Just like you, I was born a clean slate, a helpless little human with as much personality as a potato. Then as life went on, I picked up a few handy skills. I can brew the best cup of tea you’ve ever had; I am very good at giving advice to others and I am not half bad at reformer pilates. But if you ask me to roast a chicken, light a fire or change a tyre, things won’t go well. That’s fine with me – I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m pretty useless at a lot of things. There is, however, one exception to this: as a thirty-five-year-old woman, I have no idea how to do my hair and make-up properly, and this fact makes me feel woefully inadequate.
Unlike changing a tyre, I get the opportunity every day to practise hair and makeup. So, it feels like I should be able to wield a curling iron with confidence and apply mascara without smudging it on my eyelid. Unfortunately, practice has not made perfect. Not even close.
In my teens, I was all about Lip Smackers and body glitter. I couldn’t wait to get a job and finally earn enough money to buy real makeup. As it turns out, all the products in the world can’t make you look like a million bucks unless you know what to do with them. How do you pick the right shade of foundation? – I somehow always manage to look a little orange.
The solution to this problem was telling myself I was going for the effortless, slightly undone French look. To my surprise, that undone look isn’t as natural as you’d think. French women do not have dark circles under their eyes, and their luscious wavy hair is no accident. After trying to simply roll out of bed, tousle my hair and apply a few dabs of face cream, I learned that the natural look requires a blow dryer and a good concealer.
“In my teens, I was all about Lip Smackers and body glitter. I couldn’t wait to get a job and finally earn enough money to buy real makeup. As it turns out, all the products in the world can’t make you look like a million bucks unless you know what to do with them.”
Now I’m the mother of a young boy, I tell myself my blotchy bare skin and haphazard mum bun is simply showing him what self-acceptance looks like. But as noble as this sounds, it’s really my latest excuse to cover up the fact that I still can’t use a foundation brush. I apply foundation clumsily with my hands and, when I’m done, I look exactly as before: spotty and blemish-y and tired. I believe I am genuinely a lost cause, because nothing has helped me master the art of looking polished – not even professional advice. Once a new hairdresser asked me what my haircare routine was like. I looked back at him sheepishly and replied, “I wash it…”, followed by a long awkward silence. He took pity on me and launched into a full tutorial on how to blow dry my hair to create volume. It looked easy enough and I walked out of there feeling smug that my era of Kate Middleton hair was upon me. At home I gave it a go. I tangled my hair around the brush so badly I thought I was going to have to cut the brush out. Seriously, how does anyone have the co-ordination to hold a hairdryer in one hand, a brush in the other and seamlessly style hair while holding your arms in a kind of yoga pose that allows you to reach hair you can’t see at the back of your head? That level of co-ordination is not given the acknowledgement it deserves. Now my willingness to learn how to do hair and make-up is about the same as watching Game of Thrones from start to finish. You see, I am in the 0.1% of millennials who didn’t watch Game of Thrones, and it’s too overwhelming to think about how much time that would take to watch all seventy-three episodes (which are up to eighty minutes each). I feel that same kind of defeat with learning how to do my hair and makeup.
“It looked easy enough and I walked out of there feeling smug that my era of Kate Middleton hair was upon me. At home I gave it a go. I tangled my hair around the brush so badly I thought I was going to have to cut the brush out.”
There are thousands of tutorials online and eleven billion hair and makeup products. Retinols? Sounds a bit science-y. Serums now come in vitamins a–z, and I’m not sure if my skin needs them all. Could I just apply an avocado face mask to nourish it with vitamins instead? And let’s not get started on brows. They require a lot of maintenance, don’t they? Getting them shaped, treated, coloured or even tattooed, and then grooming them each morning. For someone who only goes to the hairdresser twice a year and has a hairbrush gathering dust after the blow dryer incident, this feels like an impossible regime to commit to.
Let’s be clear, I do not have a problem with all of this. To those people who are clued into the whole hair and beauty game, and who have the self-discipline to wake early enough in the morning to make themselves look put together, I salute you. If you look put together, you’re most likely a put together person who can obey a screeching alarm and not spill coffee on your shirt while getting ready. You are amazing and everything I aspire to be. Most mornings you’ll find me in the bathroom wondering how to do one of those chic ponytails that doesn’t make me look like an overgrown school child (hair out is rarely an option, because my hair is usually too greasy).
“I am in the 0.1% of millennials who didn’t watch Game of Thrones, and it’s too overwhelming to think about how much time that would take to watch all seventy-three episodes (which are up to eighty minutes each). I feel that same kind of defeat with learning how to do my hair and makeup.”
But I’m not a completely lost cause. There is one skill I have mastered: using dry shampoo. Thank you, beauty gods, for this blessed product. Also, I’m about five years late discovering silk pillowcases and you better believe they do keep your hair frizz-free. Genius! And, even better, you’ll never guess what the latest skincare trend is. Skin minimalism (Google it – promise I’m not making it up). For us folk who enjoy removing makeup even more than we enjoy taking off a bra, our time is now. We are on the zeitgeist, even if only for a short moment in time.
Look, I am aware that skin minimalism will pass, and I’ll go back to feeling like a total fraud. However, there is part of me that thinks this skill should just come instinctually to me, as it seems to come naturally to most other women. But I know we are not born holding a hair dryer and mascara wand.
The thing is most women have a sensitive spot when it comes to their body image. That could be your knobbly knees, how your teeth look, or – in my case – how I’m not as polished as others. We can’t help but compare ourselves, because that is what we have learned to do from magazines, movies, ads and TV shows. Trends like lush eyebrows and twenty-step skincare routines only serve to keep us in a perpetual state of feeling a step or two behind. As soon you think you’ve got it nailed, you look around only to find things have moved on, and then start scrambling to keep up.
I’ve finally decided to opt out of the scramble. It’s not because I am trying to be more French or a positive bare-faced role model for my son, it’s because I just couldn’t be bothered. I will eventually make peace with the fact that walking into a makeup department store is as overwhelming for me as walking into the machine section of the gym. I don’t know what to do with all the things in either of those places. But I know exactly where to find the dry shampoo, and that’ll do me just fine.
Words: Melinda Halloran | Illustration: Susanna Harrison
As seen in Swell Issue 20. Grab your copy here
