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8 Eye Creams To Get 21-Year-Olds To Stop Calling You a Queer Elder

Sometimes you are doing nothing, absolutely nothing. You are minding your goddamn business, and you are just living your life. And some queer person barely ten years younger than you pops out of nowhere and thanks you for being a queer elder. While your first instinct might be to scream, might be to ask HOW OLD ARE YOU EVEN?, might be to tell them that actually a wise and regrettably heterosexual fictional woman once said “30, flirty, and thriving,” and sure, maybe you’re not exactly thirty, but you’re not that far from it either!

Well, it sounds like it’s time for some eye creams, you old gay hag! Here are eight to try out.


Sunday Riley’s Auto Correct ($65)

Sunday Riley Auto Correct

Uh-oh, a young person just asked what the Stonewall riots were like, assuming you’d been there. Time to break out the big guns AKA Sunday Riley.


Kiehl’s Avocado Eye Cream ($37)

KIEHL'S creamy eye treatment with avocado

You’re a millennial. You’re such a millennial that you make jokes about other generations making jokes about how much your generation likes to spend money on avocado toast. You can’t be an elder as a millennial — even if you’re an elder millennial! Anyway, avocado can be for more than toast, as this eye cream proves.


Drunk Elephant C-Tango Vitamin C Eye Cream ($64)

Drunk Elephant eye cream

You’re talking to a girl at the dyke bar, and she’s pretty cute. She looks kind of young, but you’re clearly both adults, and she’s clearly into you. You make an L Word reference. She asks “who’s Bette?” Time to pack it up, go home, and apply this eye cream.


Cerave Eye Repair Cream ($20)

CeraVe eye repair cream

If you’re such a “”queer elder”” then why is your life a mess! Point that out to the 21-year-old.


Neutrogena Hydro Boost Gel-Cream ($32)

Neutrogena hydroboost

Apply this the next time a baby gay tells you they feel like they’re going to be alone forever just because they’re single in their early twenties and asks you for advice as a “queer elder,” despite the fact that you, too, are single.


Paula’s Choice C5 Super Boost Eye Cream ($39)

Paula's Choice eye cream

Maybe the reason you have those dark circles under your eyes is because you’re currently in a fight with your ex-wife over the pets you co-parent.


Clinique All About Eyes ($39)

Clinique all about eyes


elf Holy Hydration ($10)

elf holy hydration eye cream

Sometimes oldheads gotta be on a budget.

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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 820 articles for us.

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