M is for Make-Up

When I was a teenager in the 1950s, the only make-up that most girls wore was lipstick. Maybelline was the brand. We never even thought of foundation or cheek color (or rouge, as it was called back then) or eye make-up of any kind. But the summer before Frank and I were to be married in December, my mother announced that I needed a little something extra.

We went to New Orleans one weekend, and while we were there, Mother took me to Maison Blanche to shop for make-up. She bought me the very best foundation, Alexandra de Markoff. She also bought cheek color, but I don’t remember the brand. I already had my Maybelline lipstick, so I was all set. I really didn’t think too much about how I looked, but the girls at college noticed, and that made me feel good. It was at that point that I decided that God wouldn’t have created make-up if he didn’t expect me to use it!

After Frank and I married and I ran out of foundation, I didn’t use it any more. We couldn’t afford it, but I learned to use my lipstick (not very expensive, even by poor college student standards) for cheek color.

I don’t recall not wearing make-up after we graduated and I started teaching; however, I don’t recall buying it. I’m sure it came from the dime store or drug store, though, because we didn’t have money for such extravagant purchases.

I remember going to a Mary Kay demonstration party where the consultant showed us how to use the MK products. I went home looking much better than I did when I went, but Frank wasn’t impressed enough with my beauty to let me part with the money that it would have taken to get all of the products that the consultant had convinced me that I needed. So much for good make-up.

A few years later after we were doing a bit better with our finances, I had my own checking account. It wasn’t all that much, but I had enough to purchase some Beauty Control make-up that a couple of friends were selling. I loved it! And both my students and my teacher friends noticed and thought I looked pretty. You see . . . God wanted me to be pretty, so He provided make-up.

And then a few years after that, in 1996, I retired from teaching and began working as a sales rep for a textbook company. By then, I was addicted to make-up, and I felt that I needed to look extra good for calling on teachers, principals, even superintendents in schools in the Panhandle of Florida. But . . . my friends were no longer consulting for and selling Beauty Control. However, I knew that my across-the-street neighbor was a Mary Kay consultant. I now was making enough money to be able to buy whatever products I wanted, but in order to not spend quite so much, I became a part of the company. I was a consultant, but I didn’t want to consult anyone; I just wanted to buy the rather expensive make-up for 50% of the selling price. Because I didn’t want to have to pack and unpack my make-up because of traveling, I bought two complete sets of everything. Now all I had to do was remember to put my overnight bag in the car.

In 2003, Frank and I moved to Cerrillos, New Mexico. Guess what! Hardly any ladies wear make-up here, and they take great pride in looking natural. I hate looking natural and put on my make-up even if I’m not going anywhere.

A few years after we moved here, I went back to Pensacola and got together with about six girlfriends. We went out to eat and then to the home of one of the ladies for dessert. I looked around the  room at my beautiful, make-up-wearing friends and called for quiet. I announced to them that there was more make-up and hair spray in that room than there is in all of the village of Cerrillos. 

I don’t think they’d go au naturale either. You see . . . they, too, know for sure that God wants us to wear make-up.