When Beauty Gets Ugly: "Makeup Messes"

 

One thing about working with the public is—they never cease to surprise and amaze. It seems as if every week I have a new story to tell about a person who did/wore/said something crazy. Each and every time, I laugh or remark on it. And I file it away. As a writer, I love to catalog the people I meet—especially the remarkable ones. You never know when you may need to mix and match those personality quirks for a good story or side character.

And man, do I have a lot.

I still remember my first ‘huh’ moment in cosmetics. I was trying to find a lipstick for an almost fortyish woman (Man, it always comes down to a lipstick, doesn’t it?), when she asked me if I had a color that would match her hair. I’m pretty sure I just stared at her, trying to figure out exactly what she meant by that. Was she saying she wanted it to compliment her hair? I mean, she wasn’t actually asking for an ashy brown/streaky blonde colored lipstick, was she?

I hesitated, taking a moment to scan my color wheel. Still unsure, I plucked out a beige nude lip color and held it out to her. My eyes jumped back and forth from her face to the tube. I was anxious over how she’d react to my pick. She lifted a brow, staring me down. She did not look amused. Then she grabbed the tube and held it up to her short, choppy locks.

“Does this look like it matches?” she asked me.

I couldn’t help picturing her lips covered with tiger stripes of blonde and brown color. The answer was nope, it sure didn’t. So I did the only thing my newbie brain could think of—I passed her off to a different makeup line.

We’ve all had our moments of ‘huh’ and ‘isn’t that person interesting’, haven’t we? I mean, we’ve all seen the women who’ve had way too much plastic surgery—you know, the ones who resemble the alien sketches shown on Unsolved Mysteries. And we’ve all seen the women who look like they never wash off their makeup. Yeah, some of them actually admit to just adding more makeup overtop yesterday’s worn and crusty color.

(This is where I take a moment to cringe)

We’ve all seen these people. They’re remarkable, sure, but still more commonplace. Yet every now and again, I’m confronted with someone who stands utterly alone and unique. Someone who, even though I consider myself a creator of fiction, I would never have believed if I hadn’t actually seen them with my own eyes. Like the woman I talked about in my Crazy People blog post. Anyone who’s read it knows exactly which one I’m talking about. For those of you who don’t, take a moment to read it.

And just like the mantra says—you never forget your first.

I’ll never forget the night I saw my first. This woman I can still visualize entirely and with perfect clarity to this day—that was how impactful she was. It all started with me helping her husband. The man was closing in on eighty (and I think I’m being a little generous here), and wanting some bath products for himself and his wife—who was standing with her back to me, looking at lipsticks across the aisle (See? It really is always about lipstick). My first thought was, Oh, you dirty, dirty old bird, you. His wife had blonde, curly hair that flowed all the way to her hips. And she was tall, thanks to the knee-high, shiny leather boots with four-inch heels she wore. Layered under them was the fishnet stockings (I know, such a cliché) covered, barely, by a black leather mini skirt.

I was amused—and certainly a little grossed out—when something very unexpected happened. She turned around.

I have no idea what my face did at that moment, but I’m sure it wasn’t pretty.

The woman blasted me with a brutal vision of heavily lined, sagging sallow skin—except for the area at her temples where she’d used industrial strength tape to tug back her flesh. The effect it had on her eyes was more than just unnerving. It was terrifying. Because there was so much loose skin, the taping had pulled the corners of her eyes far beyond the yellowing whites, leaving an elongated triangle of shiny, puffy red flesh for all to see—which she’d graciously highlighted with a thick chunk of uneven, black liquid liner. Her ancient blue eyes were cloudy with age, yet still they managed to pierce the comfy layers of my brain.

But worst of all for me, worse than even the eyes, was when she ran the pink lipstick she held back and forth over her mouth. Peeling skin, still stubbornly attached to her dry chapped lips, flicked back and forth, up and over, as she drove the lipstick again and again. I could see vestiges of an old dried out coral layered under them. The eighty year old woman, dressed like a twenty year old rocker chick, then handed the lipstick over.

“And this one,” she said.

A piece of the woman’s dried skin had managed to escape her, hitching a ride on the soon-to-be disposed of lipstick tester.

Like I said, I can only imagine what my face must have looked like.

Who says life isn’t still full of surprises? Probably someone who doesn’t work face to face with the public, I say.

Cheers to you all, and happy shopping!!

 

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And thank you all for taking the time to rant with me;)