When I turned 13, my mother bought me a set of makeup from Clinique: a bottle of flesh-colored foundation; blush that came in a green marbled compact with a tiny brush; a mirrored box that slid out to reveal a tray of neutral eyeshadows in varying shades of brown; a subtle semi-gloss lipstick in a ribbed silver case called Mauve Crystal.
While most of my friends were buying cheap candy-colored nail polish and Wet ‘N Wild lipstick at CVS, I had the beauty regimen of a 30-year-old.
“You don’t go cheap on your face,” my mother said.
For a while now she had been pulling me into her bathroom to scrub blush onto my cheeks before school (“You look wan,” she said). I was the only one in junior high who had a dermatologist-issued moisturizer, a fragrance-free souffle in a jar that I had to tote with me wherever I went, even to the pool.
The message was clear: Your face is important, and you don’t muck it up with crap you bought for $4. If it was worth doing, it was worth doing well.
I credit this early training with my expensive Sephora habit, my avoidance of drugstore cosmetics, and my unquenchable demand for nothing short of the good stuff. I’ll reuse the same teabag 5 times in a day, but I’ll go all in for a good gloss in just the right shade of coral.
My sisters are aficionados of the face. They know exactly what MAC pencil has the right amount of glide, which mascara provides the most lift and reach. The perfect shimmery base, the most believable bronze. Their cheekbones are pronounced and their lashes are like jazz hands.
I like the stuff, but in my family I’m a chronic underuser. “Are you even wearing makeup?” my sister Kim leans in, peering at me through her ample lashes like two glossy fronds. The day she went into labor with her first child, Kim applied two waterproof coats of “Better Than Sex” mascara before grabbing her overnight bag and heading out the door.
I feel like I am wearing a lot of makeup. But it’s never enough. She sits back. “You could use a touch more.”
My youngest sister Lori applies her face with a professional hand—she can create a dramatic, Asian eye, or a sophisticated daytime glow. She has even done weddings, on occasion. She looks different every time I see her. I look precisely the same. “A little more liner would help,” she says. “You have to really define the eye.”
Every Christmas, Lori picks out one or two new items for me to work into my regimen in the new year. It’s like a long apprenticeship. “This is liquid eyeliner,” “This is a lash curler,” “This is a cool palette. You should really save the warm for summer,” and “I know this looks bright, but you can totally carry this blue. Trust me.”
In their defense, they never once made me feel I wasn’t pretty enough, or that I needed extra help. It really wasn’t about that. Nor did I ever get the impression that they were compensating for something else, or thinking that I should. They have the very best approach to it I’ve seen—your face is a big party, so why not liven up the joint? Why not show off what you’ve got.
And despite my light hand, I have become a bit of a makeup snob myself, fully adopting their cosmetic worldview. We were at a fundraiser and saw a woman around our age, maybe younger, who had showed up in a hot pink dress and not a stitch of makeup. Her face looked as if she’d just scrubbed it clean, thrown on the dress, and walked out. She wasn’t young, exactly, but she also was too old to not make a smidge of effort. Especially when you went to the expense of buying an outfit and putting on heels.
“What is she thinking?” Kim said. “It looks like she’s trying the dress on.” I had to agree. Why bother with any of it if you’re not going to commit to the illusion. My mother would have pulled that girl aside and insisted on just a little blush, for chrissakes.
In truth, I actually really enjoy the ritual, the brushes, the applicators, the wands—a fitting term, after all, when we are working a bit of magic. There’s something to watching your face spring to life. Every stroke or shadow doesn’t hide, but highlights, acknowledges what’s there and says, this is worth seeing. When I’m particularly proud of my handiwork, I’ll send a selfie to my sisters and get a thumbs up emoji in return, perhaps a gif of Beyonce swinging her hips in canary yellow dress, wielding a bat into a windshield.
I’m crushing it, clearly.