It's a white girl problem

After being here for five weeks, making through my illness, getting a handle on my surroundings and finally feeling settled and strong in my purpose here I was ready to make some concessions to my western ways.  I can handle a fair amount of adversity.  I can handle virtually never feeling clean.  I can handle wearing clothes that feel like I am wearing a sack.  I can handle not wearing make-up.  What I can not handle is all three of these things all the time.  

I do not consider myself to be a prissy girl.  I have ripped a picnic table apart to use as firewood and I can adequately handle a drill.  However, I feel that I can safely say that the last time I went five weeks with out wearing a stitch of make up was easily before the Monica Lewinsky scandal.  I like red lipstick and fake eyelashes and I don't see anything wrong with that.  I have the kind of face that can take make-up like a drag queen.  In fact I have had several ask for advice, and I have decided to take that as a compliment.  It took me many years to figure out how to do my face and accentuate my features.  No one escapes the faze when your foundation is far too dark and not blended in with the rest of your skin.  Or when you don't know how to apply eyeliner to your upper lid so you just add more to the lower lid. Then of course there is my favorite awkward make up stage when you just wear whatever new sparkly eyeshadow Mary Kate and Ashley have put out applied as if by a tiny paint roller over your entire eyelid with nothing else.  Electrics blue is always a ballsy choice.  I know that many people may think I have a heavy hand when doing my face but because of my coloring, but I have realized that I am not able to do the "oh I'm not wearing make-up, I just naturally look like this" look.  So, I have simply chosen to boldly charge into my daily life sporting the "I am wearing make-up and I am not even a little bit sorry about it" look.  But I especially in my adulthood I have discovered the many steps it takes to make my face look balanced.  

Here is a glimpse at my daily make-up routine.  I wear very little foundation, I like to even it out more than cover it up.  I like my freckles and I don't want them to go away.  So, I cover up the imperfections (giant dark circles and annoying adulthood acne)  on my face and then apply a light layer of bare minerals powder to take care of any shininess. Then I move on to what is actually one of the most important parts of my face my eyebrows.  Eyebrows are so frequently overlooked when doing make-up but can really make a difference in your face, especially when like me, you don't have any.  For me, if I do my face and don't do my eyebrows it's like looking at a house with out a roof.  Even if the siding and the paint are great really, what's the point?  And in the summer when I want to lighten up on my make-up (because I'll sweat it off otherwise) I dye them a medium auburn color.  I twice tried having it done by a professional but both times had disastrous results. The first time the result had me looking like the most deplorable love child of Lucille Ball and Grouch Marx.  As it turns out, black eyebrows aren't really my look.  And the second time ended with a more suitable light brown color but unfortunately it was on one and a half brows.  Since then, I've just done it myself.  

Next, we move on to eye make-up.  There's a lot potential here, keep it simple or make it fun and colorful.  However, whatever I choose, I will certainly end with black eyeliner and mascara.  I know many people wonder why I don't go with brown, but I will say this, brown just end up looking kind of muddy, where black really makes my blue green eye color pop.  And I figure, no one is going to think I'm not wearing this stuff so, go big or go home.  Then lastly I sweep a little bronzer in an arc from the hollows of my cheeks to my temples, and a bit of blush on the apples of my cheeks.  I know this is extensive, but I also really like playing with make-up.  It's a full commitment but it certainly makes a difference.  

When I left home I did not intend on leaving my make-up at there, that was an accident.  But I wasn't too concerned.  I really didn't intend on putting a face on while I was here.  I felt that it would be good for me or good for my skin or something.  Mostly I just felt that I was coming here to focus on other things.  Also I had been warned about the groping situation with the Indian men here (we can save that for another post) and was prepared to go bare faced and baggy clothed for most of my trip.  Initially that sounded like a dream.  You must know that for all of my girliness I also asked for sweatpants for Christmas like four years in a row.  I am that girl who walks out of the house with a full face of make-up and hair and then is in sweatpants.  The point that I am dancing around is, I was fine with the idea of sweatpants and no make-up for four months.  

However, after my bout with all of the illnesses, I came to the realization that I didn't want to feel gross anymore, I wanted to be presentable.  If I understand this correctly I believe that this is a common side affect of being a grown-up.  The easiest and cheapest solution to this would be the purchase of make-up.  So, after I had recovered I ventured out to attempt to track down some products that would work.  Now, when home unless it is the middle of the summer and I have spent a good deal of time outside I always need to buy the fairest foundation available.  I have usually have the same skin tone as a vampire, so I knew I had a tall order.   Granted, there are entire lines of products here dedicated to whitening your skin here.  Big american companies put out all sorts of products from body lotion, to face and night cream, to a spray for your armpits.  "White armpits will drive your man wild."  What?! All these years I had no idea I should be concerned about the color of the skin in my armpits.  

The best part of those advertisements is all the women in strapless dresses.  What part of India are women wearing dresses like that?  I will tell you.  Nowhere. This country is very conservative in the décolletage, shoulders and back region.  Which makes these advertisements all the more silly.  But what I knew from all of this is that I had a little bit better than a snowball's chance in hell of finding some any products for my skin tone.

When I walk into the first shop I decide to just try to track down some suitable eye make-up.  I walk up to the counter where there is a group of women ready to help potential customers navigate their meager selection.  I am shown some foundation that they recommend for my skin that would be an Italian girl's summer foundation.  One woman tries very hard to sell me some teal eyeliner and I assure her that I don't think the nuns I work with would appreciate it.  She is able to help me out with some eyeliner and mascara that I will use, but when I ask her if they have any matte brown eyeshadow with no sparkles or shimmer things start to get interesting.  She assures me that they do have what I am looking for and takes my hand and repeats my phrase "brown eyeshadow, no sparkles" back to me as she smears sparkly copper eyeshadow across the back of my hand.  I am greatly amused at the thought of having shiny penny eyebrows, but then elaborate on what I intend on using this for.  When I say that it is to color in my eyebrows she gives a slight chuckle of realization and then delves into the cabinet and retrieves a champagne gold color liquid eyeshadow.  We have taken a step back.  I look perplexed for a moment and attempt another explanation.  After a few more exchanges I realize that I am getting nowhere and just take the mascara and eyeliner.  

On my way back I see another store that advertises having Maybelline and Cover Girl products.   I am greeted by another group of women who are ready to deck me out and experience deja vu as the exact same scene right down to the dialogue replays in this store.  I again try to elaborate on what I will be using this for and the women do not comprehend me.  Unibrows are a highly common here so I can understand why no one is looking to darken their eyebrows. 

Later that night, the Tucker family and I ended up venturing out to the South Street Mall.  A mall that is just as nice as any mall I have ever been to anywhere.  They even had toilet paper and soap I the bathroom. There was a crocs store, a multiplex movie theater and a subway sandwich shop, but don't ask for ranch dressing.  There were escalators and everything was very clean.   I was in heaven.  It almost felt like home.  After getting dinner at the food court, we wandered around looking at the fancy shops with western clothing.  I have rarely ever wanted to don a dress as desperately as I do now.  Anything whimsical and fancy really.  It does a girl good to be fancy every so often.  But after a while, when it just started to just get depressing looking at the dresses, I made my way to a department store called Pantaloons where I figured they would have the best selection in make-up.  I headed to the make-up counter where there were many women eager to help someone, anyone.  I looked at the many different sections to see what they would have for brands here.  I find it highly comical that at a department store in London or Paris or anywhere in the states you would find high brow designer brands like Estée Lauder or Clinique where as here I was looking at the the very exotic brand Maybelline.  A brand you normally find a Walmart.  However, at this point I don't care, at all. 

I talk to the woman at the Maybelline counter and explain my predicament.  And as the scene from earlier in the day is about to replay for the third time I stop her and slowly explain that I am looking to color in my eyebrows.  She pauses, looking a bit perplexed, and I commiserate "I know, it's a white girl problem."   But when I ask for a brown eyeliner pencil, comprehension dawns on her face and she pull out a brown eyeshadow pallet. There is a color that is a a bit sparkly but close enough.  I also purchase some other pieces and when as I get ready to leave she exclaims that I have purchased enough to receive a case.  She holds up two garish vinyl make-up bags almost shaped like a heart and informs me that I have a choice between pepto bismal pink and purple.  I would have found these ugly when I was in elementary school and dry reply "Obviously the purple one.".  She smiles kindly and her obtuseness to my sarcasm makes me feel like a jerk.  

A warning to all of my witty  sardonic friends and family members, Indian people are impervious to sarcasm and no amount of exaggeration in delivery will make them understand.  In the end, you come off looking like an a-hole.  No matter how much I try to remind myself to refrain from the use of sarcasm, I seem to weekly have a sticky moment where I appear to be a cad.  

After the acquisition of the materials necessary to paint my face on.  I felt like a whole new woman, almost.  There was matter of my eyebrows.  I have never been able to shape them myself.  This was never quite so evident as when they were jet black that one harrowing afternoon.  After voicing this Kate informed me of a beauty parlor that was one block over from Sudder St that did waxing and threading.  Soon enough we found ourselves walking through the door that said "ladies only" and climbing the stairs.  We were greeted by several women who more than happy to be pulled out of their perpetual state of ennui by our arrival.  We enquired about leg waxing and threading and I was lead over to a chair and two women whipped off my painted on brows to reveal the two blonde caterpillars perched on my forehead.  Then one swept down pulling the skin taught while the other woman proceeded to clean up my brows with her thread.  Threading is nothing I understand.  They take a long piece of thread and twist it and then move it over the offending hairy areas.  Essentially these women cat's cradle your hair off.  It seems like witchcraft, but whatever gets the job done.  

Meanwhile, Kate was whisked over to a row of several chairs where a woman approached with a bowl of hot wax and several fabric strips.  Her five year old son Ray had accompanied us to the beauty parlor and was intrigued by the gruesome prospect of his mom getting her hair ripped out ... on purpose.  Ray watched and held his mothers hand as the woman spread the hot wax over her skin, pressed the cloth piece down and then pulled each strip off.  He only exclaimed once when his mom squeezed his hand too hard.  And he eagerly scampered over to sit next to me when it was my turn to endure this insanity.  

All the while, the women were talking to each other about the state of our feet.  Managing your feet here is a full time job.  Because the streets are mostly dirt and it is too hot to wear anything but sandals your feet take a beating daily.  Every night I soak and then scrub them down in an attempt to prevent my heels from cracking further and return them to a normal human color as opposed to the swampy black they usually are.  I do not envy the poor pedicurist who is going try to fix my feet when I return.  In the beauty parlor the woman looked at our feet in horror and assured us that they would give us "normal feet". As tempting as it was we had not scheduled that for ourselves and had to depart after the waxing.

At the end of it all I spent three hundred rupees for everything, including the tips.  That is about six American dollars and easily one tenth of what I would have paid for just the leg waxing back home.  What a bargain!

The thing I had learned from all of this is that it is not selfish to want to be presentable.  There something to be said about not wanting to completely let yourself go.  I feel that it is not a luxury but a strong dose of medicine to ensure that I don't loose my mind in the middle of all of this mess of women putting their infants to bed on the sidewalk and men shooting up heroin in between their toes in the gutter.  I am willing to give a lot of myself to try to lend a helping hand here, but I won't give my sanity.  And if clean eyebrows and mascara help I don't see anything wrong with that.