Can £12 magnifying makeup glasses save me from a beauty disaster? I tried and tested the latest gadget
PANDA eyes, streaky blusher and lippie gone rogue are common make-up mishaps.
And as we get older, these beauty blunders can become even more glaring.
We’re not making these mistakes because we’ve overdone it, though.
For many women of a certain age, it’s because we can’t actually see what we’re doing any more.
Helpfully, I have four daughters aged 14, 11, nine and seven, who are all brutally honest when it comes to my appearance.
“Mum, what have you done? You can’t leave the house like that,” Diana, my teenager, scolded the other week.
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“Why have you left a stripe of unblended bronzer across your cheek?”
Incidents like these have become a regular occurrence now that I’m 42 and my eyesight is failing.
Similar slip-ups are clearly an issue for millions of other women too — as “beauty blindness” is trending on TikTok, with 140million posts and counting.
I’ve worn glasses, then contacts, since the age of ten, but recently my eyesight’s fallen off a cliff.
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I can no longer read the back of shampoo bottles or ingredient lists, and my phone screen is brighter than the sun.
A recent trip to the optician confirmed a hat trick of ailments — in addition to myopia, I now have mild astigmatism and presbyopia (when you struggle to see objects up close).
I wear weighted contact lenses for astigmatism and just bought a pair of oversized rectangular acetate frames by a funky French brand that I now wear most days.
A Boots Opticians survey found that nearly three-quarters of Brits felt their quality of life improved after wearing glasses.
I agree with them, sort of.
All areas of my life have improved, except for one — applying make-up is now near-impossible.
Without glasses, my world is made up of blurry, indeterminate shapes and playing “guess the make-up product” at 7.30am isn’t as much fun as it sounds.
Even applying the basics, like foundation and concealer, can be a lottery.
And if I do wear my new glasses to do my slap, I have to keep lifting them off my face, squinting furiously in a bid to apply things correctly.
Most of my make-up attempts are now met with ridicule from the kids — or, worse, total silence from my husband, Will, 40, who works in finance.
The sad thing is, I absolutely love wearing make-up and now need it more than ever, thanks to perimenopausal skin ailments.
Make-up in midlife is everything. It offers a rare opportunity to “play” and reminds me to take ten minutes for myself during a hectic day.
So when I heard about Donna May London magnified make-up glasses, I couldn’t wait to give them a go.
It’s tricky to reach the lower lashes with the frame in the way
Jennifer Barton
Simply flip the single magnifying lens from one side of the glasses to the other, as you apply make-up to one eye while using the other to look through the lens at a wall mirror in front of you.
It means you no longer have to squint into a hand-held mirror, and have both hands free.
The specs are available in six strengths from +1.5 to +4.
They are a bargain at £12 including case and, the first time I use them, I love having hands free to grapple with products and brushes.
I manage to pluck my stray eyebrow hairs for the first time in weeks.
Previously, I couldn’t see well enough, so the task mostly involved me stabbing at random points between my eye and eyebrow, resulting in angry sores.
I apply a neutral eye shadow to my lid and a darker one to the corner, but get stuck when it comes to eyeliner.
Do I go over the frame of the glasses, or under it?
This involves some experimentation, but over the frame seems to work better.
It’s the same with mascara.
It’s tricky to reach the lower lashes with the frame in the way — but if success is measured by levels of teen snarkiness (which it is) these definitely work.
My 14-year-old, unprompted, tells me I look “nice”.
Well, she says my make-up “cooks”, which apparently is a positive.
'VERBAL APPROVAL'
For those with blurry vision like mine, make-up artist, beauty expert and brand founder Ruby Hammer MBE also recommends investing in a magnifying make-up mirror with a light.
I ask her if there’s a moment when women realise they need a helping hand — or helpful specs — when it comes to applying make-up.
For her, it was when she began to notice mascara clumps gathering in the corners of her eyes.
“I would not prolong the agony — just invest in a really good mirror, or the make-up glasses, because your eyesight is not going to get better,” she says.
“And if something looks good in that magnifying mirror, you know you’re going to look good in natural light.”
After a few sessions with my make-up readers, there’s a new sound in my house — verbal approval, even from my teen.
That’s until she casts her eyes down to my outfit, when it’s straight back to, “Ew, Mum, why are you wearing THAT?”
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And now I can’t go to my usual excuse — that it’s because I can’t see well.
My make-up is too good for anyone to believe that now.