How Not To Look Old

Charla calls herself an “anti-aging activist.” Her causes include: mom jeans, dark lipstick, gray hair, and nails that are too long.

Admittedly, we know this comes off as a bit shallow and contradicts the aging gracefully theory. But Krupp, a former beauty director at Glamour, grabbed our attention when she made the empirical case for the halo effect.

In a nutshell, a very famous study found that people believe what is beautiful is good. Basically, we (probably many times in error) attribute positive qualities such as kindness, attractiveness, sincerity, and warmth to people who are good-looking and negative qualities to people who are not.

More importantly, Krupp is looking out for your career. She writes, “We’ve reached the age where some of our colleagues are young enough to be our kids. We have to look younger to help level the playing field.”

But the book is by no means a call to go under the knife. In fact, Krupp is a proponent of fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi’s theory that plastic surgery is the most aging thing in the world. “If you want to look 70, boy, get a facelift. Get your lips done,” says Mizrahi.

Instead, Krupp advocates figure flattering clothes that are hip – pencil skirts, dark jeans with a medium rise, body shapers, good bras, and doing away with your matchy-matchy clothes. On the beauty front, she says cut bangs, whiten your teeth, shape your eye-brows, and wear pink lipstick.

Because, at the end of the day, Krupp believes that aging doesn’t have to suck.