Beauty Duty - Adventures in Femaleness

I am sadly lacking in personal style. Especially when it comes to all things "girly"...

My mom never really wore makeup...maybe some lipstick, some powder to keep her nose from being "shiny"... perhaps a very minimal foundation. But not the "full face" makeup that so many moms did. And in Jr. High and High School when all of the other girls were in front of the mirror for an hour before school and between every class, I wasn't allowed to OWN any makeup, let alone WEAR it. I had to BEG to get some Bonne Bell Lipsmackers (which was more a fancy chapstick than anything else). So, all of that beauty stuff pretty much passed me by. I never learned how to do it. (Didn't help that my skin was HORRIBLE from about 13-16).

So, it just never really seemed all that important to me. When I started working, I would hear women talk about it taking a couple of hours to get ready for work and I couldn't fathom why. Me, I hopped in the shower, slapped on some deodorant, whipped my hair into a pony tail and got dressed. 30 minutes if I hadn't picked my clothes out the night before (and I could do it in 10 if I had and wanted to sleep in...) I'd had a curling iron or two in my life but that usually lasted about 4 minutes because I'd manage to burn myself (oh how I envy women who learned how to NOT burn their ears using curling irons) and, for most of the time I was growing up, my Mom decided that short hair was MANDATORY for me (I got called "young man" alot until about 6th grade when the boobie fairy visited in a fairly significant way). So, when I got sent off to boarding school, my first real mission was "grow out hair".

For most of the past decade and a half, styling my hair has entailed whipping it into a pony tail... maybe a bun... I still very seldom wear makeup and when I do I just feel like it is false advertising. I have to fight from telling potential employers at job interviews "this is the only time you'll ever see me wearing makeup" because I feel like I am giving them the impression that I am somehow better looking than I really am. I have a Glamour Shots picture of myself and I've had people ask me "why don't you look like THAT every day??" Because, folks, THAT took a hair and makeup artist about 45 minutes. I have neither the skill or experience to replicate it. (The only part I've ever managed to replicate successfully was the lips. Opalescent gloss over solid lip color is sexay). Oh... I've TRIED to replicate it. And then I end up chucking the whole kitten caboodle (hot rollers, makeup kit, etc) into a dark corner of a closet somewhere and hope there is a comforting pint of Ben & Jerry's in the freezer.

I got some new hot rollers . Tried them out today. I think I need more practice. The result wasn't bad but it wasn't "OoohLALA!", either. Don't know that I would leave the house looking like this... Am interested to see if the curly bits last more than an hour or two.