Enough, but not too much
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Last night I was reading the essay Cracks in my Foundation by Marian Keyes about her love-affair with cosmetics. (And let me just digress to say: I love her writing, which is narky and smart, and, sure, chick-y, but also just hilarious and insightful.) She gave me a good bit to chew on about the pursuit of beauty, one lipstick and face cream at a time.
20+ years ago, I applied to a department store to work as a night janitor. My thinking was that I could clean at night and attend college classes during the day.
Instead, based solely on my clear Jewish/Irish skin and lack of any demonstrable cleaning skills, the hiring manager offered me a part-time job selling cosmetics for Lancôme.
When you are 18 and insecure, working at a cosmetics counter is like heaven and hell combined. I was a mess, and soon many well-groomed career cosmetic women descended on me to judge, pluck, cluck and instruct. It was ridiculously painful and overwhelming and I never did completely get the hang of things.
I actually have no idea what the process of learning personal grooming was like for other women.
I don't know if their mothers sat them down and helped them figure out what to wear or how to shave. If they were given things like razors or mascara (and then shown how to use them).
My mother was not very personal groom-y. She got her hair set once a week, and slept on a neck pillow to keep her hair in that globular shape from Friday to Friday. My sisters were 8 and 12 years older than I, so by the time I went through puberty, they were not around to instruct me on things as simple as tampon usage and as difficult as "how much is too much?"
My personal grooming lexicon consisted of randomly gathered half-clues, like glimpses of Seventeen magazine and spying on what other girls did to their faces between classes in the Junior High bathroom. And I then puzzled over all that in the family bathroom late at night using bottles of witch-hazel, leftover dull razors, dried up lipsticks found in the backs of drawers, and a deep-seated desire to fit in and not, for God's sake, go through life with an orange line of foundation around my face.
I was highly underskilled at this.
My mother's one concession to "beauty" was that she insisted I hot roll my hair starting in the 7th grade. This is mainly because puberty's other gift to me was a giant head of frizzy, schitzy, frizzy hair.
Hot rollers make my hair very Breck-girl for an hour or so before the frizz overwhelms any other temporary states. But Breck-girl hair in no way compensated for my so-awesome braces, giant glasses, giant cello, and tiny stature. It was like putting Barbie hair on a troll doll.
Also of note? At that time, I was also desperately anaemic, so standing around with hot rollers on my head at 6AM often led to fainting. However, my family always brought me around so I could sit there, sweating and miserable, while the rollers cooled on my head during early morning scripture readings.
Anyway...throughout college, I sold lipsticks and gave makeovers and passed on probably terrible beauty advice to hundreds of women. I was mocked by most of my non-cosmetic job friends, and if anyone in my more serious majors (philosophy and critical theory) learned about where I worked, I had acres of ground to cover to re-establish my classroom gravitas.
Once those days were safely behind me, I began to realize how ingrained the habits I learned during that brief time had become. I still "cleanse" my face daily. And use moisturizer. And often lipstick. I tend to let small things grow (like my pores, leg hair and eyebrows). But I think I'm fussier than my inner self-image (Rebekah Punky-Funky Cowboy) would want to admit.
What about you? Were you raised by a parent who instructed you on the vagaries of femininity? How to apply lipstick? How to avoid buying things requiring dry cleaning? How to restore your shoes to prolong their life? How to keep your hair & skin soft and supple? Because seriously, I STILL wonder if I will ever get this part of my life at the right balance of enough-but-not-too-much.
