I've always admired those girls and women who seem to radiate with natural perfection every day. They show up to all these early-morning events (school, work) with their perfectly styled hair, their flawless skin, bagless eyes, and perfectly trimmed/waxed eyebrows.
How do they do it?! This is a history of me trying to figure out this whole make-up and hair thing:
Baby to toddler: Cute little self with precious, soft hair.
Kindergarten: Started "painting" nails (really this was just me globbing a bunch of fingernail polish onto my fingertips and nails). This is also the time when my bangs started way at the top of my head and were cut in a blunt line at my eyebrows. Sometimes this look is cute on girls and women, but it looked really awkward and strange on me.
First & second grade: Still had the power bangs which my mom sometimes curled for church. I occasionally tried growing out my bangs which resulted in lots of pictures with my overgrown bangs covering my eyes.
Third grade: Decided to stick with the bangs, rather than growing them out.
Fourth grade: Grew out the bangs, but kept them that way. I liked to part my hair right down the middle. I'm guessing that people with really pointy, oval faces like mine shouldn't part their hair right down the middle. This wasn't a good look for me.
Fifth grade: I learned how to put my hair in a ponytail. So I did. Every day. First it started out parted right down the middle and drawn in a tight ponytail with a scrunchy at the base of my head. Then about halfway through fifth grade, I started pulling my hair into a slicked straight back ponytail or half ponytail. The tighter the better!
Sixth grade: I started noticing that my legs were really hairy and my eyebrows were really bushy. This was a source of self-consciousness for me so one day I asked my mom if I could shave my legs. She said, "sure," so I marched right into the bathroom to take a shower. I had no idea what to do, but I figured that it was simple enough: just take the razor and slide it up your leg! I grabbed the old, plastic, two-bladed, semi-rusty, man-razor from off the shower shelf. I placed it firmly in the middle of my shin and with great force, pulled the razor upward. Shocked, I saw a stream of blood oozing from the inch-long wound I had just inflicted. Luckily I realized after that that I needed to go a lot softer on my legs. When people asked what happened to my leg I would say, "the razor fell on my leg while I was taking a shower."
Then, apparrently not learning from my shaving mishap, and wanted to not have "caterpillars" above my eyes, I asked my mom if I could pluck my eyebrows. Again, she said, "sure," so I marched into the bathroom once again and grabbed the (also rusty) tweezers. Carefully I plucked out hair after hair in a pain-filled haze. Eventually I was satisfied and stopped. I suppose I liked the way my brows were shaped because I kept doing them like that. They were bad. They were so bad. My idea of a good brow job was to pull half of my eyebrows out from the unibrow inward. I looked real weird. And even with half of my eyebrows yanked out, I wasn't very good about keeping them plucked (I'm still not...).
I still loved the ponytail in sixth grade. I had learned that I should take a shower every day, so I did. My hair would go right from sopping wet, to ponytail every single day. Eventually some of the girls in my class informed me (in what was probably an intervention of sorts) that I would grow mold on my head if I kept doing that every day. That terrified me, so I started leaving it down to dry before putting it into a ponytail.
Seventh-eighth grade: I got better at shaving for the most part and I even started applying mascara. Occassionally I would toy around with my mom's blush and pressed powder. I really didn't learn how to apply makeup properly until rather recently...oh well! No one ever said it looked bad, so maybe it wasn't. As far as hair goes during this time, I had two styles, air-dryed left down, and up in a ponytail. I never did my nails. I just kept them short so that I could play the violin.
Freshman year: Not much changed. My eyebrows somehow got worse, though. Bigger and badder. But I don't remember doing anything different, they just morphed that way.
Also, I thought I was making a super cute face. Hahahaha!
Sophomore year: This was a pretty good year beauty-wise! I used eyeliner respectfully and mascara. I didn't do much else, but it was okay because my skin was pretty good. My hair fell exactly how I wanted it to without doing much to it!
Junior year: Something possessed me to tweeze the heck out of my eyebrows until they were super skinny lines. I learned how to use real liquid foundation and eye shadow! I got some really bad, thick bangs. They were nasty. My face shape does not allow blunt bangs to look good on me. As much as I envisioned myself looking like Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada, I looked more like the "perfect human" from the more recent Miike Snow music videos.
Senior year: One time during the winter I grew my eyebrows out super thick. That was kind of gross. Otherwise, it wasn't too bad.
Freshman year of college: Most of the time my hair and makeup was okay. I painted my nails quite a bit. But I did go through a phase where I thought I might look good if I parted my hair right down the middle and styled it stick straight, but with curls at the end. Maybe I forgot that this didn't work for me before. My face comes to a point right at my nose so having the part down the middle makes me really pointy!
Last year to now: I apply makeup about half of the time. I rarely do my hair. I'm still rocking the air-dryed look simply because I just don't like to spend all the time it takes to really do something with my hair. Most of the time I get my makeup right!
So that's the history of my beauty disasters and occassional triumphs (if you want to see pictures of examples of me with bad eyebrows and hair, I'll put them up. But only if you want me to. They're bad). Now I have to tell you a particularly unfortunate story that just happened to me last week.
I bought dry shampoo! I've never had dry shampoo, so naturally I didn't know how to use it. So the first morning I tried it, I didn't really put enough on, so my hair was still greasy-nasty. The next morning I wouldn't be fooled. I sprayed that stuff on like a Pinterest crafter gone crazy with gold spray paint. Finally feeling that I had sprayed enough on to tame the grease, I brushed out my hair like the can told me. I looked in the mirror expectantly and found that I looked like an old lady! My hair was white! Frantically, I tried to brush it out and coax it into my tresses, but it wouldn't be contained. I had to go to a dentist appointment and unfortunately I still looked pretty old. But now I know, guys. Now I know.
Dear girls and women everywhere who know how to do these things correctly,
Were you just born with this knowledge? Did you have a bunch of sisters? Or maybe your mom knew a lot about it and imparted the knowledge of cosmetics and hair to you? Maybe I spent so much time trying to fit in with my brothers that I guess I just never noticed that much about beauty and therefore was blissfully unaware that I was breaking so many beauty no-no's (nos? nose?). Perhaps your skin is just nice and your hair is just beautiful and you didn't really do anything. Maybe one day I'll learn your trade. But honestly, probably not because even though I can see that I need some help, I just really don't care quite enough to do anything about it. Besides, my husband thinks I'm pretty, so there! :P Eat it, you beauties!
Sincerely,
Still clueless
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