Coming to Grips With Cosmetics

I stood in  the aisle of the cosmetics aisle at the local pharmacy with a familiar sense of dismay and uncertainty creeping over me.  I just wanted an eyeliner pencil - my last one fell apart - but, the face of a whole industry was staring critically at me as I gazed at it in return.

I noticed that there are no cute bags to put over your head anywhere in the cosmetics aisle.  That's what I really need first thing in the morning with chenille marks on my face and my hair sticking up all over.  Real, true coverup.

There is no such thing as just an eyeliner pencil.  If there is, it's kept down on the floor in a corner where you have to stand on your head and grope to find it.  I found complicated mechanical pencils in sable, charcoal, sienna, tawny beige and tequila sunset.  There were also pencils with smudgers on them and others accompanied by sharpeners.  My eyes watered.  I sidled to my right to survey the choices.  I made a selection based on price (middle of the road) and ease of use (simple mechanical style without its own sharpener or theme song).  On to mascara.

Compared to mascara, eyeliner pencils are nothing at all.  I sometimes feel a little nauseated by commercials on TV that show young beautiful women - I'd say no older than 17 who have no idea about wrinkles or deep thinking - with CGI-enhanced lashes that grow into long black spaghetti noodles.  Thick, luscious lashes with three times the volume! says the confident sexy voice of the dazzling air-brushed celebrity, assuring me that I'll have more of everything once I use the mascara product.  More men, more money, thicker-longer eyelashes and the ever-popular defiance of age.  If I were a guy going in for a kiss, I'd strongly reconsider the idea once I got a close look at lashes covered with spackle and dye.  They look contagious.

Accompanied by mascara on its aisle are a vast array of small hand tools designed to shape, comb, pluck, clip and mold lashes and brows into thick, glossy perfect arcs.  I laugh because I need to wear glasses and find it difficult to use curlers and pluckers, molders and smudgers when everything's a blur.  I have a magnifying mirror, but that in itself is a tool of terror at 7 a.m.

I skipped the mascara and wandered into the lipstick displays.  Alluring colors were arrayed in displays in the shape of wheels, boxes, lines, fans, rocket ships.  I wondered where to start.  Every brand had a zillion choices.  It was daunting.  What did I want?  Where should I start?

Lipstick and lip liners present an infinity of choices, a plethora, an excess beyond imagining.  Colors are one thing:  Brown mauve, purple haze, pink horizon, luminous libido, swan dive.  Who knows.  But texture is another.  And the only texture worth having apparently is gloss.  Lips must be full, rounded, plump and glistening like a disco ball.

If you watch afternoon talk shows, guests and hosts alike have lips glittering incandescently as they speak.  Extreme gloss introduces a new element to eating and kissing:  No touching the lips at all or you have a serious slip-and-slide going on.  When eating, a forkful of food is presented to the face, the lips are pulled away and the teeth extract the food from the fork.  Chewing is done politely with the lips closed and they rotate back and forth, all around, throwing sparks from their chrome surfaces, dazzling viewers, blinding one another.

I had to leave.  I was feeling dizzy, but I was clutching an eyeliner pencil and two tubes of lipstick. L'Oreal won, but I couldn't tell you why.  Probably because the product was on my eye level.   I tend to approach cosmetics more like going to a dentist's office than something fun; a sort of don't-hurt-me attitude.  My mind goes to:  Well, I'll choose this one; it's not too ugly.  I always feel lucky to be out in the fresh air again, and I'm always hopeful I'll find a cute bag to wear instead of all that goop.