"
Your mother is so beautiful" was the chant of all my friends mothers as they would pick me up for kindergarten carpool. "
Her makeup is always perfect!" I really didn't understand how makeup could be
perfect. I really didn't notice. I thought all moms spend at least an hour a day applying various paints and potions as though they were going to be judged at an amateur beauty pageant. Clearly this wasn't the case. My mom was different from the other moms in our small midwestern town. This peaked my curiosity and set me on a course that shaped me into who I am today- an aesthetics junkie with a dash of beauty A.D.D. My first foray into makeup happened at a very young age. I remember tooling around in my Mom's makeup caddy and layering on anything I could get my hands on. I started with her blush. It was a deep rosy color almost like a light burgundy. I'd swirl that all over my cheeks and then dust it down with a heap of loose powder that I'm sure was darker than the medium olive skin that was my mother's complexion. It should be noted that this was the mid eighties so color choices for any woman of color whether olive, yellow, brown and the in-betweens were limited, to say the least. So, light burgundy blush and bronze powder were what she had to work with. I would then take her dark brown matte eyeshadow and smear all over my eyelids in a not-so-uniform fashion. Then I moved onto her mascara. I want to say that it was by Maybelline (it's definitely discontinued now). I started with two conservative coats. I was astounded by the way it opened up my eyes. My lashes were now visible and I had begun to understand the concept of what "batting an eyelash" was. Of course, I had to apply about ten more coats on each eye which eventually made my top and bottom lashes stick together every time I blinked. I perused the eyeliner but was way too intimidated to even try it so, I opted to skip that step and topped off my look with a bright orange lipstick. The end result: busted-booger midget drag queen who, after being denied an audition at Lucky Chengs, drowned her sorrows in a couple of scorpion bowls. Some Ponds cold cream was able to erase the wreckage of a cosmetics collision course that was my face but even thickest of petroleum jelly couldn't remove the orange stain on my lips. Which, without the rest of the hideousness, was actually quite fabulous.
I've come full circle now. My new favorite shade of lipstick happens to be a bright orange (mother approved). It was all over the runways this spring and now it's all over my lips and a little on my cheeks when I'm in a pinch for blush. It's a great shade to create a monochromatic look by blending a little over the eyelids as well as the apples of the cheeks. If I'm not in the mood for mucho naranja then I just smear it on the top lip, press together, and top it off with clear or golden gloss. My favorite is Lime Crime's "My Beautiful Rocket" as pictured here:
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