I'm a finger-painter and scribbler in an art museum. I touch the rows and rows of specialized brushes anchored in clear beads wondering what it be like to wield these tools. Who would I become if I could master this art of disguise, of transformation? If I could make my face a canvas, what landscapes, emotions, ideas would I paint there for the world to observe as I walked by?
On my sane days, I know better than to try. When I had to wear false eyelashes for a show, I succeeded in gluing my left eye shut. I apply makeup with a shaky hand, causing colors to clump and smear, and end up wiping of half of it in the hopes of creating a blended, natural effect. I'm terrified of ending up like a mother I knew as a kid, whose face looked like that of a cheaply made doll. Huge rounds of blush clownishly covered both her cheeks, powder blue eyeshadow smeared beyond her eyebrows, and her fire-engine red lipstick bled onto her teeth. Her blonde curls were teased to highs that should only originate in a porcelain scalp. So, I err on the side of minimalism. I have learned that this skill, like the arts of cake decorating, sketching, embroidering, calligraphy, and pretty much anything requiring delicate fine motor skills, is beyond my reach. A flawlessly application of potions and powders and the twisting of braids and curling of hair is beyond the abilities of my clumsy fingers. The best I can hope for is a slight highlighting of my natural features.
My first official make-up lessons focused on the application of eyeliner and the plucking of eyebrows. Blinking and squirming underneath my mom's tools, I learned the age old adage about the relationship between pain and beauty. As the years passed, I was introduced to other implements of torture including the wicked looking, but generally benign, eyelash curl. The only times I felt like any kind of an expert was when my brothers came into the bathroom and perched on the toilet seat to watch the ritual minor transformations of their sister. They dug around my purple makeup case using the brushes to dust the other containers like archaeologist unearthing artifacts from a lost civilization. Their fun ended when I grabbed them and offered to give them a makeover or sprayed my cotton candy body spray. They dodged my lipstick tubes and screeched as if the pink perfume burned their skin. They got their revenge by hiding behind the shower curtain until I forgot their presence and by leaping out the minute my mascara wand touched lashes. Or they opened both the closet and the cupboard doors in the small bathroom hallway to lock me in a maze of doors.
From sixth grade until my sophomore year in high school, nail polish was my chosen medium. I designed lady bugs and combined colors like aqua green with moonshine purple. The colors never stayed limited to the confines of my small curved nails. The paint oozed over onto my fingertips, my bedroom carpet, the table, and crusted in test strips all over my makeup case. I was constantly having to rearrange furniture to cover the faded spots in the carpet where I had scrubbed polish up with equally damaging nail polish remover. My painted nails were always smudged, caked, or bubbled from being held under the fan. My mom regularly offered my five bucks to clean the neon tangerine remnants from my toenails. I idolized my redhead neighbor, who managed the contortionist act of painting her toenails while driving us to school; until the day her foot got caught in the lanyard hanging from the keys stuck in the ignition. After that, we weren't allowed to ride with her.
My hair is just as uncooperative as my makeup. It slips out of braids, twists itself out of up-dos, and goes limp the minute it comes out of curlers. As a girl, I dreamed of having princess-length hair in imitation of the powerful, mystic women populating my fantasy novels. Unlike their soft-spoken, pink-clad Disney counterparts, they were archers, seers, leaders, and adventurers. Daydreaming in class, I saw my long hair, braided around a slim sliver crown, whipping around my face as I rode through the stormy night. As a young woman, I longed for a chic bob, sleek with flapper-like sophistication. Neither extreme conformed to my imagination. Both managed to become a combination of limp strands and unruly fly-aways, which gave me that same child-waiting-for-a-mother-with-a-brush look. I dyed my hair only once. It was a lovely auburn red that was meant to catch the attention of a boy too stupid or uninterested to know that I liked him.
In college, I threw it all away. It added up to a full garbage bag of half-dried polishes, wrong-colored powders, and disappointing, clumpy creams. I thought college would be a place of the mind, where outer appearances finally took a backseat to intelligence and creativity. I went a year with product-free, hippie hair and a face covered only in a sheen of lotion. It didn't last because I was too interested in what its like to be other people to stick to one image. I missed experimenting, missed playing with the most easily altered aspect of my identity.
I watch people and mimic the ones I like. If the trends look too ridiculous on me or are beyond my budget, I incorporate them into my fiction instead. I play with henna and contemplate tattoos or piercings because I like the look of the girl playing the guitar at the coffee shop. Her green body ink and silver studs say that she has no interest in a life within the system of business suits and cubicles. They are the insignia of the outcast artist living within a different value system. Yet, I am also captured by the meticulously arranged curls of black hair falling down the back of the young mother in the supermarket. She dedicates time each morning bringing them into existence. I want to know why.
I, humble finger painter though I may be, am searching for that perfect combination: the lavender lipstick from the author at her book signing; the effortless draping of scarves from Middle Eastern classmates; and the dark eyeliner on the teen drawing in her journal at Barnes and Noble. The combination that turns me into the main character in my own story. The exact look that transforms this biological face into an outer expression of my inner life. The poetry of clothing. The impression of a face. The lyrics of hair. The musical stanza of perfume.
Isn't that what we are all attempting to do with our adornments and styles? We are trying to communicate the mood and theme of our inner worlds. We are showing passers by the genre we are living in. Like book covers, our bodies say this is a tale of romance, of glamor, of rebellion, of spiritual seeking, of outdoor adventure, or of the downtrodden average man. I love the disco-ball eyelashes and the nose piercings, in the same way I love but could never write fantasy.
Still, it is always fun to play – to dabble in other areas even if you look silly and to get covered up to your elbows in paint. I hate when people attack others for being wannabes, trendy, or posers. Fear of attack limits us. It forces us to chose and stick with those choices. When in reality, many of us have diverse tastes. We like to wander all the aisles of a bookstore. We like Michelangelo and Warhol. Some days, we would rather wear bright purple tutus with fishnet stockings and combat boots. Some days, we would like to try on a pair of outrageous false eyelashes or to paint our nails sunshine yellow. Other days, we want to wrap ourselves in cotton tunics and let our hair loose. After all, the joys of creating and inventing should never be limited to the masters.
This post is great - I totally relate to being a finger painter among all those people who seem to know what they are doing when I go into Sephora. And I've had both eyes glued shut once. That was interesting.
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