It is exceedingly rare that I wear makeup, but when I do it is simple mascara (brown-black) and lipstick. I have two tubes of lipstick (or "moisture whip," as Maybelline calls it): Toasted Almond and Rare Ruby. When I was young— high school and college (it was the '70s)— I might have added some eye shadow, powdery blue or shimmery gray, and eye liner, also dark brown. But these days, if I use anything, it's just a touch of lipstick. Hardly ever mascara.I have nothing in particular against makeup. I just never learned how to use it. Never felt I needed it. Not that I'm any great beauty. But being a beauty wasn't in my repertoire. I was smart. Anyone who appreciated my brains would appreciate me for that, "beauty" or no.
My mother had about the same relationship to makeup as I do, though I do recall a shallow cardboard box full of lipstick tubes in the bathroom drawer when I was growing up. I'd sometimes pull the tubes open, twirl them out, inspect their colors. They tended to be nearly or mostly used up, rubbed flat by my mother's lips. Most were some variation of orange—dried apricot, coral, rust. A few pinks. Maybe she always wore lipstick and I never noticed, though I suspect these lipstick tubes were an accumulation from over the years; that she once wore lipstick more generally, and when I knew her, it was more of a special-occasion kind of thing. She never wore eye makeup. That I would have noticed.
I've since become more feminist (political) and/or philosophical, I suppose, about beauty. It's a cultural (commercial) creation, that's for sure. And it's utterly superficial: all about appearance. That said, there have been not a few occasions when I've seen a friend with and without her makeup, and I appreciate what the makeup does: it's like drawing a picture with charcoal, then adding a little contrast here, maybe a little Conte crayon color there, to give more body, more life. It's not to say that a face without makeup isn't beautiful. Of course it is. It's maybe to play up the beauty that's already there.
If you want to.
I never did.
4 comments:
Ditto about rarely using makeup, but when I do my tools are tinted sunscreen, bronzer, and under eye pencil. It used to be mascara but that bothers my eyes now : (
i love reading these pieces .. .
Thank you for reading!
My mother had an orange lipstick. Maybe it was the thing when we were young (for adult women). Not using make-up and having make-up be a mystery is our (collective our) thing. And then we mess with it and try and see if it fits and wonder, like you did here. Mess with it, see if it fits, wonder….. your muse is my muse-talks to me.
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