Making it Up: Two Decades of Not Knowing How to Apply Mascara
Written by Jen Cartwright
It’s 2016 and I’m 14 years old. With my drugstore resources in hand, I’m trying to learn how to do the mythical thing that is makeup. On this particular Saturday, I’ve dedicated a whole morning to the task. Later, I end the morning in tears created by a mixture of sadness and all sorts of products stuck in my eye.
Now in 2024, I’ve aged eight years but am in the same position: I have no idea how to do my makeup. Makeup is an inherited art passed down through big sister’s tips and mother’s resources, however, with a mother who is always bare-faced and no older sister, I’ve never had a guiding hand. There were YouTube tutorials sure - they made it look so easy as they pulled out resources from their drawers stacked with sponsored products. However, though I was a frequent viewer, I could never quite understand how they did it. I paused, rewound, and slowed the speed but it was hopeless.
My makeup ignorance sometimes makes me feel like I’m in a perpetual state of girlhood, waiting to graduate and become a woman. When I look back at old pictures, my friends have noticeably changed with darker lips and longer lashes. I, however, have most certainly not. I’m freckle-faced with patchy eyebrows in past and present tense. I’m often mistaken as younger than I am and at my age, this is not yet a compliment: it is my biggest insecurity.
At the same time, not knowing how to do makeup makes me mourn a girlhood I have never experienced. I’m not a consumer in this $100.5 billion-dollar industry, and I can’t help but feel left out. On a Friday, I follow my friend around a beauty store and nod in blind agreement as she weighs up the pros and cons of products that I can’t tell the difference between. Then, we go home and get ready for a party. I sit on her bed and nervously drink because I’m ready an hour before her. As I sip, I watch her construct a winged eyeliner while effortlessly maintaining conversation. How does she do it? I’m too embarrassed to ask.
Another time, a different friend makes me into her canvas and paints me with glittery eyeshadow. I meet my gaze in the mirror and I seem familiar yet different. Uncanny. I hate to say it but I feel prettier. I wish I had this superpower at my own fingertips.
Over the years, I’ve tried to learn the craft. On a day off, I scour a shop for resources. As I’m tight with my purse because I don’t want to make a great economic investment in something I won’t know how to use, I quickly locate the budget-friendly section. My eyes ping-pong between different eyebrow pencils as I try to decipher the difference between ‘chocolate’ and ‘brunette’. A shop assistant approaches and asks if I need any help. I blush with no tan to cover it. “Just browsing,” I say. I panic buying a brunette alongside some idiotproof mascara and brown eyeliner because TikTok taught me that brown brings out blue eyes.
I get home with my new products and sit in front of the mirror. I dab old concealer under my eyes and on my nose, unsure if it makes a difference at all. I pull my eyelashes to try and access my eyelid for eyeliner before realising eyeliner is definitely outside of my simplistic skillset. I settled for just a mascara lesson today, the supposedly simplest of makeup products with no shade matching or intricate application required. I barely notice a difference until two hours later when I look in the mirror and find dark circles under my eyes. It turns out, yes, indeed, all that product went somewhere.
But why should it even matter if I can do makeup? After all, it seems I’m far more confident without it. With my face bare, I know exactly what it looks like. Though I may blush or sweat, I can largely control how I appear. Whereas, on the rare occasion that I leave the house with makeup on, I’m constantly making mirrors out of car doors, windows, and phone screens, paranoid that I look ridiculous but do not know it.
It feels unfeminist to be self-conscious like this and I’m ashamed for caring so much. Investing in self-care seems embarrassing unless it is successful because it announces to the world “I care what you think about me”. I believe this is why I’ve found learning makeup so difficult: I don’t have the confidence. Makeup is one of the few hobbies that requires you to stare at yourself for a long time; perhaps to be good at makeup you have to be comfortable with yourself without it. I’m still working on that one.
Instead of seeing makeup as a tool for facial reinvention or plastic surgery without the surgery, I’m gradually learning to see it more as a resource to accentuate the features you already have. Contour to show off your jawline, wear a bright eyeshadow to paint your personality, do what you like but make sure you do it because you want to. Makeup is playful and experimental but fundamentally it should be fun.
With this change in attitude, I look in the mirror and try again.
Don’t even get me started on my hair.
