‘Staging Your Comeback’: Here’s an excuse to stimulate the economy
The urge to ’’reinvent’’ oneself runs irresistibly strong in the American psyche, providing no end of heft to the U.S. economy in the form of cosmetic lines, clothing companies, personal trainers, fitness centers, beauty salons, diet gurus, wardrobe planners, closet organizers, plastic surgeons, spas, body boot camps and, for anyone who miraculously has any time left over to read — makeover books.
No one is spared. Think that, having managed to live to a certain advanced age, you’re entitled to be left alone in your pastel knit pants and big white sport shoes, graying and wrinkling in blissful, sloppy peace? Think again. There’s a makeover book for you.
You need to whip yourself into shape. You need to color and pluck and paste, and drag your so-called clothes out of your armoire and set fire to them. In short, you need to be ''Staging Your Comeback: A Complete Beauty Revival for Women Over 45,’’ with the help of stylist Christopher Hopkins. The book was published in 2008 by Health Communications Inc.
Minnesota-based Hopkins is ''The Makeover Guy’’ on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and elsewhere and has a Web site of the same name. Judging from ''Comeback,’’ he takes an exceedingly dim view of dowdy, and any woman venturing into his Minneapolis salon better have a strong ego or be prepared for a working over, sorry, making over, if she hasn’t been maintaining as she’s gone along.
Chapters focus on clothing, hair, makeup — and on defining what you want to look like, on how to define goals and how to make changes in your life — strategies that can apply beyond the closet and vanity table. A series of photos shows startling transformations — some of the ''afters’’ bear faint resemblance to the women they were ''before.’’ Hopkins says he asked some of his subjects to exaggerate the way they liked to dress, but we’ve all seen women who look similar, and we might have committed some of these fashion crimes ourselves, out of laziness, or clutching onto the styles of former glory days or because we just didn’t know how to update ourselves.
Hopkins makes a lot of good points. Know your body, and dress to flatter your good features and downplay those you don’t like as much. (If you don’t know how, he shows you.) Find a good hairstylist, and spend the money for a flattering, current style. Soften your makeup. WEAR makeup. Above all, don’t give up. Take the time to take care of yourself. Looking good is good medicine for the soul.
A minor point of disagreement: I don’t agree that women should fade as they get older. Yes, it’s good to avoid shocking colors in cheap styles, such as the hot pink tank top featured along with a miniskirt and fishnets in one of ''Comeback’s’’ before shots. Hopkins believes that most women should tone their colors way down as they age. Yes, if your style up to now is loud and cheap. I certainly agree that classic, subdued makeup looks more elegant on most women. But, when it comes to clothing, if black makes you feel sophisticated, if red for you is a basic — I say, fly your colors. Dramatic women don’t do beige.
