Goodbye, Eva Fraser – the queen of facial fitness
We are awfully sad at Beauty Bible to hear that Eva Fraser has died at the age of 90. (That’s Eva not so long ago, above.) She was to faces what Jane Fonda was to bodies, and her Facial Fitness books and DVDs remain the very best out there.
We interviewed Eva for our first book, The Beauty BIble, and some nugget or other of her wisdom has featured in all our books pretty much ever since.
Her own best advertisement – we SWEAR that you could pretty much open an envelope with Eva’s jaw-line or cheekbones – she formulated a system of highly effective facial exercises which REALLY DO WORK. We would recommend anyone even vaguely considering a facelift or some other kind of ‘work’ to try her system, first. (Find her book here.)
In tribute, here are a few paragraphs about Eva which embody her philosophy about her work and about life itself, which featured in the life affirming book 50 Over 50 by Debbie Rowe and Tracey Larcombe. Meanwhile, bye, Eva. We’ll miss you – and so will your many, many happy clients.
‘I enjoy the work hugely, I really do. Every client I get, I just feel totally engrossed with them. I just love it. I hadn’t done any teaching in any job I had before but teaching people how to look after them- selves is just wonderful and so rewarding. People are so frightened of ageing, this is the problem and there’s this thing of dreading birthdays. You know, it’s a birthday; it’s supposed to be something you look forward to. It’s just about trying to get people to have a very different idea of age and to realise how young we all are. Even people in their 40s have said to me that because they’ve got to that age they think they aren’t young any more and start getting scared to do anything. Loads of people still do, even men will say ‘Oh gosh I’m 42, it’s awful being 42’. People don’t realise men think that way as well, I certainly had no idea.
Even if you’re 60 you’ve still got 40 years to go if you live to 100, so what are you going to do with those 40 years? You can do any- thing you want, anything – you can start a new job, you can trav- el the world – you can do anything you want to do. It’s just getting your mind around the fact that perhaps at 80 you may have 20 years to go, so if you want to sit and knit you can, but you could also start a new business or something. It’s nothing to do with age. Once you get to know that, I think you can change your whole mind to forget about it. I’ve still got 22 years to be 100, so I can’t even think of being old. Our work is about getting people to be much happier about themselves, which is nice, that people are so cheerfully ageing.
I feel totally different as I’ve got older. I do resemble the person I used to be in many ways but I’m glad I’m less tough and hopefully more approachable, and that I think is better, especially in this work. I wasn’t when I started it, I was still quite indifferent. But now I have great friendships with people, whereas before they were just clients, I liked them but I didn’t have the closeness I have now. I think as you get older you just appreciate people more. I didn’t really value my friends so much when I was younger, not until I was 60 I suppose. People were always doing things for me and when I think back, I didn’t say thank you, I just accepted what they did. But I’ve learnt to always appreciate what people do; I feel very differently about people now.
I think younger people just have to realise how incredibly young they are, to appreciate things and to really go for it and enjoy their lives. Not getting stuck in your life is vital. If you’re not happy, don’t think your life is some sort of sacrifice and think ‘well, I’ve made my bed’ as it were. You get up and remake it. One isn’t meant to be miserable in this life. I don’t mean you’ve always got to be laugh- ing and enjoying yourself, but there are so many things to do and I think if you’re not happy you need to have the courage to say ‘This isn’t right’ and move on. Obviously if you can avoid hurting people in the process that is better, but to know how young you are is the main thing, and to know how many things there are to do in life, and to go and do them. Probably one of the most important things is to have love in your life; to give love and hopefully to be able to accept it. Those things are really the most important I think.
