There is nothing effortless about beauty.
I’ve known this, subconsciously, for most of my adult life, but a recent trip to a new makeup store in Buckhead forced me to accept that we’ve been duped.
The primary mission that day was to find the perfect dress for my friend to wear to her daughter’s bat mitzvah. After a four-hour search, we left Lenox Square with two dresses, and as a reward for a job well done, we took a detour to the new Jones Road in Buckhead Village District.
My friends are Xennials (millennials old enough to have Gen X sensibilities), and together we have reached that moment in life when terms like aging gracefully and effortless beauty feel more like toxic myths than cultural standards we should aspire to reach.
Jones Road, the second beauty brand founded by Bobbi Brown, a pioneer of “no-makeup” makeup, felt like a place that could provide some balance.
Credit: Jones Road
Credit: Jones Road
In the 1990s, Brown, then a freelance makeup artist, founded her eponymous brand to offer women an alternative to the bright blush, shocking shadow and bold lips of the 1990s. Brown left the company in 2016 and launched Jones Road Beauty four years later.
Jones Road is the embodiment of what Gen Z would call the clean girl aesthetic. The products shift away from traditional foundation sticks and pressed powders to hydrating skin tints and multiuse balms.
New decade. Same mission. Different formulations.
The hero of Jones Road is Miracle Balm, a single product designed to give your face a healthy glow.
There are practical reasons that balms and serums disguised as makeup, or makeup disguised as balms and serums, might be well suited for mature skin. The hydrating properties help address changes in skin texture, increased dryness and loss of elasticity that are hallmarks of aging skin.
At home, I warmed the balm in my fingers and smeared a pea-sized amount on my face — using neutral as a base, then applying a shimmering copper on my cheeks and lips. While my skin felt moisturized, my face looked bland and boring.
Yes, this was effortless, but was it beautiful?
The idea that there is no time and effort required for beauty was debunked in a 2021 study from the University of Georgia, which found that the no-makeup trend did not discourage the use of cosmetics. Ironically, cosmetic sales in the $445 billion beauty industry increased alongside the rise of the no-makeup movement.
Even worse, while the no-makeup trend was intended to empower women, researchers found that it exacerbated a tension that women already feel: pressure to maintain a beauty standard while being ridiculed or punished for making the effort to maintain those standards by wearing makeup.
Reddit is one of the few places on the internet where commentary about makeup isn’t driven by paid advertising or paid influencers. In August, the platform released The People’s Beauty Index, a survey that concluded that the era of effortless makeup is ending.
Using AI to sort through threads on Reddit, the report revealed that conversations about experimental makeup increased almost 400% between July 2024 and June 2026, while talk about clean girl makeup declined 81%.
This is good news for those of us in the mature crowd who like wearing makeup that looks like makeup and for whom the idea of making beauty look effortless feels like an insult.
We have children, careers, partners, hobbies. If I’m making the effort to wear makeup, I want it to be appreciated, not ridiculed or dismissed as low effort.
After a week of experimentation, I decided that while it may have its place, Miracle Balm is not my holy grail. Instead, I landed somewhere between the bold looks of the 1990s and the clean girl face of the 2010s. To get there, I returned to a brand I first discovered in the early 2000s as a fashion and beauty writer.
Sylvie Chantecaille launched Chantecaille in 1997 as a fragrance brand before expanding into color cosmetics and skincare. The brand was a clean makeup front-runner, eliminating harmful chemicals, toxins and fragrances from cosmetics.
In 2006, Chantecaille began launching limited-edition philanthropic collections to support conservation groups. I remembered how much I loved the packaging with photos of endangered species and silhouettes of animals embossed on blush. Knowing that the products benefited a good cause made wearing them feel even more meaningful.
Credit: Chantecaille
Credit: Chantecaille
This year, the Lion Collection, celebrating the boldness of lions and benefiting Lion Guardians, caught my attention. Browsing the website, I also discovered Chantecaille’s Essential Mature Skin Makeup Guide and noted tips about the benefits of using cream formulas, avoiding black liquid liner, and always applying makeup to fully hydrated skin.
The formulas in the Conservation Collection are powders, an alleged no-no for mature skin, but the finely milled pressed blush applied well when my skin was hydrated.
A shimmering chocolate burgundy eye shadow didn’t crease on my lids, and in a first for me, the bordeaux-colored eyeliner was an exciting departure from black, brown or gray.
Searching for a new makeup routine taught me that while women can and should consider some general rules about wearing makeup as we age, we should mostly follow our own instincts.
Beauty at any age isn’t effortless, but it should always be appreciated, and it should be fun; otherwise, why bother?
Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and X (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.
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