High Fashion Girl

Jezebel tends to be one of my favorite sites to visit. This time, they got an article wrong (from my perspective). Granted, the experience the writer has had with makeup and hair stylist has been, for the most part, negative, I would ask that they not punish the entire makeup artist profession because of these negative experiences.

No one will make you feel like shit like a makeup artist will. Oh sure, there are abusive boyfriends, manipulative mothers-in-law, overzealous law enforcement officers…but it takes a makeup artist to peer deeply into your pores and castigate every single one of your personal habits while smearing your face with a dozen bacteria-ridden irritants and PROFESSING an interest in making you look good because, after all, it’s a makeup artist you’re talking to, and to have makeup professionally applied is to sit willingly in on the sermon of a high priestess of Let’s Be Honest, Is There Really Anything More To Life?

I am a nice person. I rescue animals. I give to charities. I give generously to my friends without expecting anything in return. I am an over-gifter, a perpetual volunteer. This is part of my nature. As a makeup artist, I have never criticized my client or a model about their looks or physical features. Being the subject of a makeover isn’t always a fun experience. You’re at the hands of a virtual stranger in an intimate setting. The last thing I would want is criticism about my skin, my blackheads, or my blonde moo-staché. In fact, I do the opposite: I compliment. Oh, your skin is so good! This color is going to look fantastic with your tan! Your eyes are such a beautiful shade and they go so well with this eyeshadow! You get the picture. It’s been my experience that it’s the recipient of the makeup who is critical. There have been countless times that I’ve been doing a wonderful job on their makeup only to ask for it to be removed and replaced with bright baby blue eyeshadow and neon pink lips (in a non-ironic throwback to the 80’s). Let me clue you in: unless you are Pat McGrath or Gucci Westman you will at times feel insecure about your creations. Feel free to compliment us from time to time (if we deserve it).

2) Bacteriffic brushes

They make these things that are like mascara wands that you dip, brush onto a model’s lashes, and then throw away. Steal them from Sephora if you must.

Once a makeup artist used a single-use brush for my first mascara application of the day, and then, a few hours later, dashed in for a touch-up with her Great Lash Waterproof’s own sticky, abused wand. “Oh,” she said, noting my horrified visage. “This mascara will just go on over the mascara you’re already wearing. So I’m not actually putting it on your eyes.”

Until you’re the one at risk of pink eye, I reserve the right to give you a don’t-piss-on-my-leg look. And to ask you to use my mascara, which I take with me to every job just in case.

Not in my case! My brushes are always cleaned before I do makeup. My toolkit is packed with anti-bacterial wipes, mist and hand sanitizer. Between touching your face and touching my makeup I am cleaning my hands. I don’t blow on my brushes or blow on my subject’s faces. Beyond sanitizing my hands between times that I touch your face, I physically go and wash my hands between subjects. This is mostly because the human face has a lot of bacteria on it, because I don’t want to transfer it to others or myself and because I have had bad experiences working with other makeup artists who were unhygienic.

3) Pointy pencils

Related to above: Makeup artists who try to use dirty, unsharpened eye and lip pencils, I hate you. And when I ask you, nicely, to please expose some fresh lead before you wave that shit all over my mucous membranes, it would be a relief if you were to resist the urge to pull back aghast, sneer playing about your lips, and furiously carve an eye pencil into a rapier point before raking it all over the inside of my upper and lower lids. Do you want me to cry? Because I will, and then you will have to do it all completely over again, and if that is what you want…well Sartre had a point I guess!

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I usually use eyeshadow in place of pencils, but when I do use pencils that are always soft and smudgy. I hate pointy pencils and I wouldn’t even use them on myself, much less a client or model.

5) Brainless commentary

“So, like, which are the Amish, and which are the Mormons? What’s the difference between the two? Really? So are the Mormons, like, Christian? Huh. Where do the Amish live? What about Quakers? Who are they? Ok. So which drive the horse-and-buggies? Do the people with the weird clothes drive the horse-and-buggies as well?” My, aren’t you curious! Have you ever considered retaining information? You won’t gain any water weight, I promise!

I am the quippy, funny makeup artist that keeps the whole room laughing. I can do this with ease as I also do makeup. I find it important because 1) It’s interesting and NOT brainless and 2) It helps alleviate the tension that is often felt in these situations. If you want to talk about politics or current events, we can do that too. I happen to be a news junkie and former philosophy student and from time to time I have been known to have interesting things to say.

7) Offensive smells

You’re going to be in my face. I don’t want to smell lashings of your: B.O., favorite perfume, last night’s booze, signature cologne, breakfast burrito, or halitosis. I’ll embrace the same scent-minimal lifestyle for your sake.

As one concerned with hygiene, I am keenly aware of the fact that I am in your face. I wear perfumed oil on my wrists, a nice smelling hand lotion, perfume on my decolletage and I chew gum. I don’t want to go the opposite direction and smell too overpoweringly (like you can smell me from a mile away), so all of these scents are subtle, yet pleasant. I am the best smelling makeup artist around. And let me tell you, my subjects can be quite smelly sometimes. But, I don’t bitch about it. I just do my job.

9) Stickybeaking

Yes, our jobs require us to spend a significant amount of time more or less gazing into each other’s eyes. Yes, I find this physical intimacy strangely out-of-place without its natural complement, intellectual and emotional intimacy. Yes, if we have conversational chemistry, I’d love, if it comes up, to tell you about this guy I once dated, or how I have this weird room-mate who never eats and that makes me uncomfortable, and I’d love to hear about your breakup and your cat and this asshole your best friend just started dating, too.

No, the answer is never to launch unprompted into monologue overshare mode. No, I do not appreciate pointed questions about personal matters from someone I met five minutes ago. No, I don’t want your financial advice, and I don’t want you to tell me that my prickliness is all because I’m a Capricorn, or because I must not have a close relationship with my sister, or some shit. There are plenty of topics I’m willing to talk about with a near-stranger, and a good few I’ll broach if the circumstances seem ripe. But do not treat me as your patient-listener BFF, and do not cast yourself in the role of my therapist, OK?

I share my personal life with my friends. If you are not my friend, you will know me as the easygoing, quippy makeup artist who smells good, makes you laugh and also makes you look fabulous.