The Weirdest Beauty Tips I Learned From My Mom

by Randi Bergman

Looking at old pictures of my mother is like looking through a really fancy mirror. She’s me, just better. Fuller hair, better clothes, a statuesque figure and that ever-warm twinkle still recognizable today. “Your mother, she’s still a good-looking woman,” is something my dad often says.

Aside from her always flawless seventies wardrobe which is, of course, long gone, I’m always on her about beauty tips. Being supremely lazy in the department myself, I assumed her undulating waves were just happy accidents. Not so. Here, I present the weirdest things my mom did for beauty. Not that I’d ever consider doing them myself.

1. Sleep with your rollers. Also, use rollers.

As someone with perpetually flat hair, an early-2000s dream, the lushness of hers is something I’ve always been particularly jealous of. Not that I’d ever dream of using, let alone sleeping with, rollers. “I learned exactly how to lay my head on the pillow to mitigate the physical discomfort,” she says. Da fuq?

2. Pluck your brows to match your bangs

Down with the bedhead look? Go YOLO with the grooming. Mom had one of those geometric Vidal Sassoon haircuts, which came to a point over her right eye. “I left that eyebrow completely un-plucked and just prayed the wind wouldn’t reveal my secret,” she says.

3. Use non-beauty beauty products

Apparently, a non-dandruff side effect of Head & Shoulders Shampoo is mega shine. Also sexism. “One day during my long hair phase, I got into the elevator at my office and some guy I didn’t know said, “I’d love to see that hair spread out over a pillow.’”

4. White lipstick will make your eyes pop

This is probably one of the easiest to cast aside, because who, besides Rihanna or Yolandi Visser, wears white lipstick? But according to my mom, “false lashes, lots of mascara, and Mary Quant white lipstick makes your eyes appear huge.”

Randi Bergman is the executive digital editor of FASHION Magazine, which she craftily balances with her part time gig as a hypochondriac and witch doctor. She loves anything ’90s related and her personal style was once aptly described as “either Schiaparelli or slut”