Makeup

Prologue

For many people, putting on makeup is an essential life skill. I’ve seen a few girls come to school with makeup on and some of my classmates even do it as an art form, so sometimes I’d feel a little conscious being around them cuz I’d feel like greasy crap.

(Thinking about that time when I was trying to look at some girl’s makeup but I was sitting on the other side of the room. Our eyes met but I forgot that that isn’t normal so I continued staring which probably made her feel odd.)

I’ve recently had a lot of school events that needed me to look my best back to back. Neither my mom and I knew how to put on makeup, and we weren’t willing to spend a couple thousand for a real makeup artist. We ended up consulting a salon that my mom has been very loyal to. We thought we’d be fine cuz we’ve known the salon ever since I was tiny but nope.

I knew I should’ve trusted my guts when I learned the owner who was an old lady was doing my makeup. I wasn’t trying to be ageist but she really gave off that feeling that her techniques are going to be very dated. When she started to smear foundation powder all over my face with a sponge like my mom would, I knew I was right. But I still didn’t listen to myself. Overall, the way she put on makeup for me was really lazy. She kept saying trust the process which I did because I’m a complete beginner, and no way this lady who owns a whole salon is bad at makeup, right? Wrong. Halfway through I was looking more and more uneasy and I would frequently call my mom over to look at me (secret code for “tell her it looks like shit” but my mom was a beginner too, so she just did that forced half smile cuz she doesn’t know what to say). We spent like 40 minutes on false eyelashes, taking it off and putting it on because there would always be a very obvious gap between the falsies and my real eyelashes. My mom got fed up eventually and told her not to put on falsies anymore. She couldn’t even put lipstick on me. It look like a child did it. I sat there for like 3 hours and in the end I looked like a raccoon trying to dress up (negative). I could even tell that the old lady just wanted to be done with it because she also knew I looked like shit. She even had the guts to say “it’ll be 1100” to my mom at the desk. I cried an hour before picture taking lol.

Me and my mom were both pissed. So she said next week we’d buy makeup so I could learn to do it myself. When prom came, she did my hair (her first time ever using a curling iron) and I did my makeup and things went well. (She was stressed and was trying to do my makeup the day before prom cuz she didn’t trust me. Of course it looked like shit lol, she’s old.)

Since makeup is really expensive, I had to promise that I’ll learn, and that I’d put on makeup everyday for school. Fine by me.

When my mom and I bought makeup, we put our complete trust on the salesladies at the drugstore. Obviously that was a pretty stupid thing to do. I was just not there there. I’d ask stuff like “what does primer do”, “why do I need foundation powder if I already have liquid foundation”, “what’s the difference between primer and setting spray” and they would return pretty vague answers but I just shrugged it off. I don’t want to regret anymore, but I don’t like how successful they probably felt after we purchased a few thousands worth of makeup. I still feel the regret, but I try to not let it linger that way.