Welcome to week six of Saturdays with Cindy!

Since Cindy started this weekly vlog, fashion photographers have been offering her tips on how to use beauty lighting in her videos. So this week, Cindy is explaining how beauty lighting works, how you can use it to apply your makeup, and why she prefers to NOT use this type of lighting in her videos.

Also, this week, Cindy is commenting on why the inequality of the sexes, matriarchal societies, and keeping an open attitude towards menopause. Watch the video for more.

Video Transcript:

 

Hey! Oooh, this is a nice Saturday, at least where I am. It’s going to be 80 degrees. I’m out here on my porch in my big Papasan chair. I can look around and see the beautiful garden, and I’m sure you can hear all the birds. It’s my favorite, favorite thing. What are we going to talk about

today?

 

Hi! I decided to come out into the yard. Now you’re looking up to the house where I was sitting on the Papasan chair on the porch. I’m thinking instead of talking about one specific subject today I’m going to touch on something that my bookkeeper said to me this week, today in fact.

She said that she really, really loves “Saturday with Cindy”—the one before the last one on menopause, she really liked listening to that. I can’t even remember what the subject was, but she wasn’t so interested in the menopause.

I thought about that, and I thought, “Isn’t it interesting that a woman, who is probably going to go through it, wouldn’t be interested in it because she just isn’t at that age yet?” I’m the same way or I was when I was younger.

I took a course on menopause, a really fascinating course that I highly recommend. My friend, who was 22-years-old at the time, a young man, took it as well. He was raised by a community of people who were very interested in women and were extremely aware that women are still treated as second-class citizens.

 

We pay more for our socks, more for our dry cleaning. We are still not paid the same as men in many of the job categories, and the Girl Scout law, which you may have seen I posted on my Facebook page, says, “I will try and do my duty” where the Boy Scout law says, “I will do my duty.” We’re looked at as weaker. We have to try. We can’t actually succeed necessarily. Why do we pay more for all this stuff, and why do we get paid less?

 

This community that teaches this menopause course is very aware of that, and they actually live in a group, and they live in a matriarchal society—this little microcosmic group that lives in our patriarchal society. That’s something to think about.

 

The menopause talk was really talking about attitude, and that’s the only thing we really have control over, our attitude, how we feel about menopause, the rain or anything else. My bookkeeper had so much fear going on around menopause that she just doesn’t want to confront it yet. I’d like to tell all the young women in our society that haven’t gone through it yet that there is some good news.

 

First off, the good news is you’ve got older women to talk to about it, to prepare you, to mock up the worse, start doing research, etc. As you know, time starts flying the older you get.

 

The other thing I wanted to talk about was lighting. I have had a few wonderful offers from photographers who have been giving me pointers on my “Saturdays with Cindy” on how to take away the shadows and make it so you don’t see the lines so well, etc. I grew up in the business of beauty and fashion, and I know what beauty lighting is. You can put yourself in lighting so you look like you’re 35-years-old if you’re 65.

 

Then what happens when you don’t have that lighting anymore, and you’re standing in an elevator with that oh-so-flattering light coming from straight above that makes you look like the monster? It’s like the opposite of the flashlight under the face. Did you ever do that to scare your friends when you were a kid? That side-lighting, wherever it comes in as an angle, puts all kinds of shadows on your face where you can see all the details.

 

I specifically told them that I deliberately don’t use that type of lighting, because I want all of you to see what I really look like. You’re not going to see it in the photographs and the modeling pictures that I do, that’s for sure.

 

I also want you to be aware that when you’re making yourself up in makeup light, which doesn’t allow any shadows. No shadows are created on your face, and you think you are looking great and fabulous with the makeup job you did, and then you go out into an area where the light is totally different, like direct sunlight, side lighting, underneath, above, it’s not going to look the same.

 

In fact, you’re going to see makeup on your face that you didn’t see in the so-called beauty lighting, which means no shadows, no direct light, open shade.

 

If you want to look as good as possible all the time, sit at a table where you have a fill card, so you can fill in the light on your face. I can’t really do it here. I can do a whole “Saturday with Cindy” on lighting. It’s amazing.

The other thing I wanted to mention is questions. Write down in the comments below if you have any very specific questions for me about my life, my relationships, my health, my fitness, my makeup, my philosophies; specific, direct questions. That would be fantastic.

 

The other thing is, basically what do you want to know about me? I feel better when I talk from direct experiences that I’ve had rather than some lofty, philosophical position, because what do I know? What I know is what I’ve experienced, and that’s all I can do is share what I’ve experienced. I think it keeps it honest and real, and frankly not so arrogant.

 

Let me tell you, I can be arrogant when I want to be. It’s not very flattering, and people don’t really want to listen to it. I don’t want to listen to other people expounding about life and how it is. I like them to share who they are, what they’ve experienced and how it is for them.

 

I have so many subjects here. The fashion world, and how they convince us of so many things. Lighting, age and thinning the veil between your insides and your outside, diet, fasting, fasting on water and what it can do for you, going to the gym for health rather than looks, what motivates you, fun or fear, treating yourself and loving yourself as much as you love your friends and family, what makes a woman glow, what really makes a woman attractive and beautiful.

 

This whole retreat idea and my subscription offer. That’s an interesting subject. I think I’m going to post some of your comments on the blog so you can read each others’ points of view about that. Investing in yourself, do the work.

 

One woman asked me to write a blog like Gwyneth Paltrow does, called Goop, and talk about restaurants, and stores, and other websites that I like to shop at, and stuff like that. I think that’s really fun and a great idea, but I just have so many subjects that I want to talk about that are deeper than that.

 

I would love to hear from you, and I hope you’re not disappointed in this “Saturday with Cindy.” I just wanted to keep it light and easy, and ask you to submit some questions and to discuss the menopause thing. I think that’s it.

 

All right, but don’t worry, I’ll be back! Next Saturday. Bye for now.