2002-06-27 - 4:49 p.m.

Painting My Face

I’m not what you’d call artistic. I like to knit and crochet, and I can do lovely embroidery, but I’m not a really creative person. The only drawing or painting I’ve ever done successfully was to paint my face. My mother urged me to use cosmetics, and I wore makeup regularly, beginning in my early teens. You see, I was a sallow child. It must have been a great sin, for she never allowed me to forget it. Mother tried to compensate by dressing me in pink, but it wasn’t very effective.

(Actually, mother was really an expert on color, as we found out when she went to work in a decorating department. It was years before I understood why a yellow hand-me-down looked so good on me. I don’t know how come she didn’t see that earlier.)

Of course, any makeup, other than a little pink lipstick, was not appropriate for young girls then (really, it still isn’t). So I made sure that my makeup didn’t show. I used light foundations close to my own skin color. I mixed my own blushers because the cheek color available at that time was always too dark to be subtle. I figured I had accomplished what I was trying to do when a friend of mine noticed, “gee, you have pimples too, but they don’t show.” My makeup camouflaged the acne, but she didn’t realize I was wearing makeup.

I dutifully removed my makeup each night, using simple, inexpensive products like baby oil, soap and Noxzema. (I used whatever soap my mother bought, and it usually left my face a little irritated, so I would dab on a little Noxzema to soothe it. I had that problem until my baby’s doctor recommended using Dove; I’ve been using it ever since.)

When I lived in a college dorm, the other girls knew I had the right cosmetics. Many asked my opinion or if they could borrow my blusher. Patiently softening an eyebrow pencil in baby oil, I learned to outline my eyes. The first time I dared wear it to supper, someone said, “You’re wearing that…stuff.” (We didn’t even know a word for it yet.) “It looks good.” You can identify your friends – they’re the ones who really look at you.

Sometime in my twenties I received a compliment on my nice skin (the first time I’d ever heard that), and I repeated it to my mother. “Of course you have nice skin,” she said, “I oiled you every day for two months.” Was that the same woman who berated me daily because I was so pale?

And that reminds me of another piece of reverse luck.

I was seldom able to go to the beach as often as my friends, so I did my sunbathing in my own backyard, where the rays weren’t as strong. And even though I envied their golden tans, I knew I would never achieve that color because I found just lying in the sun plain boring. So I would sit up and read, with my back to the sun and nothing shining on my face. I had some good color on my back, on my arms and legs, but very little on my sallow face.

All that gentle cleaning and the daily protection of makeup, as well as not sun burning my face, continues as a routine after all these years. I’ve learned to read the ingredients on cosmetics and use the cheapest thing that works. For example, I used plain glycerine and water as a moisturizer, and then added baby oil (which is just mineral oil and fragrance) as my skin grew drier.

Around that time, a cosmetics specialist demonstrated an “anti-aging cream,” a silly name for what might be a useful product. I also looked at a sample of “creamy baby oil,” which I received in the mail. Each contained water, glycerine, and mineral oil. The fancy cream also contained a small amount of sun block, which of course you can obtain elsewhere; it was $25 an ounce. The creamy baby oil costs about $5 for eight ounces. I still use it. (See that, Tattodnanny, my own brand of “oil of bobo.”)

If I’m going somewhere formal, I use a light makeup (because I’m still sallow). If I’m going to be exposed to a lot of sun (as when I was in southern California), I use sun block. Occasionally I use a moisturizer containing a little petrolatum (Vaseline), because it helps reduce the appearance of wrinkles (just like the stuff they advertise on television, but far less expensive).

Here I am, with this fairly young-looking skin. It’s really pretty smooth, if I do say so. But will someone explain how come I developed a real, honest-to-goodness adolescent zit the same week I applied for Social Security?

Is that what they mean by “young at heart?”

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