Beauty Dish

Review: Avon Anew Clinical Eye Lift

Review: Avon Anew Clinical Eye Lift
When you love something, let it go....

this stuff WORKS!

When I started selling Avon, I could not wait for my delivery man to drop my luscious goodies on my door step. I ripped into the cardboard boxes imprinted with Avon propaganda, slathered my face, my arms, my belly with any new sweet cream faster than you could say wanna free sample?.

Ah, those days are over. Two years later, I've animal tested myself to some other plane of beauty consultant existence. I can't fit another product in my medicine cabinet, can't squash another tube of hope under my sink. All the Avon stuff I loved, reviewed, promised to apply forever sleeps in piles gathering dust. I can't keep up! If I used every product Avon advises, every cream I found useful, I would have a beauty regimen at least thirty products long! I'd never leave my bathroom.

The brand-spanking-new Avon Anew Clinical Eye Lift is one of those products perched along my counter top now. It arrived a month ago in a fanfare of sales glory. "No sags. No circles. No surgery. At-home eye life cream and gel - for the first time Anew delivers an answer to eye lift surgery!" I swear, the literature gets more lurid each day. "Dimensional Lift Technology formulated to strengthen from the inside out by boosting collagen and elastin production and Derma-Refine Technology formulated to accelerate cellular metabolism." I'm not even sure what those statements actually mean, but I find myself creeped out by the sharp silver surgeon's knife displayed above the tub of cream in the advertisements.

The Avon Anew Clinical Eye Lift comes in a tapered palm-sized white and silver-rimmed tub. You twist off the top to reveal a dual-chambered pot, one containing a peach-colored gel, the other filled with cool white cream. Avon promises that applying the two lotions will "instantly deliver an eye lift and visibly reduce under eye shadowing" and after four weeks will "reduce sagging and drooping as well as dark circles and crepiness."

I'll be frank. I'm 40. I have five kids. I have laugh lines and the undeniable evidence of our planet's gravitational pull. 9.8 meters per second squared, day in, day out, added to sleepless night, the stress of an Avon Lady's small handful of change. It equals dark circles. It equals life. I'm not sure I want to erase my wisdom, but I opened my demo tub of Avon Anew Clinical Eye Lift in the name of science and applied it morning and night for forty days straight, much like a beauty temptation trek through some kind of old-skin desert.

The tub has a helpful cover over the lotions that shows you which lotion goes where. The container itself mimics the cover, mimics your eye, with one compartment in the shape of an almond eyelid, the other a perfect doe eye.

You smooth the peach gel over your top eyelid, caress it toward your eyebrow. It barely smells at all, but feels a bit sticky, thick, viscous. The first time I applied it, I rubbed and rubbed and rubbed. The stuff just wouldn't completely melt into my skin! I finally figured out that this was deliberate. An invisible film rests just beneath your dermis, and as it dries, it tightens, pulls the skin taught. I felt as if I had tape stuck to my lids, pulling my eyelid this way and that. It did look more firm!

The white cream - also nearly odorless - goes under your eye. It seeped into my skin nicely, left my under eye feeling soft and delicate. You can see an instant lightening and plumping effect once you apply, and it seems to last the entire day. The combination of upper-eye stretch and under-eye glide unsettled me, made me feel like I had wide-open Runaway Bride eyes.

Two weeks into my test, my under eye darkness virtually disappeared. My upper-eyes continued to feel pulled, taut. One month later I could see considerable "improvement" as defined by Avon. I can imagine my eyes getting younger and younger, changing from 40 to 30 to 20 to 10, ending in some 2001-inspired baby-eyed space wonder. You want young eyes? Dang it, girlfriend, buy this product! A million thumbs up!

But I'll tell you something, a secret, something I feel deep in my heart, something that rumbles under my surface. I like looking older. I like seeing the passage of time run across my skin. I'm not sure spending hours spreading this and that improves my life in any real, meaningful way. I'm posting this review and retiring my tub of Avon Anew Clinical Eye Lift, adding it to my bin of Loved but Let Go.

I just want to be me.

doorbell []