Me and Mom, circa 1980

When I was growing up in the 80s I thought my parents were movie stars. To be fair, they were impossibly glamorous. My father wore beautifully tailored suits and my mother had amazing hair in a decade when perms were taken seriously. Her clothes were so on point that I’m ashamed to say I didn’t save any of them (I would most definitely be wearing them now!). Aside from the hair and incredible clothes, my mother was beautiful. Like, Keira Knightley in a perfume-ad beautiful. What’s funny is that I never learned a single thing from her about proper skin care. My mother slept in her makeup, never shaped her eyebrows, and knew absolutely nothing about the importance of moisturizers, serums, and eye creams until fairly recently. Peptide Renewal Serum> I realize now that my mother’s beauty trick was a combination of great facial structure, confidence, and youth. She was married at 18 and became a mother at 20. By the time my sister and I reached our teen years, my mother was only in her early-to-mid 30s; the age that I am right now.

Thirty-something years later...

My mom definitely taught me a lot about beauty. For one thing, she never paid attention to details. She never scrutinized her face in a magnifying mirror, and certainly didn’t spend a lot of time putting on makeup or perfecting her awesome 80s hair. She just pulled her hair out of curlers, applied her glamorous makeup in flash, and was ready to go. Her beauty was based on a type of confidence that simply can’t be achieved if you’re constantly picking yourself apart and inspecting yourself for flaws. “I feel sorry for girls today,” she tells me. “We never worried about being perfect when we were your age.” And she wasn’t perfect. And she was and is amazing. Happy Mother's Day!