To say Hilary Duff has a lot on her plate would be an understatement. The 31-year-old just wrapped the sixth season of Younger on TV Land (and a seventh is already in the works); she’s starring in the upcoming Lizzie McGuire reboot; and, oh yeah, she’s a mom to two young kids. Duff has opened up in the past about how motherhood has changed her life. She told Today a few years back that she’s now “always worrying.”
One of her growing concerns? Like many, Duff is making it her personal mission to be more green. Because of the very real issues regarding climate change, yes, but also because of her children, Banks and Luca. “We owe it to our kids [to recycle] because this planet is going to be their future and their home,” Duff tells Glamour. “Our impact is going to make a difference for their future.”
Duff’s passion for recycling is why she recently partnered with Walmart and Unilever, the parent company to brands including Dove and Love Beauty And Planet, to launch “Bring It to the Bin.” The aim of the program, Duff says, is to make recycling easy and accessible, especially for busy moms who are being pulled in a million directions, which she knows from experience.
Everything she does these days is on a tight schedule, including her beauty regimen. “My routine has gotten so short, I can literally do my hair and makeup in 10 minutes,” she says. The same goes for answering our Big Beauty Questions. We caught up with the actress to have her run through our rapid-fire questionnaire and talk more about how she’s cleaning up her routine.
Glamour: What’s one beauty trend you love but would never try?
Hilary Duff: Colored lipsticks. A really different-colored lipstick, like a blue. You see it in the magazines, and I feel like it’s very runway or great for editorial, but maybe you couldn’t pull it off in real life. But I think it would be really fun.
Do you have any beauty regrets?
I went through a phase where I basically had jet-black eyebrows—and still as a blond. Jet-black eyebrows! I love a big brow. I live for a big brow, but now the tone of my brows is a little more toward my hair color.
Lady Gaga is currently doing some amazing things: Not only is she still a pop icon, but she’s helming A Star Is Born, which, by all critical accounts and definitely not just judging by the first full song that’s been released from the soundtrack is going to be a box office slamdunk. And although we’ve already discussed just how amazing her interviews for this movie are, there’s another entry for that book—and it has to do with a very rude person telling Mama Monster she needed to get a nose job.
She told the Mirror last week that while she was on her own journey to stardom—we’re talking right before her first single dropped—someone said she should get a nose job.
“Before my first single ever came out it was suggested I get a nose job, but I said, ‘No.’ I love my Italian nose,” she told the Mirror. “If people wanted me to look like a sexpot, I would look like the opposite.”
Gaga was playing by her own rules straight from the beginning, it seems: “If they said, ‘Try dancing and looking this way,’ I would always flip it on its head and do it my way,” she added.
She also opened up about her own struggles with insecurity—and about how A Star Is Born contains elements of her own life. Gaga said that at one point, she was playing three shows a night and performed at at least a thousand clubs before she got her big break with 2008’s The Fame album.
“I spoke a lot to Bradley about my life, and they integrated part of my life into the movie, but in a very special way. I am forever grateful to him for that,” Gaga told the Mirror. “There were times early on where I wish there had been someone to help nourish me psychologically, to handle the change. When you become famous everything changes; you’re no longer a free being.”
Everyone has their insecurities. That’s the truth we must cling to to get by, but when I was in high school, it didn’t feel like I was being insecure about my nose. It felt like the simple fact of the matter: I had a big nose with a bump at the top of the bridge, and I hated it more than anything. Nothing would convince me I wouldn’t benefit from a rhinoplasty, not my mom saying she liked my nose (“well, I don’t,” I would acidly shoot back), not my friends saying it was fine or I’d grow into it, not the tons of photos I took of my profile so I could analyze just how big and bumpy it really was. And then, at my first beauty internship, I was organizing products one day when I found it: Kevyn Aucoin’s Sculpting Powder, the only thing that’s kept me from taking the plunge all these years.
To understand the magnitude of how good this powder is, you have to understand how much I loathed my nose. It looked okay when I looked in the mirror and automatically widened my eyes and raised my eyebrows (everyone has their “mirror” face), but when I smiled in photos, my nose dipped and spread and kept me from seeing anything else. I’d get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I was tagged in photos, so I avoided them. I started second guessing which was the “truth,” what I looked like in the mirror, or what I looked like in photos. The latter seemed more real, and it began to feel like surgery was the only way out from this problem I was sure I had.
All through high school and college, I set my sights on wearing down my parents until they saw from my point of view. It didn’t matter that one of my only memories of my grandfather revolved around my nose—toddler me demonstrating my very unique talent for touching my tongue to my nose (that dip pays off in one way and one way only). It didn’t matter how anyone else felt about my nose, because I felt powerless. I just wanted to like my smile. It didn’t feel like a huge ask, to look happy without hating myself afterwards, without facing the disappointing truth of what I looked like to everyone else. Maybe it was greedy, but I wasn’t satisfied with just looking “cute,” which I thought of then as the B+ of beauty. I wanted powerful, leading lady beauty, the kind of face that no one could say no to (therapy has been helpful for untangling this toxic link).
But when I picked up the Kevyn Aucoin powder, a world of opportunities spread before me, much like my nose. Contouring was just taking off, so it wasn’t yet at the intimidating level where every palette came with a million shades and a color corrector. Instead, it was simple. I dipped an angled contour brush into the powder and sucked in my cheekbones, dusting the powder in the hollows created by my fish-face. After watching a few YouTube tutorials, I was ready for the big leagues. With the barest layer of powder on my brush, I dusted it on the underside of my nose. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’d never notice it. But to my over-sensitive eye, it’s transformative.
PHOTO: Rachel Nussbaum
Before on the left; after on the right.
Where my nose by itself may always strike me as owl-y, after shortening my nose with a visual trick I can feel my self-esteem level up. Granted, these days I’m getting better at accepting myself (again, thank you, therapy), but on the days I want to really feel myself, it’s always and forever my last step. I’ve tried other contour products, and most will work in a last-minute duck into Ulta or Sephora. But on my very fair skin, the Sculpting Powder weaves the perfect illusion of a shadow, and comes in shades both a notch lighter and darker.
But I’ve never been one to accept good when better could exist, so after a few years spent with the Sculpting Powder by my side, I still booked a free consultation with a plastic surgeon. When I described what I was looking for—my nose, without the downturn that comes from that smiling motion—he said it might be doable, but such a small change wouldn’t be worth getting the procedure. It wasn’t quite the answer I wanted, but for now, I’m happy with my on-the-go powder. With three years between us and barely a dent in the pan, I’m not paying $20,000 for a nose job anytime soon.
Kevyn Aucoin The Sculpting Contour Powder, $44, sephora.com
