The Fashionista Files (19 page)

CHAPTER 5

Makeup, Not War:
Beauty, Skin-deep? Ha!

By now you’ve masterfully shopped for thrift-store treasures and knockoff finds. You’ve turned old stockings into sleeves. You’ve perfected the art of walking with grace in sky-high heels and jeans that drag on the floor. Your style is under control. It’s time to consider polishing the pout, flattening the hair, and acquiring the fashionista beauty routine.

Fashionistas must be well-groomed, even if they’re not blessed with the flawless genes of Carolyn Murphy. Need we remind you that Diana Vreeland, one of our most acclaimed icons, was no beauty queen? In fact, she was famously ugly. Some might even say an eyesore (God rest her
jolie-laide
soul). But DV worked her looks by exaggerating them to full effect—highly rouged cheeks, lacquered hair, prominent dark eyebrows—to create a fashionable impact.

There are variations on the beauty theme. Fashionistas from across the pond tend to stay on the rough side of polished with chipped nails, straggly haircuts, cigarette-stained teeth; fashionistas in New York like the slick, polished look that comes from weekly visits to the dermatologist and the beauty salon; West Coast fashionistas appreciate casual, well-tanned glamour. Regardless of where you live or what salon you frequent, be it a posh spot where you invest in a $200 haircut or pay the minimum for a quick blowout at Fantastic Sam’s, your budget doesn’t have to break the bank to make you feel like a million bucks. This chapter will help you keep a rigorous schedule of beauty maintenance.

Besides, what’s a fashionista without her sea salt scrub and cleansing cream?

Eye Openers

“We are starting a new year. Faint, faint, if any eyebrows. Beautifully made up corners of the eyes, eyelids and above the eyelids. Rich-looking skin with a golden sheen.”

—Diana Vreeland, September 11, 1966

Three years later, she was apparently done with faint, faint, if any brows.

“It is an appalling thing to see four hairs on the brow of a beautiful girl. What is this new kick . . . I am speaking of hair on the forehead of a good-looking girl.”

—Diana Vreeland, June 12, 1969

Brow-beaten
MELISSA

When I was eleven, I was indoctrinated to the perils of eyebrow-line application. My grandmother, who was living with us at the time, was getting ready for a posh soiree and rooting around my mother’s dressing room for an eyebrow pencil. Lola (
Grandma
in Tagalog) had overplucked her brows in her youth, so all that was left above her eyes were a few stray hairs. She looked like an alien without her eyebrows. She was also half blind.

“What are you doing?” I asked when I saw her applying her eyebrows.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Lola, that’s a
Pentel pen
!”

She had mistaken a brown Sharpie for an eyebrow pencil. We both collapsed in hysterics. Then she surveyed her reflection thoughtfully. The pen was a light brown, the same shade as her eyebrows. “No one will notice.” She shrugged, and painted a half-moon over her other eye. That night, at the big fancy party, it was true. No one had a clue that my grandmother had literally painted on her eyebrows that evening.

Let your eyebrows do the talking.

It’s always been my ambition to have perfectly arched brows, but it took a long, hard road to get there. I first started plucking my eyebrows at thirteen, when my mother took a good look at my face and decided it was time for “polishing.” But I was a lazy plucker, and didn’t pay much attention to it. Also, it took a while to get accustomed to the pain.

The worst eyebrow phase I endured was in college, when I applied such a dark eyebrow pencil that in photos of that time I look very, very angry. One night I tried the same trick as Lola. I was out of my espresso brow pencil, so I decided to use my black eyeliner instead. I started penciling it in, but it didn’t look right. I kept filling in instead of washing my face and starting over. Big mistake! I looked like a cross between Frida Kahlo and Groucho Marx. None of my friends said anything, but I still cringe when I see the photos.

Maybe I should have used a brown Sharpie instead!

Tweezer (Wo)Man
KAREN

Growing up, I was fascinated by my mother’s beauty routine, the way she kept her makeup immaculately stored in Lucite cases, categorized by color. She had a kit of brushes and a magnifying mirror. She didn’t spend that much time on her face, yet she always emerged from her bathroom with creamy, even skin, glamorously shaded eyes in earth-color combinations, enhanced by her perfect eyebrows, which she spent ample time shaping and trimming. She was obsessed with her Tweezerman tweezer, a professional quality stainless-steel tool with points so fine and sharp that they could pull up the tiniest and shortest of hairs, even the ingrowns.

A family affair! Getting my father in on the brow action isn’t easy. Mom holds him down while I go to work.

She stored her Tweezerman with the same meticulousness— in felt bags in a box, as she did her Chanel bags. It was handled with the utmost care. Whenever I went out with my mother, at least one person commented on her flawless brows—they were curvaceously arched and thick without being too thick. And according to her manicurist, they “opened up her eyes.”

I wanted my eyebrows to open up my eyes. And at the age of twelve, my mother gave me my first lesson. She told me to imagine the shape first and she held the side of the Tweezerman against my brow on a diagonal to show me a line to follow. The line began on the underside of the brow and sloped upward to the center of the brow. “Pluck below that line only,” she instructed. And we began . . . as I screamed in pain. Virgin skin is very sensitive. “You’ll get used to it,” she assured me.

And I did. Maybe too used to it. I started plucking religiously. Every time I saw even a trace of stubble, I went to work. But it was more than just grooming. Removing a hair, grabbing it from its root and ripping it from its follicle, gave me the same kind of sick thrill as popping a pimple. Then the inevitable happened: I overplucked. And I really do mean overplucked. By the time I was finished one Saturday afternoon, I had almost no hair left above my eyes. The line was so pencil-thin that when I took a step back to see the damage I had done in my attempts to even things out and constantly correct mishaps, I was aghast. And almost bald!

I called my mother at work in a panic. “I’ve gone and done it,” I cried. “I can never leave the house again. I’m a monster!” When she got home and saw me, her eyes popped out of her head. She stared in silence and covered her mouth with one hand. “Oh, my God, what did you do?” she finally said, horrified. She grabbed my hand and yanked me up the stairs to her office—the bathroom. I sat on the toilet seat and she tried to correct the errors of my ways. Out came eye shadow and pencil. She managed to draw in my brows well enough that I could go to school Monday without being mocked severely.

I was warned that overplucking may be hazardous to your face. Hair doesn’t always grow back. Luckily mine did. Though it took a few months, during which time I was so self-conscious I took to wearing hats on most days. When they grew back, my mother presented me with my own Tweezerman, hoping I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. I was warned about dropping Tweezerman, as it dulls the points (when they dull, however, you can send it back and the company will sharpen it). From that day on, I have been a brow fanatic.

I still run to the bathroom to remove unwanted errant hairs as soon as I see them pop up. I inherited many of my mom’s routines, right down to the felt bag. I have the magnifying mirror and even a heat lamp that emits the kind of fluorescent light that makes it really easy to see every minor and teeny little pore. I sometimes get stuck in my bathroom for forty minutes at a time, examining my brows and trimming the hairs with nail scissors. Over the years I have learned not to overpluck, a struggle against my obsessive nature.

Raising a Brow

The first step to fashionable beauty is the creation of a beautiful face, which means eyebrows, eyebrows, eyebrows!