Want to turn back the years? Stop squinting
Wrinkles around the eyes are a major gripe – even in one’s early thirties.
And yet you can do so much, first to prevent them from taking root, and then to delay their embedding. All the measures below are completely cost-free.
Avoid sunbeds
Morale is raised following a sunbed session. We are transformed, like a wall given a lick of paint. But we should avoid the salons like the plague.
Sunbeds accelerate skin-ageing and the development of fine lines particularly around the eyes. California tan peepers – commonly used – absurdly only protect the eyeball.
Yet the charity Melanoma Focus found in 2024 that 28 per cent of Britons are still beating a path to the salon doors. Belfast, of all places, is the sunbed capital of the UK. Think of the damage to that thin northern skin which has not evolved to cope with sun rays.
Avoid squinting
Don’t get into the habit of pulling a grimace when walking alone outside. Sit in your parked car in any high street and quietly observe the pedestrians coming along. You will see exactly what I mean.
We do pull hideous faces as a default. It is partly a self-conscious thing – you feel you should be wearing some sort of expression and so you pull a squinting face as though scanning the horizon.
But your face gets use to being pulled and, like Mr Bean’s, eventually begins to default into that squinty look – even when you are inside. It helps to wear sunglasses in the street, even in winter.
Avoid moisturiser swamping
Less is more. Don’t apply more moisturiser to the around-the-eye wrinkle area than you do to the rest of the face. It means that part of the skin can’t breathe and it makes things worse.
Just use ordinary SPF50 moisturiser as you use on the rest of your face. Have a laugh when you consider that the most expensive eye cream in Harrods is La Prairie Platinum Rare Haute-Rejuvenation Eye Cream – 20ml (4 teaspoons) for £920.
Avoid pestle-and-mortar-style eye-rubbing
Don’t ball your hands into fists and rub roughly if your eyes are itchy.
You will damage the surrounding skin to a W H Auden-like extent. The poet compared his facial condition to ‘a wedding cake left out in the rain’.
When itching occurs, lie back, having applied circular cotton wool pads soaked in ice water. That will do the trick.
Do wear glasses and contact lenses if you need them
Although some short-sighted vintage beauties use mini-torches to illuminate documents in public, it is impractical.
We must bite the bullet and train ourselves to wear contact lenses, or just put the ageing glasses on. If we don’t, we encourage squinting wrinkles.
Do wear sunglasses when it’s sunny
These are squinting-preventative. It’s worth having your normal prescription adjusted to be photochromic, so you don’t have to carry two pairs.
Eye masks
Personal recommendation – ask for this for a Christmas present: a Drowsy silk sleep mask. This is a padded silk cocoon for luxury sleep in total darkness.
Less bulky when you’re travelling is the Eagle Creek Sandman Eyemask (£17.99), in ultra-soft fleece. The comfortable elastic strap is adjustable for a perfect fit.
Bedtime
Don’t bury your face in a pile of bunched-up pillows. This will produce the condition known as quilting on your whole face. The eiderdown-like lines will subside when you get up, but eventually they will stay in place.
Why not copy Joan Collins’s sleep technique – it has worked for her, at 92: lie on your back with just a small pillow under your neck.
And here are some things that aren’t cost-free:
Frownies
Frownies were created in 1889 and take the form of long strips of perforated paper, which you wet. You build muscle memory by wearing them while asleep every night for 30 days. They can be used for ‘crow’s feet’.
As well as helping with frowning, they smooth static lines (those that the face shows in repose; not dynamic lines produced by, say, smiling). They cost £28.95 for around two months’ supply.
Once the muscles have built their memory, you can use them less often. The company has been operated by women in the same family for over a century.
Eye make-up remover
Use one that does not leave an oily residue. Lancôme is ideal.
Dry eyes
TheraTears lubricant eye drops (£15) are perfectly safe eye drops for older dry eyes.
Laser treatment
Another squinting preventative is the top-of-the-range laser treatment at Moorfields for both eyes (£5,000).
Cataract and lens-replacement surgery is about £3,000 per eye.
