A Feast for the Eyes
I’ve always hated those women’s magazine articles that focus on some minuscule aspect of one’s personal care--healthy cuticles, say, or glossy eyelashes--and blithely prescribe impossible regimens such as “drink eight glasses of water a day, avoid sun, red meat, dairy products, caffeine, cigarettes, stress and alcohol, give one-third of your income to charity and get plenty of sleep.”
Well all right! Unless I’m brainwashed by a cult leader, I have no intention of living in such a fashion for the sake of healthy cuticles. That’s what manicures are for.
Unfortunately, there is one area of the body that does instantly register every bad act. It takes a lot of dissolution to develop ruddy cheeks and a W.C. Fields nose, but very little to make you wake up looking like Robert Mitchum--with soulful duffle bags under the eyes.
A bad day at work, a neighbor’s cat in heat, three glasses of wine at a birthday party--by the time you’re 40, your eyes register every shock and bump. And sometimes sooner. I know a 24-year-old political campaign worker who, if her candidate slips in the polls, looks as if she’s gone a round with Oscar De La Hoya.
It’s a problem, and this is why there are more creams, gels, serums and potions on the market formulated specifically for the few square centimeters known as the eye area than for practically any other body part. There are brighteners, tighteners, smoothers, anti-wrinklers, even chillers. Of course, most of them, especially at the low end, are just a combination of grease and preservatives.
In my 40s I’m becoming a character out of a Don DeLillo novel, worrying about all the innocuous things (such as underarm deodorant and Jell-O) that might give me cancer. For this reason, I prefer natural cosmetics or, better yet, things I can buy in the produce aisle. This may be heresy for a beauty junkie to admit, but there’s nothing at Barneys’ cosmetics counter that’s as effective for puffy eyes as two slices of organic cucumber.
The problem is, at times of stress, exhaustion or trauma, chances are I don’t have a cucumber in my purse. Those of us who lead busy lives may not get to the farmer’s market, so potions are helpful--whether it’s the ingredients themselves that do the work, or the mini-massage you give yourself by patting the product onto tired eyes. Just the act of buying eye cream is a gesture of self-care that ever-so-slightly quiets the inflamed soul.
My sister-in-law, whose under-eyes are of Greek-Italian descent, refers to the purchase of eye cream as “pitching pennies into the fountain of youth.” She recently tested Lamas Beauty’s Eye Recovering Complex, which she said was putty-colored, smelled faintly of beer and seemed like “something you’d find next to the sink of a tenured art history professor at Berkeley. The overall effect says hemp.” There’s no hemp in the Lamas product, but it is vegan.
After some experimentation, she ended up preferring Boscia’s Enlivening Amino-AG Eye Treatment, a pearly cream in clean white packaging that’s a little more Blahnik than Birkenstock.
My favorite daytime eye product is Body Bistro’s Green Apple + Neem Eye Jelly, a bright, happy green gel with the same cooling effect as cucumber but which can be applied while seated at one’s desk. At night, I like Enessa’s Neroli Cell Renewal Wrinkle Treatment, which is light, soothing and smells a little like freshly turned earth. It’s the smell of rest and regeneration.
If the phrase “98% pure” on a label makes you wonder what’s wrong with the other 2%, I’m with you. A line called GratefulBody promises 100% purity, no synthetic ingredients and no genetically engineered or pesticide-laden botanicals. Their 30Plus Eye Cream is light and fresh, and smells like I imagine the air of Middle-earth’s Rivendell would smell--a medicinal herb garden belonging to a race of immortal beings. This product certainly prevents some mental wrinkles, which I’m sure has an effect on the development of physical ones.
Sometimes poor diet is to blame instead of stress. When your eyes start to look like the drive-through windows of the soul, JavaJamu’s Skin Tissue Tonic is an herbal remedy based on Javanese ingredients such as black turmeric root and cashew leaves. It seems to revitalize your skin, in part, by straightening out your digestion, relieving sallowness and puffiness in the process. The blister-packed pills are easy to carry, so you can pop them after meals (even lousy ones) as recommended.
But my favorite eye therapy is still the proverbial tea bag. Caffeine, antioxidants and herbal extracts are the key ingredients in many eye creams, and tea blends contain combinations of these that suit a number of eye-stress situations. But don’t reach for Lipton--that would be like using Crisco to dress a salad.
Zhena’s Gypsy Tea, which you can buy at Whole Foods and keep in the cupboard far longer than a cucumber, is an all-organic, fair-trade tea. (The fair-trade certification means that the women who pick the tea have healthcare and maternity leave and therefore probably don’t need stress-relieving eye treatments as much as you do.) The tea bags are round--i.e., eye-shaped--and have no staples to scratch you.
When I called Gypsy founder Zhena Muzyka (she really is a gypsy) at her Ojai company and asked if she ever used the teas this way, she said, “Of course! How else can I dance all night and show up for work the next day? This is the tea drinker’s morning-after therapy.” She recommends Chamomile Blessings, with sun-dried Bulgarian rose petals and Ukrainian lavender, for relaxation and stress relief; a white tea blend called Sense of Peace (“white tea has double the antioxidants of green tea”), with mint for soothing inflamed eyes; and Breakfast Bliss, which is high in caffeine and fluoride, for hangover puffiness.
“In the morning when I make a cup of tea, instead of throwing the bag away, I put it in a container in the fridge,” Muzyka says. At the end of the day, the morning’s cup of tea becomes a soothing poultice for tired eyes.
Speaking of which, in the process of “making” all the eye tea bags, I grew to prefer tea over coffee, and as my caffeine intake dropped, my sleep quotient increased, my red wine consumption tapered off to next to nothing, and I started eating better, thanks to all those trips to Whole Foods. Pretty soon I was feeling pretty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. You see where this is going? That’s right. It’s obnoxious to admit, but these days even my cuticles and eyelashes look fantastic.
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Resource Guide
Zhena’s Gypsy Tea, Ojai, (800) 448-0803.
