Oscar Beauty at a DIY Price

As you watch the parade of age-defying actresses down the Oscar red carpet today, you’d be justified to ask what exactly do such human beings do to look so good? Of course, genes account for part of it. So do facelifts. And then there’s the little-known beauty technique that rivals a mini nip-and-tuck at keeping gravity from ravaging your visage. It’s facial massage, also known around Hollywood as the non-surgical facelift.

It was my friend Coralie who first told me about a Los Angeles-based Swedish facialist, Arcona, who had developed a method of strategically stroking the face in upward motions. “The next day your cheekbones are out to there,” Coralie said. Of course, I didn’t believe it—who would?—until I went to Arcona’s studio (originally in Valley Village, and now in Santa Monica) and had a facial massage treatment myself.

Arcona primed her hands with an emollient made of naturally active ingredients and then attacked my cheeks, lips and forehead with a series of upward strokes. Arcona believes that these actions counteract the aging forces of gravity. What’s more, the upward strokes reputedly exercise the muscles in your face, reversing the gravitationally pull on your skin, and stimulating blood flow and collagen renewal.

Over the next few days I noticed that my cheekbones had returned, my face looked more relaxed, and my jawline had sharpened. While those initial results faded after a week or so, I found that my face returned into sharp, youthful focus again when I started doing a similar facial massage on myself. I may be fooling myself, but I seriously think doing this massage twice daily—once in the a.m., again in the p.m—has knocked about five years of age off my face.

This is the technique I’ve learned:

Lubricate your hands and fingers with a nourishing face cream—I still use Arcona products, which feature naturally-active ingredients such as vitamins B-5, C and E, but you can also pick up some highly effective Aveeno creams at the on Colorado or York—and follow these five steps:

1. With the tips of your fingers and the palms of your hands, smooth any fine lines on your forehead upward.

2. Contour your cheekbones by rubbing the palms of your hands in the hollows of your cheeks, all the while lifting your cheek muscles upward and toward your ears.

3. Starting at the inner eyebrow, press two fingers, lubricated with face cream or serum, along your brow; circle down to below your eyes and, starting from the inner eye, gently press the skin flat. These steps can release stagnant fluid and reduce area puffiness. You can also wrap an ice cube in cotton and massage the eye area with it for a similar effect.

4. Infuse hydrating face cream into your fine lines by placing emollient on your fingertips and gently taping the moisturizer (you can also use a few drops of honey) into the “11” wrinkles between your eyes, fine lines on the forehead, crow’s feet, or “marionette” wrinkles around the mouth.

5. My friend, dermatologist Dr. Jessica Wu, taught me this daily facial exercise for firming the muscles under your chin and jaw: Curl the tip of your tongue up and back and press it against the roof of your mouth. Hold for five second. Repeat five times. You can also do this in the car while commuting, in the shower and while standing in line at the store. Think of it as a Kegel exercise for your face.

Actress Diane Lane reportedly has Arcona's facial contour massage done several times in the weeks before any big event. And while not many of us can afford to regularly splash out $85 to have the professional spa treatment done, we can now at least give our cheekbones and jawline a little workout in the comfort of our own Eagle Rock bathrooms.