The real reason (some) moms don’t wear makeup.
If you came here expecting a feminist rant about the beauty industry and all of the bad things that they have done and/or continue to do to women, you’re not gonna find it here. Well, not today, anyway. It’s not that I don’t believe that many, if not all, of those claims are valid. However, I do, on rare occasions, indulge in the use of full-on makeup. Also, you’d have to wrestle my concealer out of my cold, dead hands. I firmly believe that without it, I would have a hard time convincing people that I am not a battered woman. The Irish DNA gave me super-extra-pale skin with a near transparent under-eye area that sometimes lets one look into my actual soul. Or maybe that’s just veins. Either way, eww.
The real reasons that moms like me don’t wear makeup are a lot less complex. The main one is that we’re just too effing busy. I cannot imagine adding one more thing to the daily schedule. I have seen how much time some of you amazing, dedicated, women put into your makeup routine. I’m usually proud of myself if I find the time to shave both legs — and not just mid-calf down, so I can wear capri leggings. I think the fact that a search of “makeup tutorial” on YouTube brings up 11,700,000 videos, where people try to teach the proper way to apply it, shows that this is way more work than I am willing to put into pretty much anything. I mean, I won’t even watch a six-minute video on how to fix my dryer and that’s been broken for like, two years.
Additionally, I am no artist and I think any makeup that I try to apply would end up making me look much less like a hot mom and much more like I was auditioning for clown school. And I don’t ever want anyone to call me Krusty — for any reason.
I remember in high school one of my friends desperately wanted to do a makeover on me, which was totally understandable. She did a wonderful job, with all the right shades that took into consideration if I was warm or cool (though I felt quite comfortable at the time). She was so excited by the outcome, bless her heart. She expressed her shock and dismay that I didn’t wear mascara, “It looks so great on you and really accentuates your eyes.”
“Yeah, girl, I love what you’ve done here, but it’s not gonna happen for me. I have this tendency to touch my eyes all the time so within 36 minutes of applying mascara, I look like a stunt double for Alice Cooper.”
She didn’t invite me to any Mary Kay parties.
Also, have you taken a look at the prices on some of this stuff? Makeup makes diamonds look cheap — and at least the diamonds last forever (which is the least they can do since the mining of them has destroyed entire countries — but that’s a rant for another day). I’m not trying to decide between my kids going to college and a tub of Crème de la Mer. In my younger years, I did a stint at Saks Fifth Avenue. One of the makeup reps gifted me a half-ounce container of the stuff. It was $100 — 20 years ago. I just looked it up now, and the 16-ounce container is exactly obscene dollars. I mean, it was super dreamy and I understand wanting to own it, but I also enjoy not being homeless and not having to sell any of my kidneys. Even lipstick can set you back. Ninety dollars for a tube of dead animal fat and isopropyl titanium triisostearate? For real? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I could feed my family for an entire week on that. No, seriously. A whole week.
Plus, at the end of all the long days, the last thing I need is the makeup removal process. I had a teacher once who was either mostly blind or just a bad judge of her actual skin tone. Her foundation made an abrupt stop at her jawline and was so significantly different in color than her neck that we kids used to imagine that she just removed her whole face, like a mask, and left it on her bathroom counter each night. As an adult, I can see that that would be a better option than trying to wash it all off. Since I am the Queen of Eye Smudging, I tried dabbling in the waterproof variety of mascara, only to find that, short of removing all of my eyelashes or resorting to sulfuric acid, that shite doesn’t come off. I even bought the special eye makeup remover and yet I’m pretty sure there is some leftover waterproof mascara from ’98 along my lash line.
The only good thing about makeup is that it’s the one area where natural and organic is often cheaper. And it comes with the added bonus of not testing on bunnies or beagles, which is sort of a requirement of mine. If you’re using ingredients that may blind someone so you have to apply it to bunny eyes first — just to be certain, I’m pretty sure I don’t want your product, anyway. If you want to check out your favorite lipstick to find out if it contains the rendered fat of euthanized dogs and cats (yes, that’s actually a thing), check out the Environmental Working Groups Skin Deep database. While it makes shopping a bit more of a challenge, at least it can save you from blinding a puppy. And really, who wants to be responsible for blinding a puppy? The answer is no one, just in case you were wondering.
