don't like,
or I'm searching for feedback that you know isn't forthcoming
(15:25):
and um and if I can um instead of feeling
betrayed or feel you know, this profound sense of loss alone,
only if instead I can feel towards myself the way
I would feel towards my maybe six year old self
if I felt this disappointment and sadness, which is to say,
(15:47):
you know, you put your hand over your heart as
you would for a child, or you you hold your
face the way you would hold to Chelseford and you
just say, you know, I'm sorry, it's okay, you're gonna
be hey. Yeah. You know, as I say it, it
sounds so woo woo and so clich but it actually it. Actually,
(16:08):
I know, I am the least woo woo person. There
are many there are many moments when I think, huh,
this U turn would be easier if I was more
invested in the woo when I am not. I am
deeply practical shoes person. Everybody knows, well, you know self
compassion is very practical. Yeah, no, I mean it sounds
like something I should kind of take out the dust
(16:29):
off every day. Is the opposite of that, though, I
mean taking it to an extreme, just throwing in the towel,
like wearing sweatpants, which I literally have done many times
in my life, where it's like ponytail sweatpants, no makeup,
I don't care, eat the but eat the gallon of
ice cream and just say screw it and you know,
(16:51):
judge me as you will. So um, I love that idea,
as long as you don't hate yourself for it, because
that's the opposite. I mean, that's the I mean, if
you if you can do that as some women can
and just say the hell with it. I mean, there's
a certain that some women age, you know, into a
mumu and rubber soled shoes and there you know, w
(17:11):
n et tote bags and they're perfectly happy with that,
you know whatever. That's great. Um In fact, I love
to see there's a certain kind of um uh woman
in or maybe seventies, mid seventies who you often see
on the streets in New York. And she's got she's
often you know, kind of short, and she's kind of heavy,
and she's usually big bosomed, and she's wearing you know,
(17:34):
very comfortable shoes. She's got her practical her backpack or whatever,
short hair, no makeup, and she looks very comfortable with herself.
She puzzling along during that New Yorker lady. Yeah, and
I kind of admire that I'm not there personally, But
but that's her choice, you know, if you can make
that choice and not feel like you're, for some reason,
(17:57):
Lisa giving up. But the thing the thing with you, Lisa,
is that you you hit every mark on the continuum.
So I love that, you know. I remember once we
had a shoot at your house for the doctor Os
magazine and you had a terrible cold, and you came
downstairs and there were Oh my god, we had totally
taken over your house. It was horrible what we did
(18:17):
to you. And you came downstairs and you were in
exactly the mood you're talking about. You barely slept, you
urine sweats, your hair was in a ponytail. You're like,
oh hi, everybody. You couldn't have been nicer, but you
were clearly suffering. And what I loved was that you
were You were not gonna, like, I don't know, do
a little something something well, but it also just you
(18:42):
just didn't care in that moment. And yet I have
also seen you as you are possibly the best non
professional makeup artist that I know. I have seen you
head to toe glam, and I've seen you every kind
of every place in between, which I think is kind
of amazing. Whereas what I was saying before is like
(19:02):
I kind of only have a couple of modes. My shift,
my gearshift either sticks here or sticks all the way
down here. Um, And I don't know, I mean, I
think it's it's kind of interesting, like as I've gone
through this shift and this identity change, one of the
things I have not been able to do is figure
out whether all those editor in chief clothes should just
(19:23):
be taken to the consignment store. No, they look so
good on you, well, thank you so much. Haven't warn them?
Don't you can wear them here to the podcast. I
am wearing strange pokaout pants today, which come from the
editor in chief wardrobe. But basically, you know, one thing
I wonder about is, you know, if I want to
(19:43):
accelerate change, do I need to shift all of that
stuff out of my out of my at least out
of my sight lines to It completely depends on what
kind of change you want to shift too, because it's
all about what you feel comfortable. I think, you know,
if you feel comfortable with those clothes, fantastic wear them.
I mean, if I felt super comfortable in them, I
(20:06):
would wear them to the grocery store. And I'm not
doing that well literally, some of them I have to
be I have to dust, the shoes need dusting well,
and heel's our whole other Oh my god, I mean,
I feel like I should take out a hot glue
gun and just make some kind of a sculpture for
my backyard out of these shoes. Well, that's an interesting idea.
(20:27):
Or you mightself said, because they're probably be very shoes,
or find someone who's a size seven your size seven. Well,
well I was just gonna say, is is do we
only look nice for other people? Do we never? Well
that's that's where self objectification comes down. I mean, if you,
if you look in the mirror and you love the
(20:48):
way your face looks without any makeup, I mean, if you,
if you can look at yourself in the morning when
you first get up and say high sweetie to your
face and not feel like Jesus Christ, you know, like
what happened overnight. Um, I think you know you're going
to be a much happier person. I don't think it's
easy to do, but um. I actually had experienced recently
(21:11):
with a friend to a psychiatrist who was complaining about
her own feelings about the way she looks as she's
getting older, you know, And um, and I said, jeez,
you know I don't have that right now. I mean,
I look, I have great lighting in my bathroom. A
lot of time of time figuring out I did a
lot of research about what bulbs to get compassion right there.
(21:33):
It is anyway, so um, I said, I actually don't
feel that right now, and I, um, I don't. I
think I look my age, and I look in the
mirror and and i'm I'm fine with it. And she
looked at me and she said, well, of course you're
in denial. But she's right, She's right. I don't see
(21:54):
myself the way other people see me. I see myself
the way I see me, and I like the way
I see me. Now, if you guys said to me
a little bit, how dare she for messing with No? No, No,
it's not at all, not at all. No. I mean
she's I trust her. Um. But but my point is that,
(22:14):
you know, there's kind of nothing that people could say
to me that would shift my self compassion. I think
in a way that that you know was real for me,
unless you guys said to me, now, Jesus fell, are
you how old? You like? You look incredible? And actually
one of the things I wanted to ask you about
(22:35):
was the fact that you know, particularly through all those
years where you were the O beauty director and the
oldest oldest yea until one uh one retired and then
I became then I was older, like by fifteen or
twenty years and everyone else. And maybe that's what made
you the best. I think it what made you may
(22:56):
be the best is that you had never been a
beauty director before you. Oh so I was discovering along
with our readers. I was discovering, you know, everything that
I needed to learn as a beauty editor. Um. And
you kind of never lost your feminist take as well
on beauty. I felt like, I felt like that was
fair irony, right, there isn't it? The feminist beauty editor? Um? No,
(23:23):
I didn't think so because I was UM. I actually
was in a very particularly protected position working for the
Oprah magazine because when I was there for the for
the large part of the time, I was there from
say two thousand one to two thousand ten, UM, when
(23:43):
Oprah Show was still on the air, and she um,
basically she was the ghost that laid the golden egg. Um.
I could do anything I wanted basically as the beauty
I really wasn't tied to pleasing um, the average tisers
in a way that all other beauty editors. You could say,
don't use an I cream, Well I did, actually I did.
(24:08):
And UM, And you know, when some advertisers were talking
to me when I knew that it was just BS.
I actually, at one point in front of my publisher
one day, put my hands over my ears and went,
blah blah blah blah blah blah. I mean I was
I was a scamp because I could be, because I
was protected. That all changed and you you were actually
(24:28):
under marching orders to rebel against anything that didn't right.
It's right and UM and the authenticity of the beauty
pages in the magazine were a reflection of Oprah's authenticity
UM and the authenticity of the magazine in general. They
were proud of that. There were these beautiful makeovers. I
(24:48):
remember them through that stage where you know the woman's story,
UM and what she'd been going through. It was a
big part of it. It seemed like you almost never
did a straight up makeover. Here she doesn't look good,
but here she does. UM that totally different before after
approaches so and those were so much fun to do
and and behind the scenes, what you didn't know was
(25:10):
that I always took the woman by the hand and said,
we're going to do something for you that you will
be able to continue to do after you leave the studio.
And then I always spoke to the hairstyle is through
the makeup artist to say, you know, do whatever you
need to do for the photograph, but please make sure
(25:32):
that she leaves with an idea of what she can
do on her own and a couple of products so
that she can she can continue to do. And did
you did you ask them to keep it simple enough
that it was something you could actually do every day
without making yourself not. That was part of the right,
That was part of the point, because what you do
for a photograph is just like ridiculously complicated. Yes, and
(25:53):
you know, we we consider doing, um, a couple of
recidivism stories, you know, to see like what happened to
the women like ten years later. Um, but it didn't
really work because it's not practical, you know, to go
back to somebody ten years later and stuff. It could
be all kinds of things exactly exactly right that are
causing recidivism. This is true. There's something just about it
being Opuh's magazine also and her being on the cover
(26:15):
every month because she's not a model, she's not tira up,
but she looks amazing. And so the message that you're
telling people is you may not be a model, but
you can feel great about the way you look, and
you can put your best self forward, which is Opuh's thing, right,
was always being your best self of your best life. Yeah.
I was on a panel not too long ago with
(26:37):
a young woman who was ragging about how her magazine
what was that word that everybody used was it was
a great disruptor? Right? And I said, really, because in
two thousand and one, the Open magazine started putting a
slightly overweight black woman on its cover every month. What
do you think about that being destructive? So I think,
(27:01):
um you know, for for many years that magazine, her magazine,
like her show, and like her um did I had
a tremendous effect on raising people's consciousness about the way
they feel about themselves, about what their choices are, about
who there um uh role models might be, because just
(27:28):
by the virtue of being who she is, she introduces
a whole new role model for people who might not
have thought that that was available to them. A friend
of mine actually worked as one of the casting people.
Oh had a very different structure and yeah, m she
(27:49):
was a freelancer and she basically just walked the streets
of New Us looking for unusual, fascinating looking women. So
one of the one of the women we used models
decided not right, but right, that's what we used to do.
Um one of the women who we used to One
of my favorite makeover stories I found when I was viking,
as I want to do, up and down the um
(28:14):
bike path along the Hudson, and I stopped at one
of the piers and I saw this woman climbing out
of the water on her here and I was looking
at I was like, oh, my, gotcha, is so gorgeous? What?
And the way I described her was, you know, she
she she had actually been swimming, swimming the watermaid she
(28:36):
was emerging trying. You know, I am a New York
City person, child of the Hudson. The Hudson was a
very scary place when I was growing up, but still
it is. So she pulled herself out of the water,
and I got off my bike and I went over
to her, and I on the way I wrote about
it was, you know, I noticed she had her hair
(28:57):
was like wet slipped back. She had what I thought
was maybe eyeliner, could have been sludge. I wasn't sure,
and I said, what the heck, you know, And it
turned out she's she's like an E M T. She
was training for something the story we did, so we
used her and so I said, well, what's your what
are your with your beauty routine? And you know, she
(29:18):
spent like thirty five dollars a year, but she was stunning,
stun How old was she in her thirties? Thirties? Everybody
is still pretty in their thirties. Well she was beautiful. Yes,
I agree. I also think everybody's still pretty in their
forties and different and yeah right, so, um we we
(29:40):
made her over in a way that was very um simple,
and I cataloged her beauty routine and then we compared
her to another woman who spent I think it was
like dollars a year on and procedures and um so
it was really fun. That's one of our most fun
makeover story, high maintenance versus super But to your point, um,
(30:04):
I found her climbing out of the r Yeah. Alright,
Well I want to get back to that question of
self care and how much is enough and how much
is too much. We're gonna break for one second. Okay,
before the break, we were talking about self care and
(30:24):
how much is too much? And I personally think part
of The problem is societal in that when I was
growing up, it was an entirely different expectation for what
I would buy and do, whether it was my beauty
routine or my fashion from what my mother would buy
or where. Um, And now it seems like it's just so.
(30:47):
There was no competition between a fifty year old woman
or a forty year old woman and a twenty year
old It was we were like different universities. And now
it's like everybody's in the same cool there's you know,
you date people who are twenty years younger than you are.
Everybody wears Dulsha and Gavana, and we all use the
(31:10):
same beauty stuff, even if my my daughters might literally
Daphne and I exchange moisturizers and towners and what thirty
one and Vallas you were saying, it kind of cuts
both ways. So women in there are twenties who have
zero to worry about in the looks department are asking
for procedures and paying top dollar for products because somehow
(31:33):
they've gotten infected with worry about their looks. How did
we how do we do that? What did we do? So?
I think I think you know the selfie um uh generation,
you know, has a lot to do with that. Um.
You know, I don't think I mean framing aging in
terms of worry and um and you know, um, despair
(31:57):
is just so it's so um sad, you know. And
I know we do it because do it because were
not We feel there's a perception that you're not valued.
That's right, That's exactly exactly right. And if somebody said
to me recently, you know, when she she I was
at an event and I happened to be on my
(32:17):
birthday and she's I told her that I'm sixty seven,
and she's like, oh my god, you know sixty seven.
I'm like, all I want is to remain relevant. I
just want to feel relevant. And relevance is such an
important word, and I think one of the ways we
try to do that is through our appearance, because what
happens after certain ages, we feel like people stop seeing us,
(32:38):
and there's touch about that feeling invisible, right, and feeling
invisible is a way of feeling relevant. But um, but
if you feel relevant because you're um, you know, you're
doing relevant work or I mean you're doing some kind
of service, I think that's very helpful. Value. You have
a great new project, and I love the title more
(32:58):
than anything. Shure. I'm calling it how Not to funk
Up Your Face? And and it came to me because
I have seen so many women who have done something
and I can't always tell what it is um that
has basically funked up their face. And it could be,
you know, from too much filler in their lips, to
(33:22):
their cheeks or their chin or and we're not just
talking about older women. We're talking about from twenty to
As soon as you have money, you have the power
to funk up your face. Well, yes, and and even
if you don't have money, because I just learned recently
that there's something called I can't remember the name of
it was called care something whether that that plastic surgeon
(33:43):
and dermatologists offices often offer that allow you to take
a loan out to do stuff to your face. Now,
the reasons that I that I think it's important for
women to be thinking about how not to sunk up
their faces that I've seen so many prof rationals um
that is, plastic surgeons and dermatologists who are basically very beautiful,
(34:06):
and and you know, I'm not talking about all of them,
because many of them are my friends. But but they've
done too much of something, and I am extremely interested
in what happened. They have all the tools at their disposal,
but they also don't go into it wanting to look bad. Right,
So you can't grab the hand of your dermatologists and say,
(34:30):
what's going on, stop with the sculpture whatever? Right, or
you know when you um as I happened recently, I
was in a restaurant. A couple of women got up
to leave the restaurant and as they were leaving, the
restaurant went dead. You could hear the cutlery dropping on
the plates, and they kind of like, we're swaning out
of this restaurant thinking they looked fantastic, and people were
(34:52):
staring at them because they looked weird. So that um
uh distortion whatever it is that this more apia that
we that some of us are vulnerable to, to me
is fascinating would do with their bodies to now just
our faces, that's giant like Brazilian butt lifts. I guess
they are inject where that came from. Yes, then the
(35:16):
giant press and the whole thing. We've we're changing everything
so it's not just our faces. And have you found
for this project that there is, there's kind of a
way to see more clearly, in a way to control it,
to change something that as you said earlier, it's really
really bothering you so but not too much. It's so complicated. Okay,
(35:36):
that's why it's a whole big multimedia project, right whatever
that means, Well, I can't wait. So let me ask
you about complement culture because I feel like this is
something that really pervades women's relationships. Um and sometimes I
think it's really useful. But you know, I do feel
like we live in a culture where the first thing
women say to one another's oh my god, you look great,
(35:56):
And there's a maybe it's just the bubbles the fiz
that we need in our conversation. Maybe it's maybe it's
a way to show compassion for others or incurred self compassion.
Maybe it runs deeper. But sometimes I also feel like,
do we do we need to do this? Do we
need to do this Japanese bowing contest of you look great?
Do you look great? You look great? Before we get
(36:18):
started on this stuff, we're really there for. So what
I always say to people when I see them, and
I hope I said it to you. What I still
saw you this morning is I'm so happy to see you,
because that's what I want to communicate. I mean, if
I don't feel that way, i won't say it. But
but I'm not going to say, oh my god, you
look great as the first thing I say to someone.
(36:40):
It's always you know, I want to tell them that
what kind of goes back to what you're saying. We
all we all just want to be seen, I mean
literally done. The most important thing, and I think over
is the is the person who said that, you know,
first maybe publicly or in the biggest way, she said
something like all anyone really wants is to have someone
(37:01):
actually see them again. You know that goes back to
Tara Well's mirror med meditation or you know, my experience
of looking at myself in the mirror. If you can
allow yourself to actually see yourself rather than to only
objectify yourself in the mirror, it's going to feel very
different when you look in the mirror. How often do
you recommend doing them herror meditation every day? Is that
(37:23):
a daily thing? Every day? I mean, you know when
you start doing it, um, it's gonna feel really uncomfortable
and you're not gonna want to sit with it. UM,
I don't what I do. I don't call me your meditation.
I just look at myself until until someone appears there,
you know, so I can actually see myself. Um. But
(37:45):
but I think it's a very healthy thing to do. Yeah, yeah,
all right, merror meditation for all. That's what I say. UM.
Our listeners, If you want to follow and connect with
fal Monroe, UM, follow her Instagram. It's fantastic. Ms ll
Monroe UM. And I want to thank you for joining us. Pleasure.
(38:05):
Thank you so much, pleasure. And if you want to
follow us, go to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, at you Turns
podcast and let us know your stories, do them at
the Mirror Meditation and let us know how it works
for you. Thanks. Thanks guys,
Sometimes I think when I get up in the morning
and I go to the bedroom and I look at
the mirror, you know, one of my eyeballs, it's gonna fall.
You have no idea what's going to happen every day
when you wake up after a certain age. But again,
you know, if you feel self compassionate, it's going to
be a lot easier. Hey, guys, thanks for listening. This
(00:29):
is You Turns, a podcast about change, all kinds of change,
external and internal change, because shift happens. I am Lisa
Oz and I'm Jill Herzig, and today we are actually
going to talk about aging self image. Let's let's put
a nicer term on how do you make it nice?
(00:52):
I mean, there's really is there is there like an
all right, screw it, let's just talk about agent. Let's
do it. We're here with Val Monroe, a longtime friend,
so excited that was an expert in beauty culture for
years and years. She was the editor of the beauty
director at Oh the Oprah magazine and a very different
kind of beauty director. I have to say, I come
(01:14):
from magazine, so I know all kinds of beauty directors.
Um and she was the fabulous exception to the general rule. Um.
Millions of people read her followed her asked bell column.
I was one of them, um, and just so thrilled
to thank you and thank you. Plus were to be
hearing congratulations, guys, thank you. We're excited. Yes, we're we're
(01:40):
just kind of plunked in the middle of our you
turn and talking about it. We were intimidated by you
coming that we put makeup on today. Oh no, you're
both so beautiful. I keep saying that all these women
you know, who always say, oh, I was afraid, you know,
to meet you, are afraid to see you because I
thought you'd be critical the way I look. And I
got out a lot when I was an active beauty director,
(02:02):
and I was always saying, you know, just like be
yourself with me, please, you know. But that's when they
came to the Hearst building because I was just going
to Jill and I were talking about this. When you
work in publishing, you can't even go through the door.
They will turn you away at the door if you
don't come with your perfect hair and your perfect nails
and your high heels. And there was something about working
(02:24):
in publishing that actually made me a little crazy. I mean,
I used to say to people when they ran into
me on the street, and I could instantly see that
adjustment in their face when I was in my work mode.
You know, it's kind of like what you're talking about.
I just wanted to say, this is just a costume. Um. Conversely,
like I would walk by people on the weekends who
(02:45):
I worked with and saw regularly, and they would not
recognize me at all. I could virtually wave at them
and they just be like, who's that crazy lady with
the bags under our eyes? I don't know that one.
I mean, it just yeah, So it really, it really
was this costume, and I can't say that that was
you know, I didn't enjoy the dress up part of
(03:06):
it the way I think some people do, and I
especially didn't enjoy the fact that it puts some people
on edge and made them assume that I was holding
them to some kind of standard, which I was not.
So that's very hard to get around, I think, because
it's not you holding them to that standard, but it's
themselves so and to the point of, you know what
you feel like when you walk into, for example, the
Hearst building, right, I actually have worked word at Candy
(03:27):
Nast too, and I think it's it was worse at
Condy Nast, and the elevator was difficult, brutal, brutal place
you had to survive that every morning even started carnivorous
beasts just the you know, we used to call it
elevator eyes, which is just the up and down, both
because the eyes go up and down and because it
(03:49):
happened so often in the elevator and just made you feel,
you know, I don't know, three inches tall and three
ft wide and you know, just not good. That's such
a shame because I think when that happens, it's likely
unconscious on the up and down person's part um. A
friend of mine at the colleague of mine at the
magazine once pointed out to me that I did that.
(04:11):
I was completely unaware of it, and I'm sure I
was making some kind of judgment, but I wasn't conscious
of it. So, um, do you think you were just
trying to take somebody in in some way? But I
don't think that's really an excuse. And where I was
taking when I was doing it with a woman, I
was taking her in in many ways, you know, as
as a competitor. Probably is judging her on her even
(04:36):
her class. You know, those kinds of distinctions that I
think we make unconsciously hard to turn that off. It's
very hard to turn that off, especially when you're in
a in a community or a context where it's almost
expected of you. And you know, as I said earlier,
you know when you walk into say the hers building
or counting a spelling that that um judgment is largely
(04:57):
self imposed because you honestly don't know what other people
are thinking of you, even when they're looking you up
and down the elevator. UM. I think the key to
getting past that is to encourage compassion for yourself up
to a point where it won't matter anymore. And you know,
I say that kind of blithely, but it's it's hard
(05:18):
to do what it's possible to do. Yeah, So that's
it's self compassion you're talking about, which is something that
that's coming up for us in conversations. Part of it
is too. I notice just a trick I do when
I'm feeling incredibly judged, like in an elevator where it's
they up and down, if you just smile at that person,
(05:38):
it breaks the tension and then it gets them out
of their head of whatever they're thinking about you, and
they don't want to think those things about you, and
they suddenly like have a connection with you, and you're
both then you're both getting out of your own heads
and into a relationship that just helps me a lot.
So that actually, I think is one of the main
key components of self compassion. But but what I suggest
(05:59):
is not is that you not only do it with
other people, that you do it with yourself. Because one
of the things that I feel so passionate about is
the way we look at ourselves when we look in
the mirror, because we're taught from the time we're basically
infants that when we look at our reflection, we objectify ourselves.
And if you think about self objectification, what that is
(06:19):
is you're looking at your image through the eyes of
someone else you believe is judging you. It's a third person,
basically a second person. Right, lots of people in the
room when you're standing there in the bathroom, there a mirror,
there are and that's that's often why women feel that
a mirror is not their friend. And if you can
learn to look at yourself in a way that um
(06:42):
that decreases at least decreases the self objectification. You'll see
that your feelings about yourself are really, really different. So
I wrote a little piece about this when I was
at the magazine because somebody had sent me UM a
photo of me look with UM. I was at a
party and I was faced face in conversation with that
gorgeous creature, Mrs David Bowie, right. And as I looked
(07:07):
at the picture, as I described it, you know, I
felt as if I had just opened a bouquet to
discover that the flowers were like a day old and
she looked to me like an outrageously beautiful orchid, hothouse orchid,
you know, in full bloom. And I looked like a
parking lot daisy at the end of the day. So
I went over to the mirror in my office and
(07:28):
I looked into my own eyes for a little bit,
and I kept looking until I actually saw myself, and
then I said high sweetie, and all of that judgment
and objectification went away. So when I was talking, when
I would talk to groups of people about this experience,
it wasn't very helpful, I don't think, in a way,
because it was all about my own experience. I had
(07:50):
no way of helping them do it for themselves. It's
a very hard thing to do. If you've ever tried
looking into a mirror into your own eyes for any
length of time, it's difficult. And I discovered, um, this
teacher at Barnard, her name is Tara Well, who has
done studies on what she calls mirror meditation, and she
(08:11):
encourages her subjects to look at themselves in the way
that I did, and then has tracked how they feel
about themselves. She tracks her self esteem, she tracks their objectification.
Does she have them speak to themselves. You don't have
to say anything, You just have to You have to
be able to confront the feelings, whatever feelings come up
when you look at yourself. That's something that I wrote
(08:32):
about when I wrote this piece. And I was almost
embarrassed to write about what I felt because it because
it's so intimate. Um. But if you can, if you
can actually sit there and do that, and in a way, um,
you're befriending yourself in the way Lesta, you just spoke
about trying to befriend be friends someone in and there
(08:53):
you know your your whole experience about who you are
as you present yourself to the world shifts in a
way that's very I don't like to useus work, but
it's very empowering. Yeah. Okay, So when I was a kid,
leased to go in the closet with a mirror and
light turned off, I have to stare in it. So
I'm still a little nervous by doing that because there's
(09:14):
remember the game of Bloody Marry, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,
Bloody Marriage. You never played this game, Oh my gosh,
so too much staring into the mirror. It's possible your
family made it up, the whole town. It was a
scary game, and only Lisa play. No, no, no, I didn't.
I wouldn't play. I don't know. We just did variety,
we bore. But the mirror isn't the place that bothers
(09:38):
me so much. I'm okay with him because you always
a just whatever. And that's it's I recognize myself in
the less and less as I get older, but it's
still me. Where I don't recognize myself is in my
cell phone. That is so much harder to look at,
like when I'm on Skype with you know, if you
talk to someone on I don't even know who that
(09:58):
person is I don't want to talk to them because
I have to have a little image of me coming
up and I'm scraping them that I hate and I
can't staring into those eyes aren't go isn't gonna help
me at all. So I don't know why anyone I
would want to look at like a terrible photo of themselves,
because that's what that is. I mean, it's like, you know,
so don't look. I mean, you know, that reminds me
of what I said to some of my friends when
(10:20):
they would say, you know, like oh I hate my
neck or I hate my chin, or I hate my eyes.
I would just say, well, look at something else, you know,
go to the museum and look at a van. Go
you know. I mean that works up to a point
because if if if a body part is making you
feel really uncomfortable, and I say, you know, like, just
do whatever you want, do whatever you can to make
(10:40):
yourself feel better about it. But I always encourage one
to do them the self, you know, the the de
objectification first, because whatever you do after that is going
to feel a lot better, no matter what you choose.
I I once wrote a line we had something when
(11:00):
I was an editor Glamor magazine, which was called the
It's Okay List, which is exactly what it sounds like,
a whole list of things that really are just freaking okay.
Don't worry about it. And I remember, I think maybe
the best contribution I ever made was only believed the
skinny mirrors. So that's my that's my word of wisdom
to you, Lisa. Don't believe your phone. It's it's like
(11:20):
the equivalent of a fat mirror, you know. It is
the selfie the selfie obsessions. I just don't get, never trust.
I think twenty maybe I could get this. It's terrible
for everyone. It's terrible for twenty year olds because what
you see is not real, and it's presented as what
is real. And so we look at these images and
(11:41):
we think, oh my god, she looks so much better
than I do, when we don't know what she actually
looks like. I mean there, um, I keep thinking of
that of the of Jane Fonda at the What's at
the Oscar Systey when she looked like a Barbie doll, right,
So so um, I say, more power to her. She
she was having fun, you know, she looked. I mean
(12:03):
that the choice of that particular image I found somewhat
jarring because I do think she's a feminist. But um,
but but the problem with it is that I think
so many women look at that and thank god, she's eighty.
How did she how does she look like that? Well,
I've seen her in person. She doesn't look like that.
That's a costume, as you were saying, Jill, you know,
(12:23):
it's a costume, and it's a very sophisticated one, because
it's not you know, she doesn't put that together. She's
got experts putting that together for her. And so what
we're presented with on television, you know, with selfies, were
presented with all these images that aren't that don't really
reflect what people look like. So there's this other reality
that we're now comparing ourselves to, even younger women who
(12:46):
are asking more and more for procedures because they think
that's what they should look like and it's not. It's
not possible. We will come back to this after the break. Yeah,
(13:11):
if we're a break. We were talking about, well, Jane
Fonda for one enter beautiful but produced appearance. Um, I
want to ship here's a tiny bit and talk about identity, right,
and and and how when we feel like our appearance
is a big part of who we are and then
that changes, Um, how do we grow into that evolving
(13:36):
sense of self? With great difficulty? I had to say, so, UM,
I'm going to go back to you know, UM, at
the risk of sounding like a one note song, I'm
going to go back to self compassion because, um, you know,
as we get older, things start to get loose and
fall off, and you know, we have to deal with
(13:59):
the back on. We can do that if we if
we have things to do. Um. I actually, you know,
sometimes I think when I get up in the morning
and I go to the bathroom, one of my and
I look in the mirror, you know, one of my eyeballs,
it's gonna fall. You have no idea what's going to
happen every day when you wake up untain age. But
but um, but again, you know, if you feel self compassionate,
(14:21):
it's going to be a lot easier. So UM, I
was thinking about, UM, my nineties three year old mother,
who is She lives on her own, you know, she's
very independent. Um. But I'm watching her as she's dealing
with all these you know, kind of one loss after
another with her friends, you know, or with her physical
(14:42):
attributes and um and what what is um? You know?
Supporting her through this is her ability. Her resilience comes
from self compassion. Basically, it's about, you know, feeling good
about herself in spite of all of the things that
that are happening to her. And I think the older
(15:03):
you get, the more and the more lost there is.
You know, there's a feeling at least I've experienced this,
potentially feeling betrayed by my body. You know that I've
I've relied on for my identity because fortunately, you know,
I have gotten good feedback about it. And suddenly I
think there's no feedback, or there's feedback I don't like,
or I'm searching for feedback that you know isn't forthcoming
(15:25):
and um and if I can um instead of feeling
betrayed or feel you know, this profound sense of loss alone,
only if instead I can feel towards myself the way
I would feel towards my maybe six year old self
if I felt this disappointment and sadness, which is to say,
(15:47):
you know, you put your hand over your heart as
you would for a child, or you you hold your
face the way you would hold to Chelseford and you
just say, you know, I'm sorry, it's okay, you're gonna
be hey. Yeah. You know, as I say it, it
sounds so woo woo and so clich but it actually it. Actually,
(16:08):
I know, I am the least woo woo person. There
are many there are many moments when I think, huh,
this U turn would be easier if I was more
invested in the woo when I am not. I am
deeply practical shoes person. Everybody knows, well, you know self
compassion is very practical. Yeah, no, I mean it sounds
like something I should kind of take out the dust
(16:29):
off every day. Is the opposite of that, though, I
mean taking it to an extreme, just throwing in the towel,
like wearing sweatpants, which I literally have done many times
in my life, where it's like ponytail sweatpants, no makeup,
I don't care, eat the but eat the gallon of
ice cream and just say screw it and you know,
(16:51):
judge me as you will. So um, I love that idea,
as long as you don't hate yourself for it, because
that's the opposite. I mean, that's the I mean, if
you if you can do that as some women can
and just say the hell with it. I mean, there's
a certain that some women age, you know, into a
mumu and rubber soled shoes and there you know, w
(17:11):
n et tote bags and they're perfectly happy with that,
you know whatever. That's great. Um In fact, I love
to see there's a certain kind of um uh woman
in or maybe seventies, mid seventies who you often see
on the streets in New York. And she's got she's
often you know, kind of short, and she's kind of heavy,
and she's usually big bosomed, and she's wearing you know,
(17:34):
very comfortable shoes. She's got her practical her backpack or whatever,
short hair, no makeup, and she looks very comfortable with herself.
She puzzling along during that New Yorker lady. Yeah, and
I kind of admire that I'm not there personally, But
but that's her choice, you know, if you can make
that choice and not feel like you're, for some reason,
(17:57):
Lisa giving up. But the thing the thing with you, Lisa,
is that you you hit every mark on the continuum.
So I love that, you know. I remember once we
had a shoot at your house for the doctor Os
magazine and you had a terrible cold, and you came
downstairs and there were Oh my god, we had totally
taken over your house. It was horrible what we did
(18:17):
to you. And you came downstairs and you were in
exactly the mood you're talking about. You barely slept, you
urine sweats, your hair was in a ponytail. You're like,
oh hi, everybody. You couldn't have been nicer, but you
were clearly suffering. And what I loved was that you
were You were not gonna, like, I don't know, do
a little something something well, but it also just you
(18:42):
just didn't care in that moment. And yet I have
also seen you as you are possibly the best non
professional makeup artist that I know. I have seen you
head to toe glam, and I've seen you every kind
of every place in between, which I think is kind
of amazing. Whereas what I was saying before is like
(19:02):
I kind of only have a couple of modes. My shift,
my gearshift either sticks here or sticks all the way
down here. Um, And I don't know, I mean, I
think it's it's kind of interesting, like as I've gone
through this shift and this identity change, one of the
things I have not been able to do is figure
out whether all those editor in chief clothes should just
(19:23):
be taken to the consignment store. No, they look so
good on you, well, thank you so much. Haven't warn them?
Don't you can wear them here to the podcast. I
am wearing strange pokaout pants today, which come from the
editor in chief wardrobe. But basically, you know, one thing
I wonder about is, you know, if I want to
(19:43):
accelerate change, do I need to shift all of that
stuff out of my out of my at least out
of my sight lines to It completely depends on what
kind of change you want to shift too, because it's
all about what you feel comfortable. I think, you know,
if you feel comfortable with those clothes, fantastic wear them.
I mean, if I felt super comfortable in them, I
(20:06):
would wear them to the grocery store. And I'm not
doing that well literally, some of them I have to
be I have to dust, the shoes need dusting well,
and heel's our whole other Oh my god, I mean,
I feel like I should take out a hot glue
gun and just make some kind of a sculpture for
my backyard out of these shoes. Well, that's an interesting idea.
(20:27):
Or you mightself said, because they're probably be very shoes,
or find someone who's a size seven your size seven. Well,
well I was just gonna say, is is do we
only look nice for other people? Do we never? Well
that's that's where self objectification comes down. I mean, if you,
if you look in the mirror and you love the
(20:48):
way your face looks without any makeup, I mean, if you,
if you can look at yourself in the morning when
you first get up and say high sweetie to your
face and not feel like Jesus Christ, you know, like
what happened overnight. Um, I think you know you're going
to be a much happier person. I don't think it's
easy to do, but um. I actually had experienced recently
(21:11):
with a friend to a psychiatrist who was complaining about
her own feelings about the way she looks as she's
getting older, you know, And um, and I said, jeez,
you know I don't have that right now. I mean,
I look, I have great lighting in my bathroom. A
lot of time of time figuring out I did a
lot of research about what bulbs to get compassion right there.
(21:33):
It is anyway, so um, I said, I actually don't
feel that right now, and I, um, I don't. I
think I look my age, and I look in the
mirror and and i'm I'm fine with it. And she
looked at me and she said, well, of course you're
in denial. But she's right, She's right. I don't see
(21:54):
myself the way other people see me. I see myself
the way I see me, and I like the way
I see me. Now, if you guys said to me
a little bit, how dare she for messing with No? No, No,
it's not at all, not at all. No. I mean
she's I trust her. Um. But but my point is that,
(22:14):
you know, there's kind of nothing that people could say
to me that would shift my self compassion. I think
in a way that that you know was real for me,
unless you guys said to me, now, Jesus fell, are
you how old? You like? You look incredible? And actually
one of the things I wanted to ask you about
(22:35):
was the fact that you know, particularly through all those
years where you were the O beauty director and the
oldest oldest yea until one uh one retired and then
I became then I was older, like by fifteen or
twenty years and everyone else. And maybe that's what made
you the best. I think it what made you may
(22:56):
be the best is that you had never been a
beauty director before you. Oh so I was discovering along
with our readers. I was discovering, you know, everything that
I needed to learn as a beauty editor. Um. And
you kind of never lost your feminist take as well
on beauty. I felt like, I felt like that was
fair irony, right, there isn't it? The feminist beauty editor? Um? No,
(23:23):
I didn't think so because I was UM. I actually
was in a very particularly protected position working for the
Oprah magazine because when I was there for the for
the large part of the time, I was there from
say two thousand one to two thousand ten, UM, when
(23:43):
Oprah Show was still on the air, and she um,
basically she was the ghost that laid the golden egg. Um.
I could do anything I wanted basically as the beauty
I really wasn't tied to pleasing um, the average tisers
in a way that all other beauty editors. You could say,
don't use an I cream, Well I did, actually I did.
(24:08):
And UM, And you know, when some advertisers were talking
to me when I knew that it was just BS.
I actually, at one point in front of my publisher
one day, put my hands over my ears and went,
blah blah blah blah blah blah. I mean I was
I was a scamp because I could be, because I
was protected. That all changed and you you were actually
(24:28):
under marching orders to rebel against anything that didn't right.
It's right and UM and the authenticity of the beauty
pages in the magazine were a reflection of Oprah's authenticity
UM and the authenticity of the magazine in general. They
were proud of that. There were these beautiful makeovers. I
(24:48):
remember them through that stage where you know the woman's story,
UM and what she'd been going through. It was a
big part of it. It seemed like you almost never
did a straight up makeover. Here she doesn't look good,
but here she does. UM that totally different before after
approaches so and those were so much fun to do
and and behind the scenes, what you didn't know was
(25:10):
that I always took the woman by the hand and said,
we're going to do something for you that you will
be able to continue to do after you leave the studio.
And then I always spoke to the hairstyle is through
the makeup artist to say, you know, do whatever you
need to do for the photograph, but please make sure
(25:32):
that she leaves with an idea of what she can
do on her own and a couple of products so
that she can she can continue to do. And did
you did you ask them to keep it simple enough
that it was something you could actually do every day
without making yourself not. That was part of the right,
That was part of the point, because what you do
for a photograph is just like ridiculously complicated. Yes, and
(25:53):
you know, we we consider doing, um, a couple of
recidivism stories, you know, to see like what happened to
the women like ten years later. Um, but it didn't
really work because it's not practical, you know, to go
back to somebody ten years later and stuff. It could
be all kinds of things exactly exactly right that are
causing recidivism. This is true. There's something just about it
being Opuh's magazine also and her being on the cover
(26:15):
every month because she's not a model, she's not tira up,
but she looks amazing. And so the message that you're
telling people is you may not be a model, but
you can feel great about the way you look, and
you can put your best self forward, which is Opuh's thing, right,
was always being your best self of your best life. Yeah.
I was on a panel not too long ago with
(26:37):
a young woman who was ragging about how her magazine
what was that word that everybody used was it was
a great disruptor? Right? And I said, really, because in
two thousand and one, the Open magazine started putting a
slightly overweight black woman on its cover every month. What
do you think about that being destructive? So I think,
(27:01):
um you know, for for many years that magazine, her magazine,
like her show, and like her um did I had
a tremendous effect on raising people's consciousness about the way
they feel about themselves, about what their choices are, about
who there um uh role models might be, because just
(27:28):
by the virtue of being who she is, she introduces
a whole new role model for people who might not
have thought that that was available to them. A friend
of mine actually worked as one of the casting people.
Oh had a very different structure and yeah, m she
(27:49):
was a freelancer and she basically just walked the streets
of New Us looking for unusual, fascinating looking women. So
one of the one of the women we used models
decided not right, but right, that's what we used to do.
Um one of the women who we used to One
of my favorite makeover stories I found when I was viking,
as I want to do, up and down the um
(28:14):
bike path along the Hudson, and I stopped at one
of the piers and I saw this woman climbing out
of the water on her here and I was looking
at I was like, oh, my, gotcha, is so gorgeous? What?
And the way I described her was, you know, she
she she had actually been swimming, swimming the watermaid she
(28:36):
was emerging trying. You know, I am a New York
City person, child of the Hudson. The Hudson was a
very scary place when I was growing up, but still
it is. So she pulled herself out of the water,
and I got off my bike and I went over
to her, and I on the way I wrote about
it was, you know, I noticed she had her hair
(28:57):
was like wet slipped back. She had what I thought
was maybe eyeliner, could have been sludge. I wasn't sure,
and I said, what the heck, you know, And it
turned out she's she's like an E M T. She
was training for something the story we did, so we
used her and so I said, well, what's your what
are your with your beauty routine? And you know, she
(29:18):
spent like thirty five dollars a year, but she was stunning,
stun How old was she in her thirties? Thirties? Everybody
is still pretty in their thirties. Well she was beautiful. Yes,
I agree. I also think everybody's still pretty in their
forties and different and yeah right, so, um we we
(29:40):
made her over in a way that was very um simple,
and I cataloged her beauty routine and then we compared
her to another woman who spent I think it was
like dollars a year on and procedures and um so
it was really fun. That's one of our most fun
makeover story, high maintenance versus super But to your point, um,
(30:04):
I found her climbing out of the r Yeah. Alright,
Well I want to get back to that question of
self care and how much is enough and how much
is too much. We're gonna break for one second. Okay,
before the break, we were talking about self care and
(30:24):
how much is too much? And I personally think part
of The problem is societal in that when I was
growing up, it was an entirely different expectation for what
I would buy and do, whether it was my beauty
routine or my fashion from what my mother would buy
or where. Um, And now it seems like it's just so.
(30:47):
There was no competition between a fifty year old woman
or a forty year old woman and a twenty year
old It was we were like different universities. And now
it's like everybody's in the same cool there's you know,
you date people who are twenty years younger than you are.
Everybody wears Dulsha and Gavana, and we all use the
(31:10):
same beauty stuff, even if my my daughters might literally
Daphne and I exchange moisturizers and towners and what thirty
one and Vallas you were saying, it kind of cuts
both ways. So women in there are twenties who have
zero to worry about in the looks department are asking
for procedures and paying top dollar for products because somehow
(31:33):
they've gotten infected with worry about their looks. How did
we how do we do that? What did we do? So?
I think I think you know the selfie um uh generation,
you know, has a lot to do with that. Um.
You know, I don't think I mean framing aging in
terms of worry and um and you know, um, despair
(31:57):
is just so it's so um sad, you know. And
I know we do it because do it because were
not We feel there's a perception that you're not valued.
That's right, That's exactly exactly right. And if somebody said
to me recently, you know, when she she I was
at an event and I happened to be on my
(32:17):
birthday and she's I told her that I'm sixty seven,
and she's like, oh my god, you know sixty seven.
I'm like, all I want is to remain relevant. I
just want to feel relevant. And relevance is such an
important word, and I think one of the ways we
try to do that is through our appearance, because what
happens after certain ages, we feel like people stop seeing us,
(32:38):
and there's touch about that feeling invisible, right, and feeling
invisible is a way of feeling relevant. But um, but
if you feel relevant because you're um, you know, you're
doing relevant work or I mean you're doing some kind
of service, I think that's very helpful. Value. You have
a great new project, and I love the title more
(32:58):
than anything. Shure. I'm calling it how Not to funk
Up Your Face? And and it came to me because
I have seen so many women who have done something
and I can't always tell what it is um that
has basically funked up their face. And it could be,
you know, from too much filler in their lips, to
(33:22):
their cheeks or their chin or and we're not just
talking about older women. We're talking about from twenty to
As soon as you have money, you have the power
to funk up your face. Well, yes, and and even
if you don't have money, because I just learned recently
that there's something called I can't remember the name of
it was called care something whether that that plastic surgeon
(33:43):
and dermatologists offices often offer that allow you to take
a loan out to do stuff to your face. Now,
the reasons that I that I think it's important for
women to be thinking about how not to sunk up
their faces that I've seen so many prof rationals um
that is, plastic surgeons and dermatologists who are basically very beautiful,
(34:06):
and and you know, I'm not talking about all of them,
because many of them are my friends. But but they've
done too much of something, and I am extremely interested
in what happened. They have all the tools at their disposal,
but they also don't go into it wanting to look bad. Right,
So you can't grab the hand of your dermatologists and say,
(34:30):
what's going on, stop with the sculpture whatever? Right, or
you know when you um as I happened recently, I
was in a restaurant. A couple of women got up
to leave the restaurant and as they were leaving, the
restaurant went dead. You could hear the cutlery dropping on
the plates, and they kind of like, we're swaning out
of this restaurant thinking they looked fantastic, and people were
(34:52):
staring at them because they looked weird. So that um
uh distortion whatever it is that this more apia that
we that some of us are vulnerable to, to me
is fascinating would do with their bodies to now just
our faces, that's giant like Brazilian butt lifts. I guess
they are inject where that came from. Yes, then the
(35:16):
giant press and the whole thing. We've we're changing everything
so it's not just our faces. And have you found
for this project that there is, there's kind of a
way to see more clearly, in a way to control it,
to change something that as you said earlier, it's really
really bothering you so but not too much. It's so complicated. Okay,
(35:36):
that's why it's a whole big multimedia project, right whatever
that means, Well, I can't wait. So let me ask
you about complement culture because I feel like this is
something that really pervades women's relationships. Um and sometimes I
think it's really useful. But you know, I do feel
like we live in a culture where the first thing
women say to one another's oh my god, you look great,
(35:56):
And there's a maybe it's just the bubbles the fiz
that we need in our conversation. Maybe it's maybe it's
a way to show compassion for others or incurred self compassion.
Maybe it runs deeper. But sometimes I also feel like,
do we do we need to do this? Do we
need to do this Japanese bowing contest of you look great?
Do you look great? You look great? Before we get
(36:18):
started on this stuff, we're really there for. So what
I always say to people when I see them, and
I hope I said it to you. What I still
saw you this morning is I'm so happy to see you,
because that's what I want to communicate. I mean, if
I don't feel that way, i won't say it. But
but I'm not going to say, oh my god, you
look great as the first thing I say to someone.
(36:40):
It's always you know, I want to tell them that
what kind of goes back to what you're saying. We
all we all just want to be seen, I mean
literally done. The most important thing, and I think over
is the is the person who said that, you know,
first maybe publicly or in the biggest way, she said
something like all anyone really wants is to have someone
(37:01):
actually see them again. You know that goes back to
Tara Well's mirror med meditation or you know, my experience
of looking at myself in the mirror. If you can
allow yourself to actually see yourself rather than to only
objectify yourself in the mirror, it's going to feel very
different when you look in the mirror. How often do
you recommend doing them herror meditation every day? Is that
(37:23):
a daily thing? Every day? I mean, you know when
you start doing it, um, it's gonna feel really uncomfortable
and you're not gonna want to sit with it. UM,
I don't what I do. I don't call me your meditation.
I just look at myself until until someone appears there,
you know, so I can actually see myself. Um. But
(37:45):
but I think it's a very healthy thing to do. Yeah, yeah,
all right, merror meditation for all. That's what I say. UM.
Our listeners, If you want to follow and connect with
fal Monroe, UM, follow her Instagram. It's fantastic. Ms ll
Monroe UM. And I want to thank you for joining us. Pleasure.
(38:05):
Thank you so much, pleasure. And if you want to
follow us, go to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, at you Turns
podcast and let us know your stories, do them at
the Mirror Meditation and let us know how it works
for you. Thanks. Thanks guys,
Road to Somewhere News
Hosts And Creators
Lisa Oz
Jill Herzig
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