The Will To Beauty
Cosmetics advertisements from the mid-twentieth century are charming. Avon used illustrations and slowly phased in the regular use of photographs in the 1960s.
My first attempt to find the right foundation was a flop. In part one, I went to the drug store and took my best guess. It was overwhelming, took awhile, and there was no one to help me. The good news is I can return the makeup. The bad news is I accidently threw the receipt away, so I’m going to have to unload this dud at the family Christmas party.
What can I do to avoid going to the drug store again? I could order a bunch of foundations online, try them all, and send back the ones that don’t work. That sounds good, but considering my poor track record with returns, I may be down all that money and pushing off six foundations onto my sisters. There are the high-end department store makeup counters. I aspire to wear Chanel one day, but today is not that day. I’m not worthy. An Ulta Beauty has popped up nearby and I’ve been looking for a reason to visit. Maybe they have samples.
I had about 10 minutes one day to go in and check it out. It was huge inside and there were a lot of smiling, lovely ladies in aprons on hand to help. The right half of the store had samples available – everything from Este Lauder to Urban Decay. I chose an isle at random in the section where the less expensive makeup was and told the sales woman I was hoping to be matched for a foundation. She checked my wrist to determine my undertones, then whipped out a fresh makeup sponge, grabbed a compact off the shelf and had me matched in less than a minute. It was a mineral foundation called Pur. (Like the water filter?) I was at the end of my 10 minutes. The makeup was in my hand. It was SPF 15. A bit more expensive than I was shooting for, but not too bad. I bought it and got out of there.
It blended into my wrist and disappeared. It looked a bit golden on my face at first, but ultimately blends in pretty well. Turns out my face is pinker than my wrist. This could be a match, but I’m going to try it a month before deciding. Mineral foundation is a different beast than liquid. I have to figure out how to apply it so it isn’t blotchy.
Finding the right foundation has been a hassle. I tried to do it in my early 20’s and gave up. I liked the way my natural skin looked, so I left it for another decade… and here we are. I still like the way my skin looks, though I have a few fine lines now. It’s more the principle of the thing. I’m 34 and I feel like I should know about makeup. (I thought I knew more about makeup before I started this blog). Really motivated teenagers can figure it out, so it can’t be that hard, right? I recently spent an hour at my local drug store gazing at foundation bottles, holding them against my face and wrist trying to choose the one that blended in the best.
The ultimate way to know if a foundation is your match is to try it on your jawline then go outside and check it in the sun. You can settle for rubbing it on the inside of your wrist. There were no samples available at my drug store and no one around to help. Already feeling awkward, I didn’t want to discreetly squirt foundation on my person, so I settled for a liquid foundation that appeared to match (it was inexpensive and the cashier said I could return it if needed.)
I tried it on my wrist outside the store and it looked like a winner. Unfortunately, when I applied it to my face at home with the finishing powder it was too light. To be precise, I looked like I needed a blood transfusion. Well, I was expecting a hassle.
Find out what happens in Part Two.
I had twin boys in April and have been so busy with them that I haven’t had time to update my blog. I miss writing about beauty and art, so instead of creating zero content until my babies will sleep through the night, I’m going to keep a little running journal of my beauty exploits and the things that I learn about cosmetics and dressing well. The entries will be small bites, but it’s fitting because that’s how my life is these days. There’s only a little time to devote to my personal interests and wellbeing. Since my husband has started working nights I’m lucky if I can get a shower twice a week. (So gross, right?) I have discovered dry shampoo. It’s similar to hair spray, but it’s like an aerosolized white powder that sucks up oil from hair. I spray it on, rub it in, and my hair looks about 60-70% better. I use it if I have to leave the house on the weekdays. It has a very strong tropical smell, though, so if you’re sensitive to fragrance look for a fragrance-free version. I wish I knew about this stuff in college – it would have come in handy during finals week.
The benefits of rosewater for skin and hair are numerous, so why miss out when you can make it at home on your own stove? Below, is a recipe for rosewater that is easy, requires few ingredients, and is ideal for first-timers. I walk through the process in a video tutorial at the bottom of this page.
I don’t have a lot of time to paint my nails. Because of this, the enamels that make the cut for my Nail Polish of the Week on social media must look great after a single coat, spread well, and dry fast. I’ve done the vetting. Now it’s your turn to decide which is your favorite Nail Polish of 2020. Look through the nail polishes below, then vote at the bottom of the page.
We all want to be in good health. To celebrate the new year I’ve created an 8.5″ x 11″ mini-poster with ten simple thing to do every day for better health. You can download the image below to your desktop by right-clicking and choosing Save Image As. If you would like to print this image, you can download the print-friendly version by going here. It’s much larger. Once you save it to your computer, right-click the file and choose Print.
The world as we know it has ended. The buildings are all abandoned and the undead stalk the streets. It would have been way more interesting if it had turned out that way. Actually, nothing happened. In fact, I was so bored that on Day Seven I started to feel resentful that my mother-in-law didn’t even have the decency to get sick after all those months I spent worrying about her health. (I thought this thing was supposed to be contagious!) I apologize for my flippancy. I’m a little nutty from being inside for so long. So what did actually happen? My positive Covid19 test came back on January 29, 2020. I didn’t start really having symptoms until January 31 – coughing, congestion, feeling too tired to get out of bed for more than a couple of minutes at a time. (The full description of the beginning of the sickness is in my last blog post.) I stayed that way for a few days, napping the virus off, but I never felt like I had been hit by a bus as with the flu. On Day Six, I was well enough to sit at my computer and try out digital painting for about two hours, but then I started feeling badly and went back to bed. I took this as a sign that I would be feeling a little better every day, but Covid19 is a weird illness. On Day Seven, I tried drinking a cup of coffee to perk up in the morning. I thought I may have enough energy to straighten up my house, but after the coffee I developed an intense need for a nap and was down again. My two-year-old became agitated and wanted to nurse the whole day (he usually does that when he’s sick.) He threw up twice in the evening and felt warm, but never ran a fever. He just snuggled up to me and woke up anytime I tried to get up. I began having indigestion and gastro-intestinal symptoms a few days earlier, so I figured he probably had a very mild case of Covid19. My husband has been suffering this illness along with me with pretty much the same symptoms. He had a burst of energy around Day Five and busied himself around the house. The next, he felt terrible and spent the day in bed. He genuinely felt better around Day Eight and has only needed to take a small nap here and there since.
The last day of isolation was yesterday. We are not supposed to be contagious anymore, but I’m still coughing and feeling tired. I lost my sense of smell around January 2, and it hasn’t returned yet. Our first-grader never developed symptoms. We kept her out of the room as much as possible, and it paid off. However, she will have to do schoolwork from home for the next ten days. Now that our contagious period has ended, her self-isolation period officially begins. The two-year-old seems to be feeling better and my mother-in-law is fine. We’re running out of diapers and groceries, so it’s good we can go out now.
Update: My first-grader has just emerged from her bedroom with a runny nose. We aren’t out of the woods yet.
I almost made it through 2020 unscathed, but it got me in the last week of the year. We aren’t locked down where I live and my brother-in-law visited for Christmas. I probably should have suspected he would bring the plague, because he gave me strep throat last year, but he didn’t appear sick. And anyway, he was the guest of my mother-in-law and we were staying in her home. Christmas came and went, my brother-in-law left, and my husband returned to work on Monday. At about 2:30 pm, my mother-in-law came into the room looking rather pale and told me our visitor had tested positive for Covid19. Seems he had stopped off to see a friend before Christmas and had contracted it there. Our minds both turned to my mother-in-law’s health. She was in her 70s and had at least three pre-existing conditions. She said her muscles were aching today and she had a bit of a cough. She went to lay down and I called my husband to tell him to get tested right away. He was already feeling ill. Unfortunately, it was too late in the day for any of the nearby clinics to test him. He came home with a fever and I put him to bed.
The next day, the whole family piled in the car and we went to the closest testing site. It was a little, white tent set up outside the library. An extensive line of cars wrapped around the building and out onto the road. In all, we waited about three hours in line. The testing itself was pretty quick and only mildly uncomfortable. We didn’t have to get out of the car. They just swabbed the inside of everyone’s nostrils with a q-tip and sent us on our way. We went home and waited again.
We received the results the next afternoon. My husband and I were positive, yet our two kiddos and my mother-in-law were negative. We were relieved to hear we didn’t all have it, but this created a bit of a problem. If you test positive, the guidelines are for you to stay as far away from others as possible to minimize spread. My mother-in-law could barely care for herself because of her condition. No way would she be able to care for young children too. We did the best we could to self-isolate, while at times venturing out to make peanut butter sandwiches and fill up cups of juice.
The next day, New Year’s Eve, noticeable symptoms finally set in for me. I felt tired all day, my residual cough that had been hanging around since the last time I had a cold became constant. I felt congested and my throat started to hurt a little. Oddly, the feeling of not being able to breathe well had bothered me on Monday and Tuesday, but was gone now. I napped most of the day, but managed to wake up just before midnight to watch the year change. Happy 2021.
I was worse New Year’s Day and slept a lot. My husband was feeling a little better and made a chicken for the family. I enjoyed what I could taste of it. That brings us to the present moment and how I’m getting groggy typing this. I have a mild case of Covid19 and I would opt for this over strep throat again. The worst part is the anxiety that my mother-in-law could catch it and end up on a ventilator. We’re doing the best we can to prevent that. Actually now that I have Covid, I feel relieved. This is what all the worry for the last 9 months was about? I worry too much. I’m off to bed again.
I am revving up production for the fair woman’s beauty and skin care guide. It’s to be a well-researched online reference with custom fashion art and downloadable infographics you can save to your computer or print and hang by your mirror.
I’m taking on the challenge of doing the illustrations myself. I have a bit of experience with figure drawing, but I’ve never done fashion illustration before, so I have some learning and practice to do. My husband gave me a drawing tablet for my birthday, and that should speed things along once I figure out how to use it. The best of my practice will be posted on social media.
In addition to illustration, I will have to do a lot of research for the guide, which will be time consuming. I bring this up so that readers understand why I am taking a break from making content about art and culture for a while.
Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Telegram to see what I’m doing daily. I’ll share interesting articles I find, the best of my drawings, and, of course, the Nail Polish of the Week (it’s the high point of my Saturdays.) Segments of the guide will be published as they are ready. As of today, it will be all about the work and I won’t mention politics or my opinions about current events.
Alise Elaine 