In an attempt to look 10 years younger, a woman will dye her hair blonde, sun tan her skin bronze in a tanning bed, and wear too much makeup. But this really won’t give her youthful skin nor will it stop aging. Natural beauty does not look like this…

The Barbie Makeup Look is not attractive and has an aging effect on mature women. Most women have fallen victim to this fashion, beauty and style mistake at some point in their lives. Blonde envy is common amongst the non-blondes in the world. Knowing that the long blonde hair and tanned body is an attraction for so many men, many women try to go for this quintessential California beach babe look. Even when we are like … 50 years old … We still fantasize about looking gorgeous (one can dream). The problem is that this look really is not flattering for older women. Older women that do manage to look good as blondes are usually the real blondes, not the processed ones.

Do you remember the sleeper hit romantic comedy movie “There’s Something About Mary”? The movie is from 1998 and starred Cameron Diaz, Matt Dillon and Ben Stiller. The movie features Ben Stiller as “Ted” who is a somewhat shy nerdy young man who has been obsessed with Mary since high school and enlists a private detective (Matt Dillon) to track Mary down years later. Everyone in this funny movie vies after Mary’s love. In previous blog posts I have talked about the dangers of getting too blond and too tan when you’re too old to really pull it off. At 3:00 in the morning I lapsed upon There’s Something About Mary on cable TV and lo and behold I stumbled upon the perfectly “brazilliant” canonical example of the Barbie Makeup Look Don’t!

I don’t remember if anyone remembers Mary’s roommate, the older woman named Magda. She was the older woman, really tan with blond hair who had the dog that Matt Dillon tried to poison. Well, my eyes opened wide with glee as I realized I had found the perfect example of the old lady barbie look! Magda is the canonical barbie makeup look Don’t! Magda was played by Lin Shaye brilliantly. Now, I hope Lin Shaye doesn’t mind me showing her because truth be told she is actually a very attractive older woman. It’s just that they put her in the role of the overtanned blonde neighbor of Cameron Diaz (Mary) in the movie. The movie made hilarious good fun of the over tanned, leather skinned, blonde frizzy hair look.

You can see that Magda in There’s Something About Mary was made to represent the classic Barbie Makeup Look on Older Lady Don’t: Too blond hair, too suntanned skin, frosted barbie pink and purple makeup. Whoever dreamed up this part clearly understood how women do fall prey to this horrible look and they made really good light fun of it in the movie. Lyn Shaye was really great in this movie and stole the scenes she was in. In real life, she does not look like this blonde barbie don’t. Her character was purposely created to make fun of the dark tan, wrinkled skin, bleach blonde hair, wearing full make-up in the sun look. In one scene she was holding a reflector under her chin to get the maximum exposure to the sun’s rays. All women obsessed with tanning should look at this witty portrayal and they will certainly stay out of the sun thereafter. Lin Shaye looks decades younger in real life than she does as Magda in the movie.

Magda in "There's Something About Mary" classic old lady in barbie makeup look. Too tan. Hair is too bleached. Lips too frosted. Sun reflectors pre-dated invention of tanning beds.