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Die Wrinkles Die!

By Allie McLaughlin

Some of TGF's prettiest readers have agreed to share with us their favorite style, beauty and "how-to" tips. This week features ideas from is Allie McLaughlin, a lovely lady from Boston, Mass. to see more of her go to her Personal Ad here at TGForum.

About Face...

For those of us not lucky enough to be born with the drop-dead androgynous look, getting our faces to look right (read feminine) can require the expertise of a civil engineer.

I'll share two tricks that you can use to transform that Ernest Borgnine look into something softer, something closer to Shelly Winters if not Suzanne Vega.

  • Trick 1 - Facial Exercise

    Plastic surgeons and their cohorts in the AMA would like you to believe that facial exercise does nothing to change your appearance... And worse, some will tell you that doing facial exercises will create problems, not solve them.

    I have found that this just isn't true. I began doing facial exercises over ten years ago and still swear by the practice. Familiarizing yourself with the musculature of your face and neck, isolating these muscles and becoming aware of your habitual facial expressions that create lines and creases can produce amazing results as long as you keep up the practice.

    There are two practitioners whose books should be in every non-androgyne's library: M.J. Saffon's, The Fifteen Minute A Day Face-Lift, and Carole Maggio's, Facercise. I've found the exercizes in these books to be helpful for reducing my heavy-duty-weight-loss-turkey-neck, and fighting my inherited "smile lines" (thanks, Dad). Go to your local library and check them out.

  • Trick 2: - Quick and Easy Elastic Surgery

    Meanwhile, you've got a photo shoot in two days and you haven't made it to the library yet. What do you do? Go to the drug store and buy four medium-sized hair combs and a package of small pony tail ties. (We are assuming here that you're going to wear a wig and that you have at least some hair of your own.)

    This procedure will produce nearly the same results as the hair cap and surgical tape trick--but if you're like me and sweat buckets, particularly when dancing, then you may not trust that surgical tape will stay attached.

    Link several of the ties together to a length of about 4 to 6 inches then slip one end of the strand over each hair comb. You now have a contraption that looks like... well, like two hair combs attached to a length of hair ties.

    Now, take one comb and trap some of your hair near the temple, pull the strand over the top of your head and trap the other comb through the hair near the opposite temple. This will pull your face taut, lifting your cheeks, arching your eyebrows and erasing five-to-ten years off your face. Note: If this procedure hurts, try repositioning the combs so that they capture more hair.

    For extra strength, you can use two sets, one set near the temple and another set farther back. At this point you're ready to make a guest appearance on Star Trek as The Wide Eyed Alien Androgyne From Galaxy M31.

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