My 600-hour adventure in beauty school. Learn more about the project or catch up with Orientation and Week 1.
Old-school “professional stage makeup box” from The Art of Stage Dancing by Ned Wayburn (1925) via Project Gutenberg.
I apply my first Daytime Face on Thursday night. Blanche is my model. We start giggling while I fuss over which foundation to use on her (Beauty U is not exactly well stocked with makeup colors for African-American women) and load product onto my disposable wedge sponge, but when I reach in to apply the first blob, I pause. Miss Lisa — our most experienced teacher, who owns her own spa and looks every bit the PTA mom until she shows you one of her tattoos — comes right over.
“It’s weird at first, right?” She says. “Don’t worry, you get used to touching people fast. Now I touch everyone all the time, even if we’re just having a conversation.”
The last time I did someone else’s makeup was at an eighth grade sleepover. Now I’m inches from another person’s freckles and eyelids and I can’t even remember her last name.
It is weird.
And it’s only going to get weirder when we move on to facials and waxing — so even if I don’t get used to it, I better get over it, I think is what Miss Lisa means.
2 Comments
It must be so intimate, right, because their eyes are right there, looking. When I’ve had my makeup done, I try so hard not to look at the person! Same with the dentist.
Wait. You’re going to learn to WAX people? Craziness.
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