L’Oreality

You know what makes me feel super inadequate? Well…in addition to the laundry list of other things that make me feel inadequate, including, but not limited to: moms who print photo books, marathoners, forty-ish moms with flat stomachs (I’m looking at you K-Wag), the lady who just told me she pulls out her stove and fridge and cleans behind them every two weeks, and people who don’t eat carbs. But today I’m going to focus on makeup tutorials. YouTube makeup tutorials actually make me anxious. Makeup tutorials say, “you, too, can be beautiful and shave 10 years off your face if you have three hours, a steady hand, $332 worth of makeup and a collection of rare make up brushes made with the fur from the underbelly of a wolverine”. 

Except here’s the problem: I don’t have any of those things. There is indeed a steep price for having a perfectly made up face. I do wear makeup, okay? And some of it does come from exclusive make up stores. I am not a gal who is going for the completely au naturale look, by any means. I’ve lived in Florida most of my life and I am 40 years old. That equates to wrinkles and spots and tired face. This mess needs covering. But there is just a limit to the amount of time, money, and energy I am willing to devote to a camouflaging routine every day. So when I watch these videos in which a woman (or a man) is using scotch tape stuck to her skin in order to make the angle of her eye shadow look magazine beautiful (and it is), I’m out, dude. OUT. 

I mean first of all, who has time for this? Am I the only person who doesn’t have a full hour to spend in front of a makeup mirror to put on her face every morning? Those are precious minutes I can be SLEEPING, guys. Sleep trumps makeup any day of the week. Sleep is nature’s makeup. I don’t have time for carving out cheekbones or drawing tribal art on portions of my face to shrink my nose or whatever because basically, I love sleep too much to care about my wide nose. And also, who in God’s name wants to look at herself under those cruel fluorescent lights and horrifying magnification? I’ll pass. My five minute routine which sometimes involves applying makeup with my fingers is a solid C effort. And as my friend AK recently reminded me, C’s get degrees, y’all. 

Which brings me to the tools. The tools are what give me the shakes. When I see the lady in the video with all the bulbs and sponges for all the different makeup products, I cock my head to the side like a confused puppy. And the brushes?!? Oh my gosh the brushes are the worst part. They have NUMBERS and LETTERS like some sort of nuclear codes. Here’s how many brushes I own: four. They don’t need Dewey Decimal call numbers for me to keep track of them. They have two categories. The ones I had before I was a mother and the ones I got after I became a mother (okay I’m kind of exaggerating here, but not that much). There’s the one purple eye shadow brush that’s leftover from a set of brushes my dad–MY DAD–bought me on the low on hand shelf at Sam’s Club. And there are three stragglers from a Target set I purchased myself. And now that I think about it, I also have a few of those tiny little sponge applicators laying around that came with the actual makeup. I sometimes even use those. It’s totally embarrassing but if it can’t get done with the above supplies, it ain’t getting done. Contouring is not something on which I can waste my life. I have plenty of other things for life wasting. I know you’re judging me. Have at it. You don’t even know me.
Not to mention, the cost of making yourself up like this has to be up there with, like, building an aircraft carrier. I do not consider myself an especially thrifty person by any stretch of the imagination (much to my husband’s dismay). But there are a million other ways I want to spend my dinero. Three different concealer colors at $25 a pop (is my face spotted or something?? Why all the different shades?) an eye shadow palette with six colors I won’t touch at $50 (does anyone actually use the olive green?) and primer at another $50 (what in he name of Avon is that really for anyway?). All that adds up to a pair of TB sandals, people. And TB sandals stay on my feet alllllllll day long without reapplication. The spongy concealer twister contraption that may or may not be the right shade for my face–purchased from CVS the day I sprouted a bright red zit–will have to do. I DO own some fancy lipsticks. I bought them in 2011 when my sister got married. They are not yet empty. You do the math. 
The bottom line is that after watching one of these makeup tutorials, I am super self conscious about my makeup and method of application. It pretty much makes me feel like my own makeup application bears a striking resemblance to a Barbie bust’s (you know the one, 80’s girls) plastic face made up with Claire’s makeup and applied with my three year old nephew’s fingers. Translation: Miss Hannigan sheik. 

Whatever. Maybe I wasn’t born with it. 

**If you ARE a makeup expert/tutorial maker, to you I say bravo! Your face is most definitely superior to mine and I would love to have you transform my face someday. But I’m kind of a lost cause when it comes to doing it myself. It’s too overwhelming. More power to you.