After 40, your skin stops holding water — and every serum you own was designed for the skin you used to have.
It usually starts small. Your foundation settles into lines it used to glide right over. You catch your reflection in the car around three in the afternoon and your cheeks look flat, when they looked perfectly fine at eight that morning. Someone takes a photo from below and you see your neck properly for the first time in years. So you start layering, serum and then cream and then another cream, and somehow your skin still feels tight by the end of the day.
Eventually you do the responsible thing. You go to the counter and spend $80 on the hyaluronic acid serum they promise is "the one." You get it home and it's sticky, or it pills under your moisturizer. Or it's fine for a week or two, right up until the bottle has been open long enough that it stops doing much of anything.
And that night, a quieter thought creeps in: "Maybe it isn't the serum. Maybe this is just my face now."
It isn't. And here's the part nobody at that counter will tell you.