can't I somehow shut this thing down?

There really does need to be some sort of opt-out system available.

Andi, it's okay to grieve. It's okay to still be grieving. There's not a timeline you have to follow.

Advice online in general says for over 50 skin go all cream based, eyes lips, everything. I'm okay with that, I guess. I was just hoping ya'll would be willing to burble on a bit about colors and whether or not you use cream based makeup over powder based, and what you like about it or not, and what you do with it that's different.

Avoid cream-based eyeshadows, because they will smudge, smear, and settle into any fine lines. For folks who aren't goths and/or drama queens, something like this WnW palette would be good: [link]

I've heard good things about the Photo Focus foundation. When you apply any foundation, apply teeny dots on your face and blend the bejeezus out of it with a sponge, foundation brush, or your fingers. If you need more coverage, apply a few more teeny dots and blend some more.

Creamy lipsticks are good, but if you wear one in a dark color you also need to use lipliner, because lipstick feathering into any lines around your lips is a real thing.

Also, if your eyebrows have thinned or lightened, find a brow pencil to fill them in with teeny-tiny strokes. Faint eyebrows are one of those things that can look "off", unless it is SUPER OBVIOUS that you're going for a stylized high drama look.

(I fill my eyebrows in with a metallic burgundy liquid-to-matte lipstick, but it matches my hair, I am a High Drama makeup person, and the formula means it doesn't smudge. )

Cool. Thanks, Atropa.

I didn't really like cream eye shadow back when it was a thing when I was a teenager.

ETA, I have weird eyebrows, so I've got plans and a pencil that seems to work reasonably well. I've never actually fixed them right, so I plan to practice.

Thank you , dear ones. Today has been a better day.

I cover the 2-3 greys in my eyebrows with one of the gel eyebrow tamers from Maybelline. When I bother. I don't usually bother. (I'm almost 45 and have Peter Capaldi eyebrows.)

I didn't recall looking at his eyebrows, so I went and took a gander. Those are serious! Mine are decent for the first half, and then suddenly cut off into trailing bits halfway across out to the outside of my eye. Like....eyebrow, eyebrow, look a squirrel!

My eyebrows are pretty non-existent. It didn't matter with the long bangs I wore most of my life. Now my glasses frame my eyes. From time to time my SIL will wax them into some kind of order, and a couple times she has talked me into tinting them, but that startles me!

In early adolescence I had a monobrow, pretty thick from end to end. I pulled up my socks and created the gap between--the old trick with a pencil along the line alongside the mouth corner and nostril; the eyebrow is supposed to begin where the end of the pencil crosses the monobrow. And through years of constant tweezing I became inured to the pain. I cleaned up the line of my brows from underneath, which left the outside third a bit thin and undefined, but I've always worn glasses and only dealt with that bit for super special occasions. I never really learnt the art of penciling in well.

Now I have the occasional white eyebrow hair which I pluck, and I have my handy brow scissors at the ready for the new coarse wiry hairs that want to beetle. But on balance, the wild rambly undersides and middle brow hardly grow in at all, any more.