The Best Eyebrows in the Business

When I was in junior high my friend Hailey decided to give me a makeover right down to plucking my eyebrows. Three plucks into it I pushed her hand away and said get away from me right now. People say beauty is pain. If it is then I would rather not be beautiful because I do not do pointless pain. From that day on I was decided that I did not care what was trendy. I liked my eyebrows the way they were and they could stay whether or not they were giant caterpillars hanging out over my eyes. And for a while I got made fun of by various people for the fact that I did not pluck my eyebrows (young girls can be cruel). My eyebrows were not badly shaped just kind of thick and in the late 90’s and early 2000’s eyebrows were supposed to be sculpted and thin.

I only tell that story because last night I was watching TV (it’s wild card weekend, according to my dad it is the best weekend of football in the whole year) and a make-up commercial came on. The commercial was for some sort of product that makes your eyebrows look thicker. THICKER! I hope you will all forgive me for the confusion that I feel when it comes to celebrating thicker eyebrows but in my short life (no, in the short period of time between me being old enough to wear make-up and now) culture has shifted from wanting almost no eyebrows at all to celebrating woman with thick eyebrows as a thing of beauty. In searching for the product I saw advertised I found a beauty blog explaining how to get thicker eyebrows.

Thicker darker eyebrows are now desired. Something that I, oddly enough, was teased for as a young teenager. Our ideas of beauty are so arbitrary that it actually hurts my brain. It hurts my brain even more to think about how quickly those standards can change. Sure, the day Hailey tried to pluck my eyebrows was probably in 2002 or 2003 (which would be more than 10 years ago) but when you think about the entire history of the world that span of time is nothing. 100 years is a blink of an eye to an elf.

15 years ago my ideas of beauty were being formed as well as my ideas of what other people thought were the epitome of beauty. So last January my friend Erin taught me how to do my make up. While were at the store I turned to her and said “I’ll do whatever you say but I am not going to mess with my eyebrows. I like my eyebrows just the way they are,” and I was surprised to hear her compliment them. She told me that she liked my eyebrows, they were nice and full. What? I thought that thin, neatly plucked eyebrows were still the standard and that people hated my eyebrows. The standard of beauty changed so fast that it gave me make-up whiplash. It really did.

I don’t really know what I’m saying or trying to say about the world. I’m just confused by the whole world and by our standards of beauty. I’m just pleased that I like the way I look no matter what society tells me and wish that we lived in a world where no one else thought they had the right to dictate what makes me or anyone else feel beautiful.

Just a thought.

I am a total dead loss as a woman

I have noticed recently that my lip gloss does not have an expiration date. However I have also noticed that my tube of lip gloss does not work, taste, shine the same way it did when I first bought it 4 years ago. That is why I started checking for the expiration date to begin with (I am wary of putting things in/on my mouth that have gone bad). This experience has made me aware of 2 things. 1) Most lip glosses do not have an expiration date. 2) They don’t have an expiration date because no one expects you to keep track of, let alone use, the same tube of lip gloss, or chap stick, for nearly 5 years. I’m probably right about both of those.

Obviously the people who came to these conclusions have never met me. I put on lip gloss or chapstick once every 8 days or so and then immediately put it back in the same pocket of my purse. I don’t wear a lot of make up. I like to rub my eyes, sometimes they get itchy. When I wear lip gloss my hair get stuck in it. It is so NOT super hero (which is my goal in life, I just don’t know where to find a vat of toxic waste). So I just never really wear make up and that is why my lip gloss is somewhere between 4 and 5 years old and probably expired. 

I am 24, nearly 25 and I have no idea how to do my own make-up. For years it was okay that I had no idea how to do my own make-up because most of my friends were theater majors and if I went to a party and needed some make up for my look either Isabel or Alyssa would usually do it for me.

 

For example. This entire outfit, hair, make-up, etc was the product of everyone who went to the Rocky Horror Picture Show but me. I simply stood there and let my friends dress me up (one of the benefits of being the size of a doll).

 

All the people in the above picture are great and exactly the reason that in college I never needed to have any particular skill or sense when it came to fashion and make-up.

Unfortunately I am no longer in college (and haven’t been for a while) and all those awesome people live quite far away from me. I can’t just text someone a picture of my outfit in the morning and ask if I look like a functioning adult. I might have to leave for work before they respond. And I certainly don’t know how to get them to do my make-up for a party over Skype, someday technology might advance that far but not today. So yesterday my friend Erin, who is also incredible and a hairstylist, sat me down and taught me how to do my make-up (now when I go to the theater and comic-con I can at least pretend to be able to function).

Turns out, I am a total dead loss as a  woman. By the end of the evening I had eye liner smeared all over my eye and hands and none of it was ending up where it was supposed to. When I’m not naturally good at something 1 of 2 things happens. I either get extremely hostile (something I’m trying not to be 15% less in 2014) or I turn it into a big joke and don’t take it seriously.

It is okay though, I don’t wear make-up very often anyway and I already sort of was a dead loss as a woman, I’m a terrible cook, I’m always armed, and dresses don’t have pockets so I don’t wear them… ever. Instead I’ll just go ahead and watch Gladiator again and beat people up. That’s more fun anyway.