They tend to go out on the town in pairs, I’ve noticed: the conventionally pretty one, all dolled up and shining, and her average-looking friend, who’s barely had time to do her hair. The pretty one, I have a hunch, is generally the instigator. With the plainer one by her side, she thinks she’ll look even more dazzling than usual. And the plainer one goes along with the idea because she wants to bask in her friend’s glow—or maybe because she just doesn’t get out much. I don’t know. I do know, however, that when I spot them and manage to push in beside them at the bar, I often feel sorry for the pretty one.
Because she’s about to learn she’s not the pretty one.
“What are you girls drinking?”
The pretty one answers for both of them in most cases. Hers is the dominant personality, and her heels are higher, too. The plainer one (the supposedly plainer one) isn’t wearing heels. They hurt her feet, and she’s not afraid to say so because she has no image to preserve. This makes her much easier to talk to. It also makes her more interesting to talk to—and, as the night wears on, to look at. By then, see, the bar is full of pretty women, and pretty women tend to look quite similar. They may not look similar before they dress and put on makeup, but afterward they do.
“Where in Ohio?” I ask the plainer one, who doesn’t look half so plain now. I like her nose. I like the fact she has one. The pretty one had a nose at one time, but she hired a surgeon to cut most of it off.
“Akron.”
“I love that city,” I exaggerate. “It’s so…I don’t know…so…”
“Depressing?”
“Industrial.”
That’s when the pretty one, who’s tired of standing around with nothing to do but check out her look-alikes and estimate her own rank in the evening’s pageant, wanders off to use the bathroom. I don’t really notice; I like her friend. Her friend has hands that are too big for her wrists, and when she gestures with them to make a point, I’m mesmerized by their power, their vitality. I’d like to hold them, to feel them on my back. I bet they’re warm—much warmer than the pretty one’s, which are small and slender but look icy.
No one will make you feel like shit like a makeup artist will. Oh sure, there are abusive boyfriends, manipulative mothers-in-law, overzealous law enforcement officers…but it takes a makeup artist to peer deeply into your pores and castigate every single one of your personal habits while smearing your face with a dozen bacteria-ridden irritants and PROFESSING an interest in making you look good because, after all, it's a makeup artist you're talking to, and to have makeup professionally applied is to sit willingly in on the sermon of a high priestess of Let's Be Honest, Is There Really Anything More To Life?
2) Bacteriffic brushes
They make these things that are like mascara wands that you dip, brush onto a model's lashes, and then throw away. Steal them from Sephora if you must.
Once a makeup artist used a single-use brush for my first mascara application of the day, and then, a few hours later, dashed in for a touch-up with her Great Lash Waterproof's own sticky, abused wand. "Oh," she said, noting my horrified visage. "This mascara will just go on over the mascara you're already wearing. So I'm not actually putting it on your eyes."
Until you're the one at risk of pink eye, I reserve the right to give you a don't-piss-on-my-leg look. And to ask you to use my mascara, which I take with me to every job just in case.
3) Pointy pencils.
Related to above: Makeup artists who try to use dirty, unsharpened eye and lip pencils, I hate you. And when I ask you, nicely, to please expose some fresh lead before you wave that shit all over my mucous membranes, it would be a relief if you were to resist the urge to pull back aghast, sneer playing about your lips, and furiously carve an eye pencil into a rapier point before raking it all over the inside of my upper and lower lids. Do you want me to cry? Because I will, and then you will have to do it all completely over again, and if that is what you want…well Sartre had a point I guess!
5) Brainless commentary
"So, like, which are the Amish, and which are the Mormons? What's the difference between the two? Really? So are the Mormons, like, Christian? Huh. Where do the Amish live? What about Quakers? Who are they? Ok. So which drive the horse-and-buggies? Do the people with the weird clothes drive the horse-and-buggies as well?" My, aren't you curious! Have you ever considered retaining information? You won't gain any water weight, I promise!
7) Offensive smells
You're going to be in my face. I don't want to smell lashings of your: B.O., favorite perfume, last night's booze, signature cologne, breakfast burrito, or halitosis. I'll embrace the same scent-minimal lifestyle for your sake.
9) Stickybeaking
Yes, our jobs require us to spend a significant amount of time more or less gazing into each other's eyes. Yes, I find this physical intimacy strangely out-of-place without its natural complement, intellectual and emotional intimacy. Yes, if we have conversational chemistry, I'd love, if it comes up, to tell you about this guy I once dated, or how I have this weird room-mate who never eats and that makes me uncomfortable, and I'd love to hear about your breakup and your cat and this asshole your best friend just started dating, too.
No, the answer is never to launch unprompted into monologue overshare mode. No, I do not appreciate pointed questions about personal matters from someone I met five minutes ago. No, I don't want your financial advice, and I don't want you to tell me that my prickliness is all because I'm a Capricorn, or because I must not have a close relationship with my sister, or some shit. There are plenty of topics I'm willing to talk about with a near-stranger, and a good few I'll broach if the circumstances seem ripe. But do not treat me as your patient-listener BFF, and do not cast yourself in the role of my therapist, OK?
