All Made Up

Brought to you by the mirror on the wall.

I’m no good at public primping. It’s not just because I’ve always been the anti-Barbie; I simply never practiced when I was growing up. In my hometown, one of the worst types of criticism that could be leveled at a girl or a woman was that she was conceited or otherwise full of herself. Unless you wanted to be razzed about your vanity for weeks on end, you didn’t spend more than a moment looking in a mirror anywhere anyone could see you. Anything beyond smoothing your hair, straightening your blouse, and checking your teeth for stray flakes of parsley definitely meant you were too into your own good looks and needed taking down a peg. You could buy a little leeway with an “I’m so fat,” but not much, because then you were just fishing for compliments on your figure.

You think I’m kidding? The code was strict. I remember once watching, while waiting my turn in a high school bathroom, a classmate spending several minutes refeathering her hair and draping her sweater just right. I also remember the names we all called her as soon as she was out the door, and how the rest of us made a point of being virtuously quick with our own washing up.

Damned vain if you do and damned vain if you don’t. Get it? Out in public, expect to be looked at by everyone but yourself.

But only public primping was verboten. Hometown propriety also required that girls and women be seen to have made an effort to look nice, because anyone who didn’t was automatically either admitting defeat (the ugly girls, how sad) or silently sneering at the rest because they thought they already looked okay, which is of course a sin.

So you had to make an effort — in the privacy of your own home. But not too much of an effort. Being visibly made up or having overly styled hair was a sign of either ineptitude or sluttiness, possibly both. I, like everyone else, spent countless hours in front of the bathroom mirror applying layer after layer of spackle and spray trying to achieve the “natural” look.

I made the too-much-effort mistake once — once — in junior high. I showed up at school bearing evidence of one of my first forays into cosmetics (blue eye shadow; it was the early 80s, okay? cut me some slack), and my nemesis CheRae took great pleasure in pointing out to the entire junior high band that I’d finally decided to become one of the big girls. I remember where both of us were standing, what my classmates’ laughter sounded like, and how hot my face felt. I scraped off the blue at the first opportunity and didn’t try eye shadow again until high school.

Old habits die hard. I still won’t do more than glance at myself in a public restroom mirror, even if I’m the only one there. Just long enough to see that my hair and clothes aren’t in too much disarray. Hell, I won’t even look my reflection in the eye while I wash my hands. What kind of woman stares at herself in the mirror all day? An uppity slut, that’s what kind, and my mother did not raise me to be an uppity slut, thank you very much.

By the same token, I still don’t leave my house for anything but a workout without a dusting of powder on my nose and a swipe of mascara on my eyelashes. You wouldn’t know it to look at me — and that’s the point. You’re supposed to know that I tried, but not how hard. You’re supposed to know that I care, but not how much.

Stupid, right? Here I am a powerful, confident, independent, 21st-century womanhearmeroar, yet I’m still following the arbitrary rules of junior high society.

If I ever truly grow up and move away from that place, I’ll send you a postcard. A pretty one. But not too pretty.

Today around the world: November 29 is Unity Day in Vanuatu (part of Oceania, group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean, about three-quarters of the way from Hawaii to Australia).