I suppose my first post will be about an incident that has occurred within my over-a-decade long foray into the world of beauty.
The other day I noticed that the phrase "Virginia girl" was listed in the urban dictionary. I was curious, so I looked up it's meaning, thinking it was going to say something like how awesome Virginia girls are, or that they are so beautiful. And I felt a little cool because I wasn't having to look up something I had seen behind a hashtag on my kid's Instagram comments for a change.
Here's what it said:
A girl who don't take care of themself i.e. not wearing make-up, not brushing their hair, not showering on a daily basis, etc. A lot of times either morbidly obese or a freakish skeleton.
A: Check out that chubby chick with the swamp hair. Has she not heard of the invention of make-up?
S: What do you expect? She's a Virginia Girl!
Second definition:
1.having jacked up teeth
2.thinking they know what a "poof" looks like
3.being ugly in general
4.being jealous of girls 4 states away
I was offended!
How dare they talk about Virginia girls that way!
I sulked for a few minutes until I remembered how I used to look and dress when I lived in Virginia:
Talk about jacked up teeth and hair.
In this one, I'm even proving my point by wearing a Virginia t-shirt!!!!
Wait for it.....
this one's my favorite.....
Gaaakkkk. It's painful to look at. Yes, I'm aware that most Virginia girls are very put together, and yes, I'm aware that I was still beautiful on the inside and all of that... but the urban dictionary reminded me of something that even my mother noticed when she moved to Utah a few years ago: everyone in Utah is so BEAUTIFUL! Even the lady at the checkout line, and the kids working at the car wash, and ESPECIALLY at Target and City Creek.
(People shopping at Walmarts anywhere are the obvious exemption to this observation.)
As a tomboy child, I had a long way to go as far as caring about my appearance once I became a young adult. How I managed to get myself engaged, I'll never know, but I remember my first day getting ready in the morning with my roommates at BYU. I jumped out of the shower, threw on my t-shirt and jeans, and was brushing my teeth before heading out the door with wet hair when I noticed that my roommate was actually running her curling iron down every section of her hair.
"That must take her forever to get ready!" I thought, while inwardly scoffing at her.
"I will NEVER be the kind of girl that would do something so ridiculous!"
But after people asked me innocently why I never dressed up...."For what?" I would respond.
At some point, I think I realized that when in Rome, why not just do as the Romans do?
Plus I began to learn about looking nice for your husband, and after all, he took pains to look nice for me so I should extend the same courtesy. Plus....I wanted to learn how to look pretty.
I mean, come on, who doesn't?
And so began my introduction to fashion, beauty, hair and make-up which has taken decades of learning from scratch, lots of patient advice and tips from my fabulous sister-in-laws, and many many mistakes. One about which I want to write about today.
Eyelashes.
I have this thing about long eyelashes. I want them. I think they look so beautiful. Maybe it's because I like vintage things, I don't know but Alicia Vikander proves my point in a movie I just watched this weekend: "The Man from U.N.C.L.E".
I couldn't stop looking at her eyelashes. I think they do so much for the eyes and for femininity in general.
Anytime I have a situation where I know I am going to need to go heavier on the make-up, such as family pictures, a formal event or public speaking engagement, I always want to make my lashes look more full. Not wanting to spend the money for professional lash extensions, my quest began with a search for the best mascara possible. The problem is that my lashes are short and stubby and so mascara doesn't do any good. So then I tried false lash strips with glue.
EVERY time I have tried false lashes it has ended in fiasco. They are always uneven and crooked and it takes me forever to put them on. Once I was speaking at my niece's baptism and the corner came off while I was speaking. It flapped every time I blinked and blinded me, and looked ridiculous.
So why I got it in my head that I would try individual lashes when I had to speak in church last Sunday is beyond me. I did a you tube tutorial and thought I knew what I was doing. I'll admit, they looked beautiful! I couldn't stop looking at my eyes in the mirror they were just what I've always wanted and they didn't look fake.
The problem?...they started to bug me. I put on waaaaayyy too much glue and I could see the globs of glue in my line of vision. I started to itch them and tug and pull, then I couldn't take it anymore so I headed to the bathroom to use the special removing liquid stuff.
They wouldn't come off!
I put so much of that stuff on there that I burned my eyeball. I pulled to hard and yanked out my real eyelashes with them. I kept rubbing, I kept trying...they would not come off.
I'm going on day 8 now and I'm still struggling with this. Every night I have a freak out and claw and scratch at my eyes, itching and willing them to come off. I twist them, I try and scratch off the glue. It doesn't matter.
Every morning I wake up and they are pointing in different directions, so I have to re-train them into place. I try to wipe off my eye makeup at night with a cotton ball, and because they are plastic the cotton hairs get stuck in them and look ridiculous.
"This is my punishment for vanity," I think every morning as I repeat my process in desperation. Slowly over the course of this week, one or two will fall out a day and there's a minor celebration. All on my right eye, none on my left. I'm beginning to look like I'm pieced together like a Nightmare Before Christmas character. But there's nothing I can do!
This morning I woke up and one of the false lashes had turned completely around on my eyelid, so it was pointing downward. It still would not come off.
I took a shower, I used more glue. It would not come off. It would not twist upward. I was faced with the dilemma: do I leave it like this throughout church today, or do I pull out more eyelashes?
I pulled out more eyelashes. And now you can see on the top picture that one eye has no more false lashes, and now significantly less real lashes that will probably never grow back and the other one still has a full set. And that is how I went to church today people.
Have I learned my lesson?
Nope.
As soon as the other ones fall off, I'll probably do it again because I love having eyelashes so dang much. And as Julian Casablancas said,
Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense.
Although this time....
I will most definitely use less glue.
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