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.