Amanda Mull has found the secret to perfect skin: be rich.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t moisturise, keep hydrated or stay out of the sun. But the celebrity beauty secrets magazines are so keen to share tend not to include the best-kept secret of all:

You can drink as much water and wear as much sunscreen as you want, but the most effective skin-care trick is being rich.

Rich people look different to the rest of us, because rich people have access to things the rest of us don’t (and don’t do the jobs many of us mortals do, some of which are hardly skin-friendly).

Rich people who are also handsome or pretty have usually been lucky in the genetic lottery too. As Mull writes:

It’s no mystery to beauty editors and writers, as well as the famous women surveyed, that the answer is a combination of youth, genetic luck, and access to expensive products, treatments, and cosmetic dermatology procedures that few people outside their world could ever hope to experience.

If you get plenty of sleep, eat well, drink plenty of water and use skincare products you probably won’t end up looking like a monkey’s scrotum. But you’re not going to look like your favourite Hollywood star either – and the older you get, the more of a difference money, or lack of it, makes.