What I Used to Know About Makeup

Now, even prior to this decision to try something “new,” I did possess a few token items in my cosmetics collection. The meagerness of it, as some of you will have figured out if you’ve read my previous posts, was actually a point of pride with me: “look how little I use to look this good” and all that.

Still, even in my most anti-makeup moments, I knew that on “special occasions,” I could wear a bit of makeup and that was fine.

I first wore eyeliner (of the black pencil description) in college. I never liked it because it irritated my eyes but I thought it made my eyes look nice and made them look less small, so I stuck with it. Every so often I would ask my friends how to put it on because it would end up being a huge smudged mess all over my eye and it generally took several attempts to get it “right.”

I first wore mascara halfway through college. I swiped some on and hated it; my eyelashes would cause the mascara to smear onto the skin under my eyes and also made my short lashes look clumpy and awful.

I owned loose powders that I just brushed all over my face (the makeup savvy among you will cringe at the thought) and I used to wear a smear of dark eyeshadow (usually blue) on my eye.

The only makeup brush I owned was a powder brush that came with the loose powder, and the sponge applicators that came with the eyeshadow.

That was all and everything I had prior to this metamorphosis. I only ever wore this stuff to go out at night or to parties but even then I was pretty lax with it… because when I looked in the mirror after putting that stuff on, I didn’t think it did much for me. So I put it on because I thought I should, because wearing makeup and looking a little “better” was surely what was expected.

I began to get frustrated. Why wasn’t I looking as hot as my friends or other girls when I had makeup on?

Every friend that I ever asked to help me out would answer me, at some point, by saying “Aw Viv, you don’t need any makeup.” I cringed when I heard this because what I was hearing was an insincere, prepackaged compliment that was meant to overshadow my curiosity rather than sake it.

(It is only now, some years after the last time I was told this, that I realize that compliment was genuine at least in part because back then, I was lucky enough to have amazing skin.)

Of course, now that I’ve done at least some research and experimentation, I’ve figured out that my problem was in fact that I had no freakin’ idea what I was doing.

Loose powder, I learned recently, is actually used on top of makeup to set it and help it last all day… wearing it by itself may even out your skintone (by making it a shade or two lighter than you actually are) but more often than not it will wear off within a few hours (usually in patches) and make you look kinda, well, weird. Eyeshadow is far more delicate an affair than rubbing a dark color all over your eyelid, and a mascara and eyeliner were not meant to be applied the way I was applying it

So if you’ve ever felt completely lost in a sea of pencils, brushes, powders, creams, gels, liquids, and inks, do join me as I recount my journey thus far and make note of some awesome people who have helped me along the way.