Beauty and the Beast

Must-read for Moms from Cookie Magazine...
One mother wonders if having children has robbed her of her looks or if it's all in her head. Her conclusion: a little bit of both.

A month after the birth of our second son, my husband, Bryan, and I had our first night out: a holiday cocktail party at a friend's. After putting down the baby and kissing my 2-year-old good night, I scrambled into a dressy outfit that was loose enough to fit over my tripled-in-size boobs, scraped my hair into a bun, and put on some makeup. Heading down in our apartment building's elevator, I caught my reflection in the brass button panel. The lighting there is reliably flattering—soft and golden. But all I saw was limp hair and sallow, puffy skin. My attempt at smudged metallic eyeliner had only exacerbated the gray bags under my eyes. I exhaled and teared up, and before I could mentally buoy myself, I said, like a child, "I'm not pretty anymore."

I wasn't fishing for compliments, though Bryan responded with a shoulder squeeze and the requisite round of oh-nonsense-of-course-you-ares. It was as if I needed to say it before someone else did, like when you critique your own cooking ("This is dry and a little tough....") to preempt judgment from others. In that instant, I was totally blindsided by a sense of mourning—for the loss of my younger, fitter, brighter-eyed self; of the freedom I had before having any children. I felt as if irreparable damage had been done, to both my looks and my life.

The glaring irony, of course, is that I'm the health-and-beauty director of this magazine. I have access to the newest makeup colors and high-tech skin creams months before they hit stores. I have VIP cards entitling me to free services at Manhattan's best hair salons and spas. I receive invitations from dermatologists for laser treatments, Botox, and lipo, and from fitness pros offering free Pilates sessions. But since becoming a mother, I'd barely booked an appointment. And despite the heaps of beauty loot waiting in my office when I returned to work, I still felt like crap.

I work with a lot of glamorous mothers, and when I brought up the topic with them, I was amazed at how many echoed my sentiments—even though, to look at them, you'd wonder what all the whining was about. It made me think: Is feeling beautiful post-children even achievable? Is there an anthropological reason why a woman's looks take a nosedive after she has kids? (Did Cro-Magnon women need to be attractive only until they secured a mate?) Why do we feel we can't take the time, or don't deserve the time, to look and feel good? And when we do try, why do we still cringe when we look in the mirror?

Remembering my elevator meltdown now, a year and a half later, I know that lack of sleep and a tsunami of hormones were largely responsible for my misery. But even months after, when I'd stopped nursing (or pumping) around the clock and was getting much more sleep, I still felt ... off. The feeling was sharper than in those first months, because as my spirits gradually improved, my appearance didn't—and the incongruity caught me off guard all the time. I'd swing my toddler, Alex, around, laughing hysterically, then glance in the mirror, zoom in on my greasy hair and deepening crow's-feet, and freeze, my smile tensing into a grimace. My mind would race: It's so unfair that laughing with your babies deepens your wrinkles. I'm tired of being a grown-up and having so many responsibilities. I'm pissed that nobody tells me, "You look too young to have children!" anymore. I'm so vain. I'm not supposed to care about this. But I do, and I'm depressed—and that makes me shallow and ungrateful. And so on.

This trifecta of entitlement, guilt, and self-hatred seems to trap a lot of moms. "Two boys kissing me makes me feel prettier," my friend Alison, who owns a PR firm in Manhattan, told me when I asked if motherhood had sabotaged her looks.
"How do you feel when you look in the mirror?" I asked.
"Like I need Botox. Awful."

Over the course of one phone call, my friend Karen, another mom of two, barely took a breath as she rattled off her issues: "My belly button droops. I have saggy skin and a poochy stomach, and my linea negra never went away. I look at myself naked and think, Who would ever want this body?"

Plenty of men. At least plenty of men a few centuries ago, according to Helen Fisher, a research professor of anthropology at Rutgers University and the author of Why Him? Why Her? (Henry Holt). "Two hundred years ago, an older woman with three small children who had lost her waist and had big breasts would be regarded as extremely attractive, because she was fruitful," she says. "Also, in hunting-and-gathering societies, children were raised by their mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Today, a woman raises her children to a tremendous degree by herself. We weren't built for this, so we run ourselves ragged. The problem is not motherhood; it's the responsibilities of modern motherhood. If someone dropped in from 5,000 years ago and saw us, they'd be shocked."

Or how about from just 30 years ago? When my two sisters and I were little, my mother, a concert pianist, always took the time for haircuts, lipstick, perfume, and even facials (over bowls of steaming water at the kitchen table). She wore waist-cinching wrap dresses and tunics made from fabric bought in Amsterdam with dark flared jeans and chunky necklaces—even on days when she drove carpool in the morning, practiced for eight hours, and cooked three Chinese dishes for dinner.

"Previous generations didn't think grooming had anything to do with mothering; a woman took time to put on makeup and a dress because they made her feel good. That didn't make her a bad mother," says Gail Saltz, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital and the author of The Ripple Effect: How Better Sex Can Lead to a Better Life (Rodale). "We're so child-centered now. We're not good mothers unless we're giving it all up for the kid." Furthermore, mothers today "always feel like they're falling short," says Nancy Etcoff, a Harvard University psychologist who studies the connections between beauty, emotion, and the brain. "They have really, really high expectations for themselves."

Of course we do. But even if I accept that I can't have it all—what can I say?—looking good is still one of the things I want to have. So I turned to beauty experts with older children and asked how they survived the ugly years. Makeup artist Jeanine Lobell, whose kids range in age from 7 to 15, told me that after having her fourth baby, she entered "a good acceptance phase. I said to myself, 'This is my life. I'm going to look like hell for a while, but it's temporary.' " Now that her kids are older, she's back on track. "You have to find a new version of beauty for yourself. Accept how much you're willing to do, then work within those confines." Lobell's advice follows this simple formula: "Figure out the thing you need to fix on your face and the thing that's most fabulous on your face. Fix the broken thing, and emphasize the good thing."

For Linda Cantello, the Paris-based international makeup artist for Giorgio Armani Beauty and a mother of two sons (ages 18 and 23), the key was making beauty rituals as compulsory as brushing her teeth. "I always faithfully got my roots done," she says. "And I always wear perfume and earrings." Cantello suggests going to a makeup counter for a professional application. "An artist will bring out what you don't see anymore. Because when you look in the mirror, all you think is, I'm a mom. I'm tired. I have to do the laundry. How many women have been in that place where they feel invisible?"

I found myself there late last summer, when Ben was 8 months old. So on a particularly hot, sticky day, I accepted an invitation to meet with a trainer. I liked her instantly and signed up for two mornings a week, between preschool drop-off and work. Soon after, I started running again after a four-year hiatus. The first thing I noticed was how good it felt to reconnect with my body, which had become a sluggish, milk-manufacturing foreign entity. I was also amazed at the emotional lift I got from having non-negotiable time for myself, even if it was only a 20-minute jog while Bryan fed the boys breakfast. And just a couple of months in, I felt fitter and more optimistic than I had since becoming a mother. Gradually, I noticed certain things felt possible again: I could wear a dress with a waist. I could try a new prescription night cream and actually believe it might even my skin tone.

Around this time, I met Frenchwoman and mom of three Mathilde Thomas, cofounder of the natural skin-care line Caudalie. She's the picture of cool, calm, and effortless glamour, so I asked her how she holds it all together. "Of course mother hood is extremely tiring, and yes, yes, yes, it makes you age," she told me. "But it's life; it's great. It's very important to be more beautiful after having kids than before."

I asked her to elaborate. "My marriage is extremely important," she replied. "I won't put my children before it. You shouldn't be that person who says, 'I've given everything to my children,' because you may not get anything in return. So you need to be a little selfish."
I try to use those words as a mantra.

I still work out with my trainer twice a week and run on other days. I've streamlined my beauty efforts, and I'm having more fun with makeup than I did in my 20s. The other night, Bryan and I played back a video of our day in Central Park with the boys; struck by the roundness of my face, I announced that I wanted a facelift. But I was (mostly) joking. And many mornings, as I ride the elevator down to my lobby, with wet hair and skin dewy from some newfangled antiaging face serum or another, I do feel pretty—and, more important, happy. And then I get on with my day.