Italian Peasant Beauty Tips From My Feisty 90-Year-Old Grandmother

“Don’t put anything on-a your body that you wouldn’t put in-a your body.”

You know those grandmas who slip you $20s and sneak you cookies? Mine’s not one of them.

My Nonna is 4 feet of Italian fury—a 90-year-old spitfire who’s always eager to share wisdom, guilt and pasta. I lived with her for two months when I first moved to Toronto. The strict 11pm bedtime she enforced quickly turned me into a boxed-wine alcoholic, which worked out well because she yells when she talks, and her advice was a lot easier to digest with a wine-warm belly.

I’d tune her out when she’d ask me, “Why you no marry?” but I listened to her beauty advice with rapt attention because she’s 90 and pretty much has firmer skin than I do.

A strict Oil-of-Olay-er, when it comes to treatments, Nonna Fanny is all about 20th century hills-of-Italy methods that will make both mother earth and your body very happy.

Her motto: “Don’t put anything on-a your body that you wouldn’t put in-a your body.” (Except Oil of Olay, and don’t eat that.)

GARLIC

“You want a nice skin?” Nonna asked me one day as I slathered Nutella on a piece of toast, trying to forget about the giant zit on my chin. “Garlic.”

Nonna’s go-to product is garlic. It’s like her Windex. (If you’ve seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, that’ll make sense. If you haven’t, you should.) She once told my uncle Steve, who has been horseshoe-bald since he was 19, to “rub-a the garlic on the head; make-a the hair grow.”

We all laughed at that, but in my research, I learned she might be onto something. Garlic has killer antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and stimulating properties, so with its encouraging nature, that pungent bulb may even be able to make hair grow.

And I’ll be damned--it makes zits shrink! The next time you get a massive pimple, try rubbing the sliced edge of a half a garlic clove on it instead of crying, or popping it.

I’M A POPPER.

And I have the scars to prove it. Garlic might be the only substance strong enough to stop me. If garlic shows up, I’m like, “OK, I trust you. You can kick my ass.” If garlic were a person, she’d be Wonder Woman.

LEMON

For a toner that’s loaded with vitamin C and safe for everyday use, try lemon juice and water. Just dab a cotton pad in it and sweep across your face. Ahhh. I suddenly feel like drinking a gin and tonic on a beach.

Speaking of beaches, when I lived in Italy, I used to bring lemons to the beach with me, cut them and douse my hair with their juice. Nature’s highlights were better than anything I’ve ever paid for.

In fact, my regular stylist was all, “where did you get this color?” when I came back home. From the lemons and the sun, yo!

I now do this in public parks because I no longer live in Italy and don’t have a backyard.