Snarky in the Suburbs: Makeup artists make faces look like art projects

The one of many things that blows about being an adult is that your Christmas list is tempered with loads of fiscal common sense. Last month, we got our house painted so that means it’s Merry Christmas/happy birthday/anniversary and any other major and minor gift-giving days to me and my husband.

Not that any of that has stopped me from jotting down a couple of little things I’d like for Christmas. They’re not presents actually, but more of a wish list of annoyances I’d like to see eradicated.

The one thing I really, really want is for the current make up trend of contouring to go away and never come back. Someone please explain to me how treating your face like a paint-by-number kit is a pleasing visual. All that shading and shadowing of every facial nook and cranny is ridiculous. I don’t care how much you blend in the 20 different colors of beige foundation and concealer, your face is still going to look like an art project.

I did the whole contouring one time only because I was bullied, yes bullied, by an overzealous makeup counter salesperson. She pummeled my face with brushes and pots of goo all bearing names like fawn, biscuit, ecru and even sandy loam because when I think of expensive make up the first thing that comes to mind is “heck yeah, I want to slather on some landscaping soil.”

The whole makeup/makeover was a failure. The cosmetic counter lady was horrible at selling to women who are now stopping to read the bladder leakage ads in magazines. (Can you believe there’s something called a lazy urethra? A guy must have thought up that name because a woman would have named the condition “lady parts battered by childbirth due to kids’ having enormous heads combined with never having enough time to fully empty my bladder equals me being this close to always peeing my pants. Thank you, children I birthed who now ignore me.”) Instead of telling me how she was “camouflaging” my “puffy, wrinkled” face she should have been cooing (read: lying) about highlighting my amazing eyes. Worse, when she was done I looked like a monochromatic finger painting.

All this couldn’t have happened at a more difficult time. You see, I had been a little down in the dumps about my less-than-youthful face, and when this happens, my go-to is a trip to the cosmetics counter. Not in an attempt to be transformed, mind you, but to get a little ego boost. I do this by lying about my age. I tell the makeup people I’m 10 years older than I’m actually am. Yes, I know this sounds counterintuitive, but hear me out.

When I do this, all they talk about the whole time I’m being waited on is how good I look! Who cares if it’s because I’m masquerading as a decade older. It’s compliments, people. One time a whole group of Lancome girls swarmed me like a Honeybaked ham at a family reunion and hand to God, oohed and ahhed. Do you know the last time anyone ooh and ahhed me? How about almost never.

Then, oh yes indeed, it gets better: Two chicks from the Estee Lauder counter came over and joined in the chorus and the always super snooty Chanel makeup lady who has a serious heavy hand with her personal eyeliner application strolls by and does a thorough examination of my face and pronounces me “incredibly poreless for my age.” I was walking on sunshine and all it cost me was a portion of my dignity and a tube of Definicils mascara. That’s a bargain in my book.

Now imagine my deep emotional distress of going to the makeup counter, lying about my age, and instead of getting at least one paltry, “Really, I wouldn’t have guessed you were that old. You look like maybe 10 years younger,” all I receive is degrading comments about a jowl intervention and get my face contoured so severely I was embarrassed to do school pickup.

I blame all this on the whole contouring trend. Oh, don’t sit there and think that doesn’t even make sense. It does! Before 50 shades of beige, makeup people had the time to ooh and ahh. Now it’s about getting all up in your business with sandy loam foundation so you can have a highlighted brow line.

The next thing on my list is … Oh no, I’ve run out of words. Well, not run out, trust me I’ve got a lot more of those, but I’m only allowed 800 per column. I have to stop. That’s so not fair. I’ve have more stuff on my Christmas list. I haven’t even gotten to hating on fast dry deodorant. (Because who is so busy they don’t have a nanosecond for their underarms to enter a moisture-free zone?) Oh well, maybe next week.

This story was originally published December 15, 2015 at 5:28 PM with the headline "Snarky in the Suburbs: Makeup artists make faces look like art projects."