As I wrote before, recently I've been hanging out a lot in New York City. I've spent most of my time here confirming that I have exceptionally heinous seasonal affective disorder (Mom and Dad, ironically you did me no favors by raising me in Malibu), but in my spare time I have also taken a sudden interest in beauty products.
It's hard to explain why this has happened, except for the fact that I suddenly realized that I'm not cool. At least not by New York standards. I'm not sure why it took me 26 years to figure this out; the evidence has always been there. Looking back at pictures of me in high school, you could describe my style as "Rocket Power meets John Adams as a Catholic schoolgirl."
Translated, I exclusively wore surf brand clothing and had a very short haircut that I insisted in pulling into a tiny ponytail wherein most of the hair didn't actually stay in the ponytail. And I felt great about it.
As I've gotten older my "style" has "matured", as one of the fashion bloggers who lives in a minimalist loft and exclusively wears beige might say. On my better days, I've kind of got an 80's Ralph Lauren thing going. The rest of the time, we're lucky if I put on pants.
What's awesome is that I've never really felt badly about that - until New York. Everyone here looks cool even when it's 2 AM and -15 F outside, which is when I'm rocking my "Lumberjack joined Pi Phi" ensemble.
Everyone sort of wears a uniform. Like all the girls have on very bright lipstick (a "matte red lip with orange undertones", I now know) and very high boots. They rarely wear clothes that aren't black (bye bye green puffy vest) and seem to wear rings on all their fingers, even on parts of their fingers I've never thought to wear rings. Don't they worry about them falling off?
Because I'm sort of poor and can't do a wardrobe overhaul, I thought I'd start with beauty products. My philosophy with makeup has always been: wear whatever my mom buys me. But I'm in my mid-twenties now, so it felt like time to grow up.
Whenever I start to get interested in something, there's a chance I develop an obsession for learning all about it. This was no exception. The problem was I had no idea what I'd gotten myself into.
For example, things I thought I could do to my skin: moisturize it, maybe sunscreen it, put on makeup. Things I now know about that I could be doing to my skin: moisturizing, masking, exfoliating, priming, de-blemishing, bronzing, plumping, night cream-ing, contouring and then about a billion strictly makeup products that I'm not totally clear on the purpose of. I read every blog and magazine I could get my hands on. I even went and subjected myself to those women who leer at you from the makeup counters at Nordstrom and then try to spray things in your direction (YOU'LL LIKE IT). I understand that for most women this doesn't sound novel, but for me it was like discovering marine biology all over again, but with less dolphins and more removal of body hair (P.S. speaking of, the greatest discovery I made in all of this was the furry little mustache that had totally escaped my notice for the previous 26 years of my life. Thanks woman at the Bobbi Brown makeup counter! You've created an obsessive new insecurity that I will have for the rest of my days).
It kind of all got too overwhelming after awhile, so: I bought a red lipstick. I marched into Sephora, demanded help, and then bought some Nars number that seemed pretty fancy when the lady smeared it on the back of her hand (why do they do that? I must have less advanced powers of visualization than everyone else because it doesn't help me).
I "wore" my red lipstick that night on a dinner date with the Boyfriend. I hate those cliche anecdotes about people who get a makeover and then their significant other disapproves in a supportively-nuanced way. It's like a weird humblebrag: they love me even though I've spent the latter 90% of our relationship making zero effort towards keeping up my personal appearance! First of all, this wasn't really a makeover, second, I shower, and third, I'm not bragging - but I'm bragging - the Boyfriend thinks I look bangin' even when I'm in athletic shorts and a t-shirt that was his when he was ten and chubby. He might even prefer that to a "glam" evening look, which is sort of an odd form of narcissism (it just took me about five minutes to get the "c's" and "s's" right in that word). This is a long way of saying: he was severely unimpressed by my attempts at being sophisticated. He gave helpful feedback though ("it's very red").
I tried other stuff too: YLBB ("your lip - but better!") glosses, volumizing (which Spellcheck is snottily informing me isn't a word, so f--- you L'Oreal) mascara, dusty rose shadows. Maybe the low-point was when I bought a liquid eyeliner in jet black. I love to paint, so I thought I would have crazy skillz in applying the liner over my lids. Instead I poked myself in the eye like eight times drawing a line that would embarrass most second graders, then watched on repeat a Vogue video of Alexa Chung demonstrating her method for drawing "cat eyes" where she keeps saying in this super posh voice "I like to draw the FLICK fuuuhhst." Maybe it's my lack of British accent, but my eyes looked less like sexy cats and more like the printer cartridge exploded.
I started reading this one online mag because it seemed more intelligently written than the rest, although still at times confusing (in the space of one month, red lipstick, brown lipstick, and purple lipstick were declared the IT look of the moment - fashion truly is mercurial). Even when I followed all their advice I ended up with a version of me that was moderately terrifying.
Eventually I decided maybe "beauty" as in "beauty products" are something you kind of work into. So I bought a few new things that will potentially revolutionize my life, and then reordered the stuff I know works because I hadn't done that since maybe high school which I'm guessing is breaking health codes somewhere.
Something neat that beauty companies do is throw in little samples if you order a product from them (things I never knew). I had ordered a blush/bronzer duo from a large beauty company whose name I shall not reveal except to say that it rhymes with "Mephora" and a package particularly laden with samples arrived. First, I threw away all the perfumes because they make me nauseous and I hate them. Then, I tried on all the lip glosses and had to throw them away because they make me look like I wandered around Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and randomly stuck my face into the goobery stuff. The only sample left was a face mask treatment also from a company I won't name.
I read the description on the product and it promised some pretty fabulous things.
I was hit by a burning sensation. Not the pleasant tingly kind. Surprisingly, this wasn't one of the selling points included on the package. "Hey," I thought, "this is supposed to be happening - all the dead stuff is being cleared out!". Maybe this was "exfoliating." Two seconds later I started to doubt the validity of that thought.
Then the pain level kicked up about 14 notches, so I ran to consult the modern equivalent of 911 - the medical google search.
Answer: don't google stupid things.
Next I typed in the name of the product. The first link was a thread of reviews on a beauty forum. Here is the first post I read:
The mask had been on my face all of 30 seconds. I should qualify that through nothing I have done other than sheer genetic luck, I have pretty nice skin. I don't get acne, it's kind of all the same color, it doesn't get dry. There are many lotteries in life I haven't won (see: height), but this is one of them. So, I went from having pretty passable skin, to painful red splotches all over my cheeks. I'm not joking about the painful part. It's like zits except if they were created by fire ants with oversized cuspids.
The next morning I woke up with swollen eyes, dark circles, and chemical burns. I kind of looked like Bilbo in that scene from the Fellowship of the Rings where, after having been this spry little guy for the beginning of the movie, it looks like someone put him in an oven and baked him.
I was supposed to meet a friend to get manicures (more fun beauty adventures) later that morning. I pulled out my BB cream (I totally forgot what that stands for but it was sold to me by an esthetician as a substitute after I made her take off every bit of foundation she had caked on my face because I thought I was suffocating). I applied it gently to the blemishes and:
So there it was. I went looking for brilliance and instead got uncoverable destruction. Thanks face mask for doing exactly the opposite of what you advertised you would do! Next time I'll just go straight for the Clorox and we can work some real magic.
At that point I decided there was no saving it. I deserved the state I was in as a lesson for my vanity. To further my martyrdom, I put on probably the ugliest outfit I own. Actually, the ugliest piece of clothing I own (harem pants that I bought from Forever 21 because what else do you buy there), guaranteed to ruin any ensemble. I think my friend was worried.
I had a lot of time for self reflection over the next three days in between reapplying scentless Aveeno body lotion to my cheeks. What I decided was that there was a lesson in all this frivolousness. It's cool to care about what you look like, because presentation and perception are important. I can even sort of buy the argument that fashion is about art, or reinforcing an identity, or building confidence.
I have an almost concerning obsession with clouds (this is all going to tie back together, I promise). I've spent whole days sitting on the shore of my favorite lake in Montana watching clouds march from the mountain range behind me over the lake to the range on the eastern shore. The mountains and water create some instabilities that produce incredible cloud formations: lenticular clouds that often get mistaken for flying saucers, mammatus clouds that totally look like boobs, and my favorite, the cumulonimbus.
You know what I don't care about when I'm cloudwatching? That's right: under-eye bags, whether or not my illuminator has been correctly applied, and what the hell is dry shampoo. I can't really judge anyone who makes beauty products and fashion their life, because who knows what it's all about anyway. All I'm saying is that sometimes it is important to expand your perspective. Maybe I wish, in my bleeding heart of bleeding hearts, that girls spent less time reading Seventeen and more time cloudspotting. The image anxiety that inspired my tragic face mask might have been averted had I had a little perspective in that moment on what beauty really is. Maybe there is also something to be said for the places we choose to live having as much to do with our aesthetic self esteem as the eye creams we use.
To end this on a less preachy note, I sent a mature and articulate note to the company that so kindly provided me with free chemical burns that didn't include ravings about clouds (because then they definitely would have deleted it).
They were nice enough to apologize, offer advice about testing products on a sample of your skin before going balls to the wall (oh hey...), and throw in some free "Beauty Points" that I can redeem for more stuff to burn my face off. All in all, I can't say I'm holding a grudge, but I'm now on a strictly "natural products" binge, which is why I'm sitting here covered in coconut oil. Which as it turns out tastes pretty good, too.
It's hard to explain why this has happened, except for the fact that I suddenly realized that I'm not cool. At least not by New York standards. I'm not sure why it took me 26 years to figure this out; the evidence has always been there. Looking back at pictures of me in high school, you could describe my style as "Rocket Power meets John Adams as a Catholic schoolgirl."
Translated, I exclusively wore surf brand clothing and had a very short haircut that I insisted in pulling into a tiny ponytail wherein most of the hair didn't actually stay in the ponytail. And I felt great about it.
As I've gotten older my "style" has "matured", as one of the fashion bloggers who lives in a minimalist loft and exclusively wears beige might say. On my better days, I've kind of got an 80's Ralph Lauren thing going. The rest of the time, we're lucky if I put on pants.
What's awesome is that I've never really felt badly about that - until New York. Everyone here looks cool even when it's 2 AM and -15 F outside, which is when I'm rocking my "Lumberjack joined Pi Phi" ensemble.
Everyone sort of wears a uniform. Like all the girls have on very bright lipstick (a "matte red lip with orange undertones", I now know) and very high boots. They rarely wear clothes that aren't black (bye bye green puffy vest) and seem to wear rings on all their fingers, even on parts of their fingers I've never thought to wear rings. Don't they worry about them falling off?
Because I'm sort of poor and can't do a wardrobe overhaul, I thought I'd start with beauty products. My philosophy with makeup has always been: wear whatever my mom buys me. But I'm in my mid-twenties now, so it felt like time to grow up.
Whenever I start to get interested in something, there's a chance I develop an obsession for learning all about it. This was no exception. The problem was I had no idea what I'd gotten myself into.
For example, things I thought I could do to my skin: moisturize it, maybe sunscreen it, put on makeup. Things I now know about that I could be doing to my skin: moisturizing, masking, exfoliating, priming, de-blemishing, bronzing, plumping, night cream-ing, contouring and then about a billion strictly makeup products that I'm not totally clear on the purpose of. I read every blog and magazine I could get my hands on. I even went and subjected myself to those women who leer at you from the makeup counters at Nordstrom and then try to spray things in your direction (YOU'LL LIKE IT). I understand that for most women this doesn't sound novel, but for me it was like discovering marine biology all over again, but with less dolphins and more removal of body hair (P.S. speaking of, the greatest discovery I made in all of this was the furry little mustache that had totally escaped my notice for the previous 26 years of my life. Thanks woman at the Bobbi Brown makeup counter! You've created an obsessive new insecurity that I will have for the rest of my days).
It kind of all got too overwhelming after awhile, so: I bought a red lipstick. I marched into Sephora, demanded help, and then bought some Nars number that seemed pretty fancy when the lady smeared it on the back of her hand (why do they do that? I must have less advanced powers of visualization than everyone else because it doesn't help me).
I "wore" my red lipstick that night on a dinner date with the Boyfriend. I hate those cliche anecdotes about people who get a makeover and then their significant other disapproves in a supportively-nuanced way. It's like a weird humblebrag: they love me even though I've spent the latter 90% of our relationship making zero effort towards keeping up my personal appearance! First of all, this wasn't really a makeover, second, I shower, and third, I'm not bragging - but I'm bragging - the Boyfriend thinks I look bangin' even when I'm in athletic shorts and a t-shirt that was his when he was ten and chubby. He might even prefer that to a "glam" evening look, which is sort of an odd form of narcissism (it just took me about five minutes to get the "c's" and "s's" right in that word). This is a long way of saying: he was severely unimpressed by my attempts at being sophisticated. He gave helpful feedback though ("it's very red").
I tried other stuff too: YLBB ("your lip - but better!") glosses, volumizing (which Spellcheck is snottily informing me isn't a word, so f--- you L'Oreal) mascara, dusty rose shadows. Maybe the low-point was when I bought a liquid eyeliner in jet black. I love to paint, so I thought I would have crazy skillz in applying the liner over my lids. Instead I poked myself in the eye like eight times drawing a line that would embarrass most second graders, then watched on repeat a Vogue video of Alexa Chung demonstrating her method for drawing "cat eyes" where she keeps saying in this super posh voice "I like to draw the FLICK fuuuhhst." Maybe it's my lack of British accent, but my eyes looked less like sexy cats and more like the printer cartridge exploded.
I started reading this one online mag because it seemed more intelligently written than the rest, although still at times confusing (in the space of one month, red lipstick, brown lipstick, and purple lipstick were declared the IT look of the moment - fashion truly is mercurial). Even when I followed all their advice I ended up with a version of me that was moderately terrifying.
Eventually I decided maybe "beauty" as in "beauty products" are something you kind of work into. So I bought a few new things that will potentially revolutionize my life, and then reordered the stuff I know works because I hadn't done that since maybe high school which I'm guessing is breaking health codes somewhere.
Something neat that beauty companies do is throw in little samples if you order a product from them (things I never knew). I had ordered a blush/bronzer duo from a large beauty company whose name I shall not reveal except to say that it rhymes with "Mephora" and a package particularly laden with samples arrived. First, I threw away all the perfumes because they make me nauseous and I hate them. Then, I tried on all the lip glosses and had to throw them away because they make me look like I wandered around Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and randomly stuck my face into the goobery stuff. The only sample left was a face mask treatment also from a company I won't name.
I read the description on the product and it promised some pretty fabulous things.
(The last one there was more implied than explicitly stated - but that's the whole purpose, right?).
Being a dipshit, I decided to rub it all over my face.
I was hit by a burning sensation. Not the pleasant tingly kind. Surprisingly, this wasn't one of the selling points included on the package. "Hey," I thought, "this is supposed to be happening - all the dead stuff is being cleared out!". Maybe this was "exfoliating." Two seconds later I started to doubt the validity of that thought.
Then the pain level kicked up about 14 notches, so I ran to consult the modern equivalent of 911 - the medical google search.
Answer: don't google stupid things.
Next I typed in the name of the product. The first link was a thread of reviews on a beauty forum. Here is the first post I read:
The mask had been on my face all of 30 seconds. I should qualify that through nothing I have done other than sheer genetic luck, I have pretty nice skin. I don't get acne, it's kind of all the same color, it doesn't get dry. There are many lotteries in life I haven't won (see: height), but this is one of them. So, I went from having pretty passable skin, to painful red splotches all over my cheeks. I'm not joking about the painful part. It's like zits except if they were created by fire ants with oversized cuspids.
The next morning I woke up with swollen eyes, dark circles, and chemical burns. I kind of looked like Bilbo in that scene from the Fellowship of the Rings where, after having been this spry little guy for the beginning of the movie, it looks like someone put him in an oven and baked him.
I was supposed to meet a friend to get manicures (more fun beauty adventures) later that morning. I pulled out my BB cream (I totally forgot what that stands for but it was sold to me by an esthetician as a substitute after I made her take off every bit of foundation she had caked on my face because I thought I was suffocating). I applied it gently to the blemishes and:
So there it was. I went looking for brilliance and instead got uncoverable destruction. Thanks face mask for doing exactly the opposite of what you advertised you would do! Next time I'll just go straight for the Clorox and we can work some real magic.
At that point I decided there was no saving it. I deserved the state I was in as a lesson for my vanity. To further my martyrdom, I put on probably the ugliest outfit I own. Actually, the ugliest piece of clothing I own (harem pants that I bought from Forever 21 because what else do you buy there), guaranteed to ruin any ensemble. I think my friend was worried.
I had a lot of time for self reflection over the next three days in between reapplying scentless Aveeno body lotion to my cheeks. What I decided was that there was a lesson in all this frivolousness. It's cool to care about what you look like, because presentation and perception are important. I can even sort of buy the argument that fashion is about art, or reinforcing an identity, or building confidence.
I have an almost concerning obsession with clouds (this is all going to tie back together, I promise). I've spent whole days sitting on the shore of my favorite lake in Montana watching clouds march from the mountain range behind me over the lake to the range on the eastern shore. The mountains and water create some instabilities that produce incredible cloud formations: lenticular clouds that often get mistaken for flying saucers, mammatus clouds that totally look like boobs, and my favorite, the cumulonimbus.
To end this on a less preachy note, I sent a mature and articulate note to the company that so kindly provided me with free chemical burns that didn't include ravings about clouds (because then they definitely would have deleted it).
