Remember the first time you put on makeup? Of course you do. I bet it was a lipstick from your mother's purse, a cherry red that smelled of perfume. What about those pre-makeup moments?
I remember the first time I came close to wearing makeup, playing with some Crayola watercolor paints. At age 10, I was done with paper and had developed an interest in painting my face. One hazy morning, after double-checking the “non-toxic” label, I dipped my fingers into the pot of red and tentatively blended it over my cheeks. Blush. And then I dipped into the violet. Eyeshadow.
I thought, “This is great! I'll never need to spend money to buy makeup in the future!” At lunch, father hinted at how flushed I looked, to which my grandfather quickly replied, “She's been exercising.” I was sure they both knew what I had been up to, and chose to let it slide.
Of course I had been very wrong about using Crayola watercolors as makeup for the rest of my life. Since that incident, my interest in makeup—the real stuff—has only grown. I began with exploring my mother's modest kit, eventually wetting my feet with small drugstore purchases.
Recently, cruising through the makeup aisles at Duane Reade, I suddenly recalled names of lipsticks and eye shadows that inhabited a budding makeup chest.
There was a “Honeymoon Heather” lipstick from CoverGirl, a sheer plum with tiny flecks of glitter that at the time looked classy to me. Jane Eye Zing in "Grapevine," an electric purple, was another favorite. It mysteriously went missing from my stash one day to my great frustration. I went to the store again but it had been discontinued. Even now when I pass the Jane rack, I can't help but sneak a glance to see if Grapevine had somehow been resurrected.
That growing collection would repeatedly be purged by my mother, who deemed my favorite colors “too modern.” Of course, each purge led to more replacements, and as I got older, I tried out more and more sophisticated labels, occasionally returning to some trusted drugstore brands for basic items.
Often I rove the aisles of makeup stores looking for some incarnation of that “perfect purple” that the Crayola violet had imprinted in my mind. Today I am fishing for a deep magenta lipstick to match the nails that are popular this season, which brings me to reflect on the nature of personal beauty.
The trends will always change, but what we aesthetically gravitate toward varies little as we age, gelled into our consciousnesses by our earliest cosmetic experiences.
