Hyperspeed

Someone who has never painted their face sits at a vanity and sees a variety of creams, spreads, and powders; peaches and pink and brown and glitter. Yes, this is all there. There are products and brushes to apply them, palettes and lip liners and shiny glosses that get sticky on puckered lips. But a trained eye knows that makeup, this strange mask that we wrap ourselves in, is really a lot more.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been toying with the idea of bleaching my eyebrows. I know that I would love it, but it’s terrifying to change your face. After all, that’s what people know you by. They see you kiss and yell and whisper with your lips, sorrow in a welled up eye, anger from the furrow of your brow. Would people read me differently with blonded brows?

This question might sound trivial, but I don’t think it is. Right now, I’m too scared to bleach my eyebrows, so I’ve been using concealer to lighten them as a test run. Three small globs of peach paste, a spooly brush to blend it in. And all of the sudden I feel so very different. I feel alien. I feel tall. I feel sexy and strange, each quality brought out in more abundance than when my eyebrows are brown.

So of course, like everyone else, I just do my makeup. I allot 45 minutes before anything important to do a full beat. I enjoy putting it on. It’s methodical, consistent, and feminine. I like it enough that it becomes art. Bleached brows, smoky eyes, blending blush into the temple, fake freckles, gradient lips. There are so many faces to try on, some cocky and others distinguished.

I listen to music and sit on the floor, licking Q-tips and smiling at myself in my little vanity, thrilled with the glitter and the girl of it all. But I am also aware that as often as I want to do this little routine, I also do it because I simply have to. People are nicer to you when you look pretty. I get tipped best at work with layered mascara and contoured cheekbones. Doors are not only open, they are held for you.