Today everyone has been complementing my hair. My hair. The same hair that’s been frizzy all my life, stopped growing and is falling out. It now sports random highlights in three colors (my natural unwashed blond/brown, blond and semi red brown) plus a healthy spattering of grey (Mom’s side of the family is greys early. I have only one aunt that doesn’t color her hair.) Today, instead of the self-consious chignon to hid my thinning back, I wore it down. I found out (with much trial and error through out my life) that a little bit of goo makes it curly and almost non-frizzy.
This is how my life goes. My mother wasn’t really interested in teaching us how to put on makeup…no one in our family was. I have a memory of my mother putting makeup on me once for a school play. I looked like a cheap whore at the age of 7. Really, my cheeks and lips were so red I all I needed was a blue afro and I could have been someone’s grandmother.
I paid for it though. I’m extremely allergic to a lot of makeup. I go dry, I get pimples and my face swells up. I finally learned some techniques and that I look good with browns, pinks and subtle reds from an Avon lady that did our Girl Scout Troop in 6th grade. But most of the stuff I tried made me swell so badly that it hurt.
In High School I a few friends do “make overs”. Frankly the I retained little of what went on during those session. I remember a few painful washes the next day and a lot of itching. Not fun.
In College I finally found a few things of eye shadow did okay. Eventually I learned how to wear it. I wore full make up (don’t laugh) only when required, and that was literally concealer, foundation, blush, eyeshadow, the end. If I could I got a way with eye makeup one…maybe lipstick. Things changed in the makeup world…but most of it felt nasty and treated me worse. Eventually I manged to find out that cream eyeliner was okay, either in stick, pot or liquid form. I can’t do things in straight lines so stick was the best.
Last year in Mexico, M. did my face with Bare Minerals. Not only did it not make my face do its impression of the elephant man, it looked good and felt good. It didn’t make me itch or look like a clown. Best of all…they told you how to put it on.
This year I finally bought the BM eye stuff. Power eyeliner takes a bit to get used to, but it and the eyeshadow are already much better than any other stuff I had. I bought their lipstick too which works like chapstick but isn’t. Yeah!
So back to the hair. I don’t like wearing it down. I have this fear that some one is going to come by a pull it. Not a playful tug, but a full on smack down hair grab. I used to wear it down a lot, but whenever I did my mother would throw a fit and accompany that fit with the full on hair pull.
Don’t make any mistake, it hurt like a bitch. I can still hear her screaming at me to get the hair out of my face.
So here I am, a 30+ year old with hair issues made worse by PCOS. Either way I’ve changed.
I try to wear my hair up or as curly as I can get it, I wear make up and I’m now nearly 4 sizes smaller than I’ve been for years.
Yet here I am checking to make sure I don’t have a bald spot, and unconsciously pulling my hair back.
Sigh.
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