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. Loretta 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 — who teaches on Thursdays, owns her own day spa and looks every bit the PTA mom until she shows you one of her many 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.
4 Comments
November 25, 2009 at 3:29 PM
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.
December 3, 2009 at 4:15 AM
Wait. You’re going to learn to WAX people? Craziness.
December 3, 2009 at 7:45 AM
[...] Jenny. “You won’t hurt her.” We’re spending a lot more time talking about how to touch your client now that we’re done with makeup and starting skin care. “Always let them [...]
December 8, 2009 at 7:39 AM
[...] and dead skin cells trapped beneath the surface of the skin,” according to Milady’s. Miss Lisa says they may sometimes also be deposits of calcium or cholesterol, but then again, that could be [...]