What Beauty Lies Do You Tell Yourself?

By Elizabeth Angell, Allure magazine

With a few notable exceptions (most of whom work here as beauty editors) most of my friends fancy themselves low-maintenance. They claim that they're too busy for elaborate makeup routines. They told their wedding-day makeup artist that they wanted a "natural look." They assure me that they would never consider plastic surgery. But here's the thing: I think most of them are much higher maintenance than they want to admit to me-or even to themselves.

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One friend recently told me that while she thinks of herself as having good skin and would never think of shopping for foundation, she won't leave the house without tinted moisturizer. Another friend told me that she almost never wears makeup. She was, at the time, sporting a pretty expert (if subtle) smokey eye, which I pointed out to her. And yet another friend recently told me "I always think I have good enough eyebrows that I can groom them myself with just a little tweezing now and then. But whenever I have a big event, I go get a professional tweezing."

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I'll readily admit to my own self-delusion. I think of myself as someone who can get out the door quickly, but I realized the other day that after I use four or five products in the shower, I hop out and apply a leave-in conditioner, a serum, facial moisturizer, eye cream, and a separate moisturizer for my body. And that's before I've worked a styling cream through my hair and applied some makeup, "just so I don't look like death warmed over."

What about you-Do you tell yourself any beauty lies?

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Photo Credit: WWD