Blush No More!

An oldie.. but a goodie! Thought I'd share here!


Today I was thinking about my friends teenage daughter, and how she appears to have gotten through her awkward stage. I was wondering if mom finally sat down and said "ok honey, this is how you apply your make up". Make up application is like a rite of passage for all women. And you either get it... or you just don't... or better yet... you get someone else to do it for you.
This made me go all those years back to seventh grade, and my own rite of passage. I wish I could say I glided through it with ease and grace. But it was more like those stories of starting your period while wearing white jeans and having a cute boy make you aware of this grand joke on women. Yes, this too happened to me. But, that is another story. For now.. I will thrill you all with my "cake-up" skills.
I am not sure where I got the stuff. Where on earth did this shit even come from and how did I of all people end up in possession of it? I had some bright pink blush, and green eyeshadow. Now remember this was the 80's after all.. and bright was in. Although it seems to me the in color was blue then... not at all green. But that, my friends did not stop me!
I sat poised in front of my mirror... carefully eyeballing myself thinkin... "Oh yeah... I can do this... and I will be HOT... and the boys will fall at my feet in awe!"
And so it began. I masterfully applied the eyeshadow... not bad I thought to myself. It was on my eyelids where it belonged. Bonus for me. Then came my only other makeup accessory... the blush. Did I mention it was bright pink?
Let's skip the application details, and get right to the juicy stuff shall we? I boarded the school bus that morning, trying to be confident and beaming. As I looked at the faces... I started noticing these little O's spread through the isles. Jaws were dropping... and I thought... "I'm HOT!" Then I heard some snickers... and I'm not sure what exactly the comment was, but it went something like this... "Did you fall into a vat of makeup?"
That's it... my teenage life was over... my hottness deflated like a hotair balloon gone cold....and I said the only thing I could think of. "No, I have sunburn stupid." Stupid truly is as stupid does... since it was January here in Maine... frostbite would be more likely. But... that little white lie came across my lips so many times that day. Swearing on so an so's life that I in fact was suffering from a supernatural sunburn. And ya know... it only dawned on me just this morning... Why the hell didn't I just go into the bathroom and wash the shit off??? Talk about delayed reactions and hindsight.
So, instead of applying a gentle amount of blush to my cheeks, I had applied it to my entire face. A tanned face always looks better. Although... Marylin Monroe certainly pulled pastey white off quite nicely. This got me to thinking about all the women who use this ridiculous item. What is this stupid stuff called blush? I thought blushing was a bad thing. You get teased for your cheeks turning red! Now we want to go around and fake being embarrassed? As if it's not bad enough that women world over are forced to fake orgasms but now we even have to fake embarrassment about it. We really do get the short end of the stick. ;>)
Now ladies... some of you can really apply just enough and look rather nice. For me... I never have touched the stuff since my supernatural sunburn, and I never will. There are others young and old... that still seem to dabble in the art of blush, and fail quite miserably. You've all seen them. The ones that wear a shade that is fifty-seven shades darker than their own skin, skillfully applied to their so-called cheekbones. Do these ladies even know what the hell cheek bones are, let alone WHERE they are? Some of them apparently don't because they just paint half their face from just above the jaw line to just below their lower eyelid. MmHmm.. some sexy.
Never has any woman ever heard a man compliment her on her blushing cheeks. And honey, they may look at that awesome Hot Rod and think to themselves..."That's a HOT paint job... those SS stripes are AWESOME!" They will not however look at a woman with that same thought. Racing stripes do not belong on a womans face... they belong on a car, plain and simple.
No, it does not look attractive... it looks like clown day at the office.
Football players wear stripes on their face because as they are out there sweating their asses off, the sun glints off their cute lil quarter pounder cheeks and then they are blinded and then tackled by that 400lb burrito! Their stripes look ridiculous, but let's face it.. they are a safety measure. Just as you would'nt see me strap a safety cone on my ass to go walking, you will not see me with SS stripes on my face if the sun is particulary bright and it's 180 degrees out.
So... my last advice on this lovely feau-pax.... if you insist on continuing on in the racing stripe regimine... take your butt to the local salon, and have one of those skilled ladies apply it for you! Don't have the time or cash to do it daily... either throw the shit out forever... or they have this even more idiotic application technique... you can have it permanantly tattooed on! We've grown up with unrealistic soap operas... where the chicks wake up all fresh looking, not a hair out of place after a wild night of passion...You no longer have to get out of bed looking like a bedraggled fraggle, You too can have this look! Hell... you can even have a look of permanent suprise etched into your face if that's your fancy!
But better yet... let's all really be women about this. Be honest with yourselves, and honest with your girlfriends... this shit is just plain silly, and looks ridiculous. We should gather all of these ridiculous shades that you wouldn't even apply to canvas... and send them back to the cosmetic companies COD. Simply put in the return address section... 'Dear Mabeline... now the joke is on you'

Copyright H. Boucher 2009