The article was also picked up by the Daily Mail's Femail pages, with a kind of shock-horror coverage. Zut alors, no airbrushing either.

In real life, of course, many women - perhaps most women - don't wear makeup on a daily basis. But women's magazines, and many other publications, make the majority of their money from product advertising, especially beauty products, so they're keen to pretend we're all mad makeup wearers.

I thought all the women featured looked younger without their slap, so out of interest I called the DH over. He said: "Mmn. All of these women look more interesting without makeup. Prettier with it, maybe, but more interesting without."

In my experience, that's quite a common reaction from the unfairer sex. Men who actually like women generally prefer them to look natural and although they may find made-up women attractive at a distance, few of them want to see a caked face in close-up. Most of all, they loathe getting lipstick or face powder smeared all over them in a clinch.

Two things struck me about the article though. One was how some of the women clearly have such issues about their looks - one described herself as looking '72' without makeup, when in fact makeup made her look hard-faced. Meanwhile, Fearne Cotton described herself as looking 'like an egg' - being the youngest, she is probably the most impressionable. But the truth is, in makeup, she looks - well, like everyone else on television but without it, you see for the first time those huge Bette Davis eyes.

Makeup artists often don't serve their subjects well, but it makes you wonder what a Westmore might have made of her, in those great Hollywood days before beauty became identikit.

Cult Beauty, a new beauty website and glossy magazine, is now online.

The site aims to be the online arbiter for the best cult hair, beauty and grooming products from around the world. In order to remain independent, it does not accept beauty advertising.

The website will champion cult products that each stand out as the 'hero' product in their respective fields - products will be sourced and suggested both by Cult Beauty's own experts and by users. In other words, it'll be the best place to find those one-off products that can't be sourced outside the major cities. This could be a godsend for people like me, who live 40 miles from the nearest beauty shop and have to order everything online.

"We want to do for beauty what Net-a-porter has done for fashion - bringing the once inaccessible, undiscovered and elite gems in beauty to everyone," said Jessica Moore, the firm's managing director.

To use Cult Beauty, just visit the site and register. It only takes a couple of minutes and you can then browse to your heart's content by new item, colour, type of product, etc. The icons tell you if the product is animal-friendly, and you're given directions on how to use it. You can also do an advanced search by your skin type, hair colour etc.

After logging on, within seconds I spotted a flesh-coloured kohl liner of the kind I've been searching for for years. It's the Clarifying Pencil by 3 Custom Color and I will be ordering it right away. I've used white and pale pink kohl liners for years as an eye brightener, and they work like a charm, but if you want to touch up and not have it noticeable, a flesh-toned pencil is the way to go - and you can also use it as a spot concealer.

Cult Beauty delivers throughout the UK and Europe for a flat rate (£4.95 UK, £14.95 Europe).

My sister Carole underwent one of these a few weeks ago - a kind of 60th birthday present to herself. She'd developed the hooded eyes that our mother had, and the eyelid skin was actually beginning to drop onto her eyelashes.

To tell the truth, this might be one op that I also face in the future, because it's happening already on my right eye (the left eye was damaged in an accident and isn't drooping). Currently, I do eye exercises to bring the lid back up, but I feel this is only a holding pattern and won't last forever.

After she'd already booked the op privately, Carole found that in fact she would have been entitled to the operation on the NHS because it was actually beginning to impede her vision.

She opted for a local anaesthetic, partly for cost reasons (it was £1300 as opposed to £2500 for a general) and partly because she felt that general anaesthetics are something that should be avoided. Therefore she was awake for the procedure - not something she was looking forward to. Each eye took about 30 minutes, with pressure, but no pain.

After post-op recovery (she was discharged the same day), she was sent home with instructions to keep the stitches dry, which entailed having a messy face for a few days. But it all looks a great deal worse than it felt, she tells me - despite all this bruising, there was no pain to speak of. The picture left shows her at day one, with nice purple eyelids and the stitching very visible.

These pictures show her at about days three and five, as the bruising was beginning to spread. Her left eye swelled dramatically even during the operation, while the right eye showed much less trauma.

The third picture, with the yellow bruising (ultimately, it reached her top lip), is about a week after the op - the first day she felt able to leave the house, suitably masked with makeup. However, she still noticed she got some second glances in the street.

After only five days Carole went back to have her stitches removed. This was an inexpressible agony, as each eye had one long stitch, so they cut at one side and pulled at the other, at which point, she says, it was the worst pain she's ever endured in her life - like having 'hot barbed wire dragged out of my eyelids'. Fortunately, it was over quickly.

Afterwards, of course, she was itching and desperate to rub her eyes, which can't be done, and her right eye swelled up. After the op, this was the eye that had swollen least, so she was a tad surprised. Three weeks after the op, she is still having trouble with this eye because she can't blink fully. The surgeon says that this is because everything is tightening after the operation and the problem should ease within two months. In the meantime, she has a cream for night-time to prevent dry eye during the night, as well as a cream for the scars. In a month's time, she will go back for her 12-week checkup.

As you can see in these before and after shots, the op does indeed take years off you, making you look happier and more alert. Whether it is worth the pain and the money, however, has to be a personal decision. I balk at the idea, but my sister is certainly glad that she's done it.

As women age, and particularly as oestrogen levels drop, the testosterone that's naturally in our bodies gets the upper hand and we can start developing hair patterns like men's. Than means our head hair can thin, which affects an astounding 40 per cent of women, but also our facial hair can get thicker.

I have to confess here that I'm not much troubled with body hair per se. Being from a family where everyone is blonde and as slick as a pear, I wouldn't even have to shave my legs now if I hadn't Immaced them to death when I was a teenager. "Pruning makes the plant grow stronger," wrote my father on my depilatory cream, but did I take any notice? Nah.

However, I do find this past few months that I have a single rogue facial hair, and so - it appears - do most of my friends (varying in age from 35 to not-telling-you-or-anyone-else). The position of our unwanted visitor varies - mine's growing out of a mole, so it can't be plucked, just has to be trimmed every now and then with sharp scissors. Those with theirs in a luckier position just get out the tweezers and a big magnifying mirror. "Tweezers are a girl's best friend," R said, waving a corkscrew about.

Dermatologists don't agree. For the odd hair, they say, you should razor the bugger off because the force of the pluck can irritate and leave a bump. The same applies to waxing, and depilatories - you can irritate your skin and cause actual damage. Oh great.

If the hair's more widespread - your facial down is getting thicker and more plentiful - whatever you do, you shouldn't shave it. If you do, the stubble, though no thicker than before, comes back rougher, which makes it more noticeable.

Nor is laser removal a perfect solution. It doesn't work on white hair, and on dark complexions can cause hyperpigmentation of your skin so that you look like you've got a moustache even though there's no hair left. Meanwhile, electrolysis will work on the odd hair, but you can't do large areas with it because each hair has to be killed individually and even then it can take several attempts.

My friend S, who was not at the party, uses a little gadget that I had never seen before till she emailed me a link. Kind of like a big multi-tweezer that plucks out multiple hairs via the 'threading' technique. The Epicare tool is, says S, both effective and slightly compulsive. She particularly recommends it for straggly hairs round the mouth and chin. I suppose, in essence, it's a many-pronged approach to plucking.

There's one final option. If facial hair is really becoming a problem for you, you could try Vaniqa cream, available on prescription, which inhibits the enzyme that hair follicles need in order to grow. You need to apply it twice a day at first, then if your hair stops growing within three months, gradually reduce the dosage to the minimum effective level.

For a lot of women, a side effect of ageing is that their lashes get thinner and sparser - and their immediate reaction is to switch to a volumising mascara.

This is a mistake. As your lashes get thinner, they also get shorter, and a thickening mascara can give you a very clumpy look, like a teenager who's just learning. Far better is to switch to a lengthening mascara, with very very fine fibres in it, and apply two or three coats as needed. As with all mascara, open your eye wide and apply the product to the roots, then wiggle the brush up through your lashes. This way you get a natural look, and a strong eyeline. For daytime, stick to brown mascara unless you have jet-black hair, as anything else tends to look too harsh.

Personally I favour the Respectissime dual-end one by La Roche Posay, which has a conditioning wax at one end and the mascara at the other. The wax makes the mascara glide on really easily and stay put once it's there. Other manufacturers offer similar products.

For daytime, however, I recently also bought to their Definition mascara, which has a very fine wand and is perfect for building up exactly the coating you need without either lengthening or volumising your lashes. It's great if you have sensitive eyes, as it's fibre-free and hypoallergenic. In terms of how it looks once it's on, it reminds me of the old cake mascara from the 1960s, that you had to wet and then applied with a little stiff brush. This was time-consuming and fiddly, but the end result was very controllable and built up smoothly for a perfect result. Like that old kind of mascara, Definition is totally water soluble, so will streak your face at the slightest teardrop, but my eyes are so tender that I prefer this to a waterproof one.

Your 40s is also the time to think about false eyelashes for special occasions, and to practise in the bathroom (not five minutes before your wedding ceremony). The newer false lashes are a completely different animal from the spidery wings we all knew growing up (which went with purple, blue or green eyeshadow and frosted lipstick). They come in strips of varying lengths, look very natural, and you should just cut a few and apply them to the outer corner of your eye. Then curl your lashes as normal, then apply mascara as normal, and the whole lot should blend in nicely. For an idea of what's available, check out Ardell.

There are, of course, even newer options on the market, such as lash extensions, which are woven into your existing eyelashes just like hair extensions on your head. This, I feel, is going too far down the route of decadence at $300 a time (plus endless top-ups that cost nearly $100), but a woman's money is her own to spend after all. The results are spectacular and you can see them here. Once you have eyelash extensions, you can't use waterproof mascara or oil-based make-up removers, or you'll bring the bonded lashes off, and there is one other downside - some doctors believe their overuse can lead to you losing your eyelashes altogether, a condition known as traction alopecia.

For women who have lost their eyelashes altogether - a situation that is becoming sadly more common due to chemotherapy - you can have an eyelash transplant. It isn't cheap, coming in at about $6,000 and currently performed only by one doctor in Florida (though he is training others), but the results are permanent. The transplants aren't eyelash hair - they're normal hair taken from your own head, so you have to trim them, dye them and curl them in order for them to look like normal lashes. Only you can decide if this is worth it (and by the way, the surgery's performed under local, not general anaesthetic). For details, check out this YouTube video.