Make up and moi

Had a girly discussion about make up and how, on the best of days, discovering the right shade of lipstick makes me feel I hit the jackpot in the national lottery, and how knowing that I am out, exposed to the world without even a slick of gloss to shield me from cruel comments about how the dead are up and walking, makes me want to curl up and die, without the courtesy of leaving a suicide note behind to ladle on eternal guilt to the one I leave behind who will undoubtedly turn cartwheels in delight and begin pulling out little black books of forgotten one night stand numbers.

What is it about me and lipstick that makes me recoil violently from my barefaced morning dog breath face when I glimpse it unlipsticked and puffy eyed the first thing I awake. I have now come to the matronly stage in my life when I do know and understand that I have to put on my face to look human, and not like some mangled rodent remains the cat dragged in as offering to her human. And I am okay with that. I worry about the panic that sets in if I fear I have been spotted in a public situation without said face. You know. With lipstick off. With face ashine with liters of oil pouring out of them geysers on the nose they call pores. Pours would have been more appropriate. But never mind.

Once upon a time I lived barefaced. That was when I had not got into training bras. Like them bras, once I slathered on my first slash of colour on the lips, and outlined them eyes with kohl, I never went back. Make up is a definator of womanhood. A rite of passage. A declaration to the world that your childhood is now behind you and you are now a woman and out there to attract them stares from pimply gangly youth who are, in these hedonistic times, busy kidnapping each other and killing friends for ransom money. I came of age in more innocent times, when one could stare longingly at crushes and objects of interest without any risk of being kidnapped, molested or worse. And one could step out in public with bright orange lipstick without being laughed off the planet. Yup, guilty as charged. But then the skin was young and the eyes were bright, and orange lipstick didnt actually look as terrible as it would now.

Today, I must leave the house with eyes outlined, tinted sunblock in place and lips slicked over with either lipstick or gloss. Or I might as well have stepped out butt naked. I hate this dependence on cosmetics. I wish I had the courage to move out of the house with my skin bare, and no artificial pigment touching said skin. Having said that, I have moved from a situation when I sat at home all day with my contact lenses in, to a current dog laziness about putting in them eyes, and moving out and about with them soda bottle glasses and pretending that one is deliberately patronising the intellectual look on days when I havent had the chance to run the damn comb through my hair. Yup. That doesnt seem to make much of a difference, running said comb through the hair, but a slick of lipstick does immediately lift up the face, add some colour and drag one back, by above mentioned uncombed hair, back from the realm of the undead. Leave me on a desert island with a Woman Friday to fish and cook for me and a crate of sunblock and lipstick, and I would die happy. Throw in some eyeliner and some nail polish and I would die a good looking corpse too!

What is your relationship with make up?