Pig, Meet Lipstick

Like many women, I wear makeup.  Not around the house in my sweatpants, no, but even at my job where I work with only one other adult, I still put on mascara.  I think it makes me feel just a little more complete.  I've been wearing mascara since middle school, when one of my friends gave me an old Maybelline wand in that pink and green tube because my parents wouldn't buy me my own yet.

Now, several years later, I've bought enough makeup to fill up a couple of beauty boxes.

I know that doesn't sound like an impressive amount in an era of beauty gurus and makeup artist influencers who have entire rooms filled with cosmetics.  But, for me, this is a recent development, and an interesting one.  In the past couple of years, I've found myself buying more and more makeup, even though I don't wear a lot of it very often.  Now, I also like to buy a lot of skincare products - masks, cleansers, facial mists, what have you - because while I'm not one of those skincare girlies with 20 step routines morning and night, I like a face mask every now and then.  A little baby indulgence.

However, I now have eye palettes and primers and contour sticks and blushes and eyeliners and concealer and brow pencils and foundation and about a thousand different lip glosses.  This is a perfectly average collection, but I never thought I would ever be the girl who got into all that stuff.  Maybe it was a bad case of Not Like Other Girls syndrome, but I don't even think it was that - I never had it that bad.  Was never one to say that I liked to hang around the boys more because girls were too much drama.

There's a few things going on here, I think:

1. Buying stuff gives me a nice hit of serotonin.  Going home with a little bag or getting a package in the mail (FUCK, I love getting mail) is often the highlight of the day.
2. Makeup is fun to play with.  Skincare products are fun to play with.  I enjoy the process.  Even with all of its patriarchal, capitalistic baggage, there's an art to the application.  I like seeing the finished product.  It's like I'm painting, but my face is the canvas.
3. Speaking of patriarchal, capitalistic baggage, there's also a part of me that thinks with each product that it will be the one to finally make me pleased with my appearance.

The last point is kind of heavy, and while I'm not alone in thinking it, it's a very isolating thought.  But I think enough of us have experienced that feeling that I don't need to expand upon it.  Also, I don't want to pick at it too much right now.  Don't want to be getting too vulnerable on the internet today.

Anyway, I've got two packages coming in the mail, one from Colourpop and one from e.l.f.; one with lip masks and the other with a lip exfoliant and a brown eye pencil.  Who knows when I'll actually be in a situation where I need to wear eye pencil - not like I get out to do much else besides work and go to the Y - but I saw this cool rock star GF eye look I want to try out, and I think the pencil will be great for that, along with this liquid glitter eyeshadow I got a while back.  Now I just have to decide if I want to do a dark lip with it, or something more neutral.

That is, if I ever actually get around to doing it.

So, here's to the girlies who love makeup but are saving it for just the right moment.  Who love to buy it and love to apply it but almost never have occasion to.  We're slaying.