So let's get real.
Who amongst us hasn't thought a little bit about our skin in the context of aging. There's been so much pressure for us to do so many things, from creams to lasers, pills, procedures, fillers.
The options are endless.
So to cut through all those layers, we're bringing in someone who's lived in the beauty industry for decades and who has a unique and refreshing approach to aging. That's right, it's the one and only Bobby Brown.
If I look in the mirror and I don't look good, you know what I do? I stop looking and I think for a second, all right, why do I look so bad? Is the lighting bad?
Is the mirror bad?
Or have I been working too hard? Not balanced? Exhausted? What did I eat last night? So to me, it's so much lifestyle and its attitude.
Hi guys, and welcome. I'm so glad you're here.
I'm Nicole Berry and this is Skin Querries, a show all about our skin and its health as we grow in. Our skin is really a record of a life well lived, because there isn't one body part that I could think of that reflects our well being as clearly as our skin So let's go on this journey together to really understand what's going on with our skin. Let's unravel the mysteries happening inside and out.
Today we're talking about aging.
We can't do an entire season talking about skin and health without talking about aging. Whether it's sun spots, lines, wrinkles, creases, there's no turning back the clock. Aging is inevitable. Our personal choice is in how we deal with it. So for me, I like to feel my best, and that means taking care of my body, taking care of what I eat, how I move, And my skin routine actually is quite simple. I love cleansing my skin with a honey cleanser, I do a simple toner and moisturizer, and.
I'm on my way.
If I'm going to be in the sun, I add sunlaw and I do love having fun with facials and the occasional laser. But for the most part, it's pretty simple. Perhaps in an alternate universe, aging gracefully would simply refer to healthy living and taking care of ourselves. We'd value the wisdom of our elders and see their lived experience as something to celebrate and not to actually hide. But for now, I'd say, aging confidently and quote unquote naturally
is a fairly radical approach. Even the term naturally can mean different things to so many different people. There's so much to think about today. We'll speak with dermatologists doctor Adeline Kickham, but first the founder of Jones Road Beauty and in my mind a cultural and beauty icon. It's none other than Bobby Brown.
And I'm the one you thought of about aging.
I know I'm very young at heart, to be honest, the reason that I thought of you first is because in all of our conversations that we've had, I guess present yourself as you are, as you truly are has always been, I feel like, one of your values and I've always respected that so much since I was a teenager. Right getting your book Teenage Beauty, it was kind of like the Bible that everyone wanted for the holidays. And like I remember using your books and your manuals pre TikTok,
pre Instagram as like how to feel my best. It was never ever cover myself. It was always like present myself as I am. And so now I'm in my forties and with each step you've grown with me and with I think my generation and many others.
So I guess, broad scope, what is your approach when it comes to beauty.
Well, first of all, I don't feel any older than you are. I don't think of myself as any older than you are. I don't. I don't think of myself in terms of, oh my god, I can't believe how old I am. And by the way, I've come a long way since I was your age or younger about how I felt about myself, about the food I put in my body, the angst I had about what I'm eating. And I am at the best place I've been in my whole life. And I'm not even in my mid
sixties anymore. I'm sixty seven, which is insane to me. And I really believe in skin being the most important part of beauty.
Right.
It's not about if you have lines or don't. It's not about if you have blemishes or don't. It's really just about how your skin looks, and it is such a sign of health. Right. It's not what you put on your face, it's what you put in your body. You know, as someone that makes products, I know that firsthand. I know That's why when I look in the mirror, I don't look so bad. I look okay because I eat really well. And by the way, I do get laser.
I don't shoot anything in my face. I don't do injectables. I don't, you know, do any of Botot's anything. But I will do every laser that someone says doesn't hurt that bad, and it is going to make a difference.
You started as a makeup artist, right when did you make that connection when it came to letting them skin actually or the actual person like shine versus just covering them up.
You know. I started being a freelance makeup artist in the eighties, you know, mid to high eighties, and I just couldn't do makeup the way other people did it with you know, this awful foundation and contour. I just didn't look good. And I just realized how good the girls looked when they came in. So I started doing
makeup just to make them look sunny and healthy. And I used to study kind of like the Self magazine beauty pages where the girls look so good, and I would take makeup to kind of, you know, mimic that on models. So I realized that looking fresh was what mattered to me in beauty. But then I also at the same time, I was someone that was going from diet to diet to diet, to cleanse to cleanse, to realize, Okay,
this is really stupid. I should just find food that makes me feel good when I eat, and I should bring it with me because things were not readily available. And that was, you know, in the early nineties. Wow,
people thought I was weird. I'd come in with the tupperwaar with my chop salad, and I'd have baggies of vegetables, so I wouldn't like sit there and eat breadsticks all day on these gourmet shoots right at you know, during fashion week or whatever, and I just realized I looked better, I felt better eating better, and so my holistic approach kind of began then. But I also was experimenting with like the weirdest cleanses and diets and things, and finally I said this is stupid and I stopped.
When it comes to skincare, anti aging is such a ubiquitous term. What is your kind of verbiage or that language?
Is it harmful? Do you use that?
I don't believe in anti aging because guess what, I'm older now than I was when we started this podcast, right and there's nothing on the market that turns back time. There's just nothing. It doesn't work. There's nothing on the market that really gets rid of your spots. There's nothing on the market that gets rid of lines in your face. There are moisturizers on the market that make your lines look better, and there's makeup that could cover your spots.
But if I have spots, that means I'm not wearing proper sunscreen. Now, when I'm in the sun, I wear a long sleeve SBF shirt. And you know, I live in Florida three months a year. I don't want to look like I live in Florida. So I'm very protective of my skin.
And so how much does mindset come into play when it comes to aging.
I mean, you took the words out of my mouth. It's mindset. It's your attitude. You know, many of you, many of us need attitude adjustments. So there's times where I look in the mirror and I just say, oh my god, I look so old, or I look in the mirror and I say, oh my god, I look like my mother. Like that is the you know, kind of like, ah, you know, my mother was a beautiful woman. But at the end of her life. You know, didn't look so good. She didn't take proper care of herself,
definitely didn't have a positive attitude about things. If I look in the mirror and I don't look good, you know what I do? I stop looking and I think for a second, I'm like, all right, why do I look so bad? Is the lighting bad? Is the mirror bad? Or have I been working too hard? Not balanced? Exhausted? What did I eat last night?
Oh?
I had two drinks and not one, and I had martini with olives and not you know, water like So to me, it's so much lifestyle and its attitude. I have a mirror in two places I live, and it's a full length mirror. It costs me about nine dollars at like Kmart or wal Mart or somewhere, and it's on an angle and it was only supposed to be temporary. But when I look in the mirror, I look really tall, and I love it, and I refuse to get rid of it. My husband's like, let's buy a really nice
one and put it on the wall. I said, absolutely not. I like this mirror because I like looking at myself a certain way. And I'm five foot tall. I'm not tall, but it's you know, it makes me happy. I walk out of the house and I feel like a supermodel and I don't care. Yeah, it's fine. And I also know lighting is everything.
Can Bobby Brown tell us what the keys are to good lighting?
Yeah, my favorite light is daylight. I often do things in my car. I put my makeup on, you know, when I'm in the parking lot to my office or when I'm sitting in my office.
You know, I so natural light when you apply makeup.
If I have the option, natural light is best. Like I could look in the mirror and I'm fine with the lines in my forehead. There's lines around my mouth because they're supposed to be right. And you know, I don't have full lips, so I don't wear a ton of lipstick. I have really good cheeks, so I always put blush on. But my neck I put moisturizer on. It looks better. But it's not my favorite part of
my anatomy. You know, I've kind of taught the people in my organization who video me and shoot me like guys batting.
Yeah, cut that, Like.
You can't be a sixty seven year old makeup artist doing a makeup thing and your head is down dipping into the products. No, guys, right up, And if you don't like it, I don't care. Then you know, just cut to my hands, which, by the way, I don't love my hands anymore, but they're my hands, right, you know, they're my hands.
Yeah.
What about when you were younger, like earlier influences, whether it was your mom or someone growing up that kind of you know, formed your perspective on beauty.
Well in a negative way. As much as my mother was a very big supporter, she was also wanting me to be beautiful. That she once came to me and told me I was very pretty, but I'd be beautiful if I had my nose fixed. I never once complained about my nose. I never had it fixed. And you know,
there was definitely insecurities. But the woman that made the biggest difference in me where I said I'm okay the way I am was when I was in either middle school or beginning of high school and Love Story came out and I saw Ali McGraw and she had, you know, big eyebrows and these freckles on her nose and very little makeup and you know, hair parted in the middle, and I remember looking at her saying, my god, she's gorgeous.
And then I said, ah, she kind of looks like me, or I kind of look like her, And so I was able to kind of say, all right, I understand my own beauty. I'm not Sheryl Tigus or Christy Brinkley or Barbie.
Yeah right, I mean to that credit, I mean even behind you, all the faces that are representative of you and Joanes Road I love. One of my favorite things of walking into your story is that wall. It's almost like magazine cutouts. Reminds me of like my bedroom as a kid. How important is it for you to show different faces and different types of skin tone, age.
I mean, it's everything. And I've always been someone that believed in every single woman's beautiful. And it doesn't matter what your age is, what your ethnicity is, what your coloring is. You know, my job is to represent everyone. And these girls on the wall are actually for our
next shoot, which is tomorrow. So we had their pictures, you know, which are on the top where they're all made up, and we tore them out of their portfolios and you know in the bottom, we asked them all to send pictures of them without any makeup on, and so you know that's kind of what you're looking at now. I just I tape things up on walls and change them. And you know, we started taping them up on walls in the Jones Road stores and that's now become our signature.
I love it. I think it's so cool.
How important are ingredients to you, whether it's what's being put in or what's not being.
Put in to a product, Very important, very important. I mean I'm someone that you know I eat or I shop organically. Let's say, Okay, I eat out in restaurants a lot. So I'm not going to say I eat exclusive organic because I don't. I have let go on any neurosis about making things not work for me food wise, because they're not supposed to work. You know, there's so much noise that like goes into our head and what you should and shouldn't eat. I've tried to be a vegan.
I can't. My body craves meat. I eat meat. I try to eat the best kind of meat, not too much of it. I've tried to quit coffee. I can't. I try to do singles. I go back to double I try to do organic, I go back to an espresso. I'm like, okay, Bobby, stop making yourself crazy. Do what feels good.
We kind of talked about, you know, injectables and things like cosmetic surgery, that you do not do those things right? What is your I guess message to someone who is thinking about it but scared or feels pressured to do it. Of course, if someone wants to do it, they could do what they want. But if they're feeling pressure to do it, what would your advice be?
Well, who's pressuring you? Number one? And you can always do it. You don't have to rush into something. You know, there's certain things you do which are permanent. You know you're going to get a tattoo, smack on your neck or your ankle. Guys, it's permanent. You know you're gonna shoot something in your face, you know once or so it's not that permanent. But once you start. I always say to people, it's like going into your garden. Have
you ever tried weeding? Where do you stop? I have choice in my life done botox when I was in my early forties a it had just come out. It wasn't as scary then, but it didn't work for me. My husband until the other day didn't even know it because I was too scared to tell him. One time I had an eye droop and another time I had one eyebrow that was up to a point, and I remember saying myself, Okay, dude, don't do it. This isn't
for you. Someone sending you a message. And I also realize at a certain age, if I did botox now, it wouldn't match the rest of my face, Like you can't have a forehead that doesn't move in a neck that does right right, it doesn't work.
Having so many of these conversations about the skin, I'm realizing more and more that the choice is really ours when it comes to taking care of our own skin. Just like I follow my intuition with what I eat and what I do, the same goes for skincare. I know that I always want to be making a conscious choice of what I'm doing versus listening to some social media advice or even my friends. I need to bring the choice into my own and this is where I'd
like to bring in Doctor Adeline Kickup. As a board certified dermatologist, she's seen this pressure firsthand, coming up right after the break, welcome back. You know, as a mom of a daughter, I'm always thinking about how much pressure girls in their teens, preteens, even in their twenties and older, particularly on Instagram and on social media, and I wanted to speak with doctor Kikum about feeling that pressure and how it affects her patience.
And I think is more higher for gen ziers because they are inundated with this right in the palm of their hands. They are very self critical of your appearances, so when they come to the office, there's this urge to really move what I can move faster than your shadows when it comes to appearance, right, they want your nose to look a certain way, they want your chicks to look a certain way, and I'm like, you're still growing.
Right, And the point of reference is usually someone who's actually like augmented their face most likely.
Yes, exactly.
And then we also have the filters that are creating very unreasonable expectations. So it's reassuring them, educating them that what they're seeing. They have to be cognizant that it's not real a lot of times, and nobody is that perfect. Right.
It's interesting that you're a medical doctor and you actually have to explain something that's out of the medical field. You know that these filters are not real, that these are augmented, because our reality, or a young person's reality, is cute.
Very very true, and it helps for them to hear it from me because sometimes parents are frustrated, you know, the kid harasses the parents about oh I look like this, I don't like this, so they want to hear from a different expert to really break it down to them and say, hey, you're still growing. You think your face is going to be always like this, but it's not.
Let's not do certain things prematurely. Let's wait till you know you're an adult age where you can have a greater insight on some of these things and personalizing your routine, personalizing your skin health to something that makes sense for them, something that is achievable, something that is doable, and really really building up.
Your self esteem.
And then for older patients, they are coming in wanting to feel better about themselves. Right, Maybe they grew up in an era that they didn't have access to certain procedures, whether cosmetic or whatever, or they just feel like they're in a certain profession, maybe like sales, and these are all people that are growing through societal pressures. So for me, it is reassuring and managing expectations within that natural process of aging of what can you do and still do
things in a healthy manner. The idea is to never as a doctor, do any harm, to go overboard when it comes to your cosmetic options or just even general skin care advice.
Doctor Adeline says it's important that we don't think of our skin and its aging simply as an aesthetic issue.
Just like you go for checkups or your kidneys, your heart. Skin is the same way. So much of the fixation shouldn't be on the esthetics as much as what is happening to the structural integrity and the function that we're talking about when we say we're aging. So I want to educate people to know what is going on from that perspective. Now why you should use sun protection instead of just saying, you know, let's talk about how we could diminish your wrinkles, but what is happening when you
go out under the sun. You what we call oxidative damage is happening can increase your risk to cancer. So instead of just emphasizing just the esthetic part, I try to remind them of the medical part. When you start looking at the skin as an organ and the reasons why you're doing some of these things, not wholly from a cosmetic but from a medical perspective, it really centers you.
And even as a dermatologist, I don't like the term aging gracefully, like it puts so much pressure on people to be youthful or to focus on the youthfulness of the aging process and doing everything to counteract that instead of recognizing that we're aging, and how do we support the skin true is decline in structural integrity and function? How do we make our skin work for us in our skin care?
Can wrinkles or sagging skin ever become an actual medical problem or is it simply just a culture norm that we expect not to have these things.
So it's a fine line, especially in dermatology, because we are dealing with an organ that is also very visible. You know. I joke with my cadeologist friends and I'm like, you're just so lucky your organ is like inside.
Right, you know.
So there's because the skin is open to a lot of interpretations, you know, people's standards of beauty, esthetics and so many things. But there are medical issues that happen in the framework of everything as well.
Right.
You know, people come to the clinic for a different concerns sometimes, right, and I'm examining them, I'm like, wait, I'm not concerned about your hyperpigmentation, right, and I'm concerned about that model that is changing, that needs to be biopsyn So this is happening in the framework of other things, right, the wrinkles, the dullness that is happening, and sometimes we have new lesions, new molds popping up on the skin.
So you have to be able to when evaluating a patient, look past what is just merely cosmetic to find what may potentially affect your life, like a melanoma.
It's a message we've come back to so many times in this podcast. Our skin is an important marker of our health and well being, so it's important to pay attention to it and to care for it. Thank you so much, doctor Adeline Kicom for your perspective.
You're welcome. Let's bring Bobby back for the last word today.
Do you think as far as like leaving our listener with I guess simple practical step that they can take with them to improve their relationship to their skin. Whether that be actually pragmatic things that they could do or just a mindset shift.
What would you say, Well, think about what you're putting in your body first, and make sure you have enough hydration. It's a struggle I have.
I have water everywhere I go.
There's a huge difference if I do hydrate myself correctly and if I don't. So that's number one. And also, you know, just know what food you eat that makes your skin look bad. Not everyone has to be dairy free, not everyone has to be gluten free. I'm not allergic to gluten. I could eat gluten, but I feel better if I don't do it that often, and I feel better if it's good quality bread over anything. But I'm only making those choices for me, and I'm not telling
people they have to do what I do. But I just want people to pay attention to what goes in their body. I mean, I stopped eating sugar to make me feel good, you know, and everyone's like, how did you do that? I'm like, because I'd rather have a cocktail. I won't give up my cocktail.
I love that.
Well, thank you, Bobby, I really appreciate you taking the time and chatting.
It's really awesome.
Thanks, I'll talk to you soon.
Thanks, Bobby, Bye, bye bye.
It's always such a treat and pleasure to speak to beauty legend Bobby Brown. She really shares so much wisdom about not only aging naturally, but simply taking care of yourself enjoying yourself along the way. There's something that Bobby says that really resonates with me, and that's taking care of yourself, not listening to the outside world or outside pressures. And clearly it has worked for her and it's such an inspiring thing to look at her journey and how
she stayed consistent with that message throughout her life. And as always, be your own advocate, know your own body and skin, follow that intuition, because if an issue arises, don't be afraid to reach out for help. Skin Queries is hosted by myself Nicole Berry, an executive produced by Evon Sheehan.
Our senior producer is Tory Weldon.
Our junior producer is reem Al mcgrabi, with help from Austin Johnson. The show is mixed and features original music by Sam Sagan. If you enjoy the show, share it with your friends. You can also listen and follow on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and we'd love to know what you think, so make sure to leave her a view.
Until next time, m