Make-up as I go along

Last Friday looking fine

Something you might not know if you don’t see my face in real life (Instagram pics are not exactly true representations of my appearance) is that I hardly ever wear make-up. In a month I might only put on make-up once or twice and that will inevitably be for some kind of occasion like last Friday when Jess and I went to a book launch in Nottingham. I was actually wearing foundation, eyeshadow and mascara that day which for me is quite a lot, I only bought the foundation a month or so ago on a whim because it seemed like it might look less weird on my skin than foundations I’ve tried previously (fair warning, the last time I owned foundation was probably around 2004 when that Dream Matte mousse stuff was all the rage so I’ve got rather limited experience).

I have fairly dry skin (probably need to drink more water that hasn’t had a teabag in it), so when I tried foundation when I was younger it looked super flaky and awful so I just stopped wearing it. I wasn’t all that taken with the idea of coating my face in a layer of foundation and powder when I was in high school and if it meant I had to get up 30mins to an hour earlier in order to apply it all I was like “nah”. If you don’t know – I am *big* fan of sleep and my bed, it would take a much bigger incentive than having a superficially flawless complexion to get me waking up at 6am or some shit like that.

First time wielding the liquid liner

Inherent laziness is a massive contributing factor to my bare-faced ways but there’s also the simple truth that I don’t really know what I’m doing. I never had someone showing me how to apply make-up, I literally only tried liquid eyeliner just before last Christmas and considering how naff the eyeliner I had was I thought I did quite well. My mother hasn’t worn daily make-up for more years than I can even remember so I never had the whole “stealing Mum’s lipstick and smearing it on my face” experience. The only thing I figured out to do was plonk eyeshadow on my eyelid and run a mascara wand through my lashes. I was also rather fond of taking a black kohl pencil to the lower waterline and I’ll be honest it worked for me so why do more?

While I was in high school I did wear eyeshadow & mascara most days but after I moved up into Sixth form I drifted away from wearing make-up and I’ve never really got back into it. I still prefer that extra time asleep and rely on some moisturiser to save my face from looking truly awful when I go to work. I don’t have great skin, my cheeks have a fair bit of redness to them all the time and my jaw and chin are a goddamn mess and are not showing signs of clearing up any time soon. I’m aware I could mask all that with foundation and concealer if I really wanted to but I just don’t like the feeling of a full face of make-up.

My god that eyeshadow O_O

The only time I’ve had someone else apply make-up for me (other than that time I was in a theatre production which we’re not talking about) was for my Year 11 Prom and boy, did I hate it. I was deeply uncomfortable that entire night, not just because my face felt like it was caked in make-up. My hair, which had been curled at the hairdresser’s had dropped by the time I got home, I was wearing a stick-on bra thing because the dress was backless and these ridiculous tummy-tuck knickers that stopped on an awkward part of my hips and were so fucking visible under my satiny dress. I wanted to strip it all off and hide.

I’m now in a weird kind of limbo where I’d *like* to wear make-up to even out my crappy complexion but at the same time I don’t care enough to spend time and money applying it every day. For years the idea of buying products to essentially throw it away one day at a time just didn’t make economic sense to me and now I’m so ingrained in this mentality that it’s hard to cast it aside for the sake of feeling better about my appearance. It’s not even that I have outside pressure to look more aesthetically pleasing, no one in my life is telling me “oh you’d look so much prettier if you wore more make-up” but they will compliment me when I do wear it.

From following a lot of very cool women on social media I see some of the most bitchin’ make-up styles which frankly makes me super envious. I’m not brave enough to try attempting massive eyeliner wings, pastel lips or filled-in eyebrows without some kind of friend nearby to help me fix it when it invariably goes to shit. I also am in serious need of someone to properly assess my skin and say definitively what kind of products I ought to be using and what sort of make-up styles are just gonna be a no-no on my face.

That’s where Jess is gonna come in. Yes *that* Jess – Safe Space creator extraordinaire and my bestest friend nugget in this whole world (if you didn’t know, well now you know). We’ve talked about her helping me experiment with make-up and work out what suits me over the next few months. I have even given permission for her to do my make-up at some point, so look out for some hella awesome insta-pics in the future.

It’s a weird journey I’m on with make-up that keeps changing and evolving so maybe in a year or so I’ll feel more comfortable applying and wearing make-up or maybe I won’t. Who knows? We’ll have to see. I'll probably be back with another post about it if I have a break-through.