Kicking It: Beauty or the Beast?

You may recall I mentioned a recent trip to Texas in a previous column. No? Well, it really doesn’t matter either way, I was just looking for a transition from that column to this one.

Here is what happened while I was in Austin. I had an allergy attack and both eyes started itching. Crazy itchy. Lucky for me I was with my bridge partner who was staying with his friends and before we left for a Tex-Mex dinner, I asked our hostess if she could provide me with some eye make-up remover? By the time I asked, both of my eyes were unpleasantly itchy. Lucky for me she had the very same eye makeup remover that I use and, by taking off my mascara, my eyes soon recovered and started feeling normal again.

This has only happened one other time since May of last year, which happened when I was standing out in the wind while watching the grandkids thrash around in the shallow part of the San Diego Bay. We were staying at the beach rental and it was the windiest afternoon of my recollection. By the time I returned upstairs, I could barely open my scratchy eyes.

When I got back to Fallbrook, I tossed out all of my eye cosmetics. They’ve been replaced with hypo-allergenic, non-animal tested products. And it worked for a while. Mostly. Except for some reason in Austin, they didn’t.

Since I still had a long day of duplicate bridge the next day, I opted not to take a chance and did not apply any make-up on Monday. After all, everyone was masked so, I thought, what’s the big deal? No one besides my partner even knew me.

All was fine until the end of the day when I met up with a squad of Texas bridge gals in the powder room. One in particular, offered a back-handed compliment that reminded me of my former Texas sister-in-law. You know, that stretched-lipped smile with a sugar sweet comment like, “with your good figure, you really should wear make-up.” “Girl, you are never too old to look good. Ya, never know who is looking back.”

This comment was delivered by a smartly dressed lady of questionable years with pale pink overlined glossy-Goldie-Hahn lips and eyelashes you could hang a roof on. Clearly, a former Miss-Big-Haired-Texas Longhorn beauty back in the day.

Now in my defense, that was the only day in memory, that while attending a public event of a thousand people, I arrived without wearing makeup.

Yet, it was this encounter that got me wondering. When does a woman put down her makeup brush?

I for one wear makeup for myself. The possibility of passing a mirror without a glance is foreign to me and it seems prudent to add a bit of powder and mascara.

Maybe when I was much, much younger, I believed that adding an extra dab of eyeliner would enhance my chances to lure a fella, but, looking back, I am not so certain if that had any effect on my flirting successes or failures.

For the most part, I believe men are turned off by those unsightly clumps of goo that accumulate near the tear ducts. Certainly, Chandler Bing had a lot to say about it in a “Friends” episode.

What I have concluded from all of this pondering about makeup is first, my luring days are at an end. Second, I have discovered it’s more important to work on my personality than my rouge. And lastly, while a man may be intrigued by a certain lady’s endowed body parts, I’ve yet to meet a fellow who desires to be accosted by a rack of false eyelashes or gooey lip gloss.

Yet one truth remains, putting down the war paint will never make us equal to a man until we can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still believe ourselves to be sexy.