Lincolnshire-born singer Nicola Roberts has simply turned 40, and through her birthday celebrations, her friends requested how she felt. She didn’t hesitate: “I have friends that didn’t manage to make it to 40.
“So it is a privilege to get older. We should show gratitude for ageing, because it means we’re around a little bit longer, and that is imperatively important.”
It’s a refreshing response from somebody who’s spent half her life in an trade constructed on staying ceaselessly younger. But Roberts, as soon as the youngest member of Girls Aloud, isn’t clinging to the previous.
“There’s freedom at any age if you truly accept and love who you are,” she says.
That sense of acceptance runs via all the things she says and her newfound strategy to wellbeing. Roberts is talking as she marks a new chapter, lately being introduced because the face of Aveeno’s new Age Renewal vary.
The collaboration feels apt: the road promotes what it calls “ageing gratefully,” an adage that Roberts lives by, following the passing of buddy and fellow band mate Sarah Harding in 2021.
Harding died of breast most cancers aged 39, simply two months shy of her fortieth birthday.
Losing Harding, Roberts says, put many issues into perspective. It made her rethink the relentless pursuit of enchancment that had lengthy outlined each her trade and her personal habits.
“I’ve got gentler with myself,” she says. “I don’t want to put my skin through it anymore.
“When I look in the mirror in the morning, I’m like, this is fine. I’m not pulling myself apart.”
The Aveeno partnership comes at a time when that message of caring in your pores and skin shouldn’t imply punishing it, is sensible to her.
“I still want skincare that does something,” she says, “but it also has to reflect how I live. We don’t use toxic products at home; I don’t use fragranced shower gels. So it’s about finding that balance – products that are effective, but that also fit with a more mindful way of looking after yourself.”
Roberts additionally says how huge an influence weight loss plan has made on her pores and skin, as she’s observed the seen impact of what she eats have gotten extra evident with age.
“Diet is massive for me,” she says, “if I eat a lot of sugar, my skin texture changes. Even my make-up goes on differently. So it’s about balance. I know if I indulge in pizza and cake, I’ll have a breakout next week.”
She laughs when she talks about her simplified routine. “I just don’t think my skin can take that much information anymore,” she says. “I used to think if it wasn’t tingling it wasn’t doing something, but sometimes your skin just needs calm.”
This gentler strategy have additionally made her really feel extra assured, as she notes, “I prefer how I look without make-up on most days. I just like being comfortable.”
Roberts’ measured relationship with magnificence is hard-won. In her 20s, she grew to become often known as the “pale one” in Girls Aloud – an identification that got here with fixed scrutiny in an period when tanning was virtually obligatory.
“I definitely did my time being addicted to tanning and feeling like I needed to be tanned to fit in,” she recollects.
“Coming out of the Nineties and the Noughties, it was seen as attractive to be tanned – if you weren’t that skin tone, you were an outcast a bit when it came to beauty standards.”
Eventually, she recognised that the fixed drive to be tanned was unhealthy. “I got to a point where I realised I couldn’t tan – I’d only burn – and I realised how unhealthy my perception of beauty was in conjunction with tanning,” she says. “Eventually I realised I looked so much better in my own skin tone.”
That realisation led her to make a BBC documentary about tanning habit and pores and skin most cancers, and she or he was a part of a marketing campaign that helped change UK legislation to ban under-18s from utilizing sunbeds.
“Kids were leaving school in their uniforms and going straight to tanning salons,” she remembers, “it’s insane to me that something like body weight or skin tone can fall into a fashion trend category.
“The fact that tanning is coming back now is quite crazy – it’s like flared jeans. It shouldn’t be a trend when it’s about your health.”
That intuition to query what’s thought of “normal” magnificence has solely sharpened with age.
“You just have to have the responsible conversation with yourself,” she says, “what’s important to me? How far do I take this? And that’s a conversation you should have with yourself, not one driven by peer pressure or societal noise.
“If you don’t have self-love, and you’re trying to fill that hole with connection or attention, you’re going to keep making decisions that don’t serve your true purpose,” she thoughtfully explains.
“Once you fill that hole with self-respect and love, you don’t reach for other things to fill it – you can create boundaries and say no easily.”
Therapy, she says, helped her get there. “How you look is a relationship with yourself – and with the encouragement and love you get from people around you […] A therapist can help you reframe things, but self-love really is the root of everything.”
And so upon turning 40, Roberts isn’t attempting to reinvent herself, however simply change into extra comfy in her pores and skin.
“As you get older, you just naturally and really beautifully get to a point where you don’t care,” she says, “you’re like, this is it, this is who I am, take it or leave it.”