Have you ever watched a woman you care about applying her makeup? I don't mean the rushing around kind where she waves a mascara wand in the car while driving with one knee like she's Don Quixote looking for a windmill to fight. I mean the kind that takes time -- where she leans into the mirror and highlights what she feels are her finer features. You can learn a lot about a gal in this process.
While I'm told they sell makeup north of the Mason-Dixon Line, I sincerely doubt those sales rival the market share held by Southern women. From infancy, we are taught to "put on our face" as soon as we rise. I even know some ladies who went so far as to not let their husbands see their faces sans makeup, getting up in the wee hours to dance with Maybelline, then lying back down so the husband would think she awoke fully "put together."
My mama was, as in many areas of her life, self-deprecating about the process. She used to call it "putting on her Bondo," a reference to the putty that mechanics used to fill in dings in the body of an automobile. And though she may have undervalued her beautiful attributes, some of my favorite memories came from watching her, especially as she let me try on makeup, too.
No publication was held in higher esteem in our household than the coveted Avon catalog. Our coffee table prominently displayed the Holy Bible and the latest Avon circular, though only one was dog-eared and heavily read.
And heaven help the Avon lady who had to deliver the news that a product had been discontinued. For us, it was Beach Blanket Mauve lipstick. I don't know when they stopped making it -- somewhere between rotary dial and push button phones -- but my mama was convinced that the day Beach Blanket Mauve gave way to Harlot Henna was the beginning of the end. She ordered all she could and strong-armed the Avon lady for every sample. When we used the last of it, she refused to toss the container. Might be a smidge left, she said.
My mama would dip her brush into a gold canister with cotton balls printed along the exterior -- Coty Airspun translucent loose face powder. She didn't trust the newer pressed powders, insisting they were "cakey." While she worked her magic, she'd tell of things on her mind, of the evening's events or how this color shadow would play up my eyes. For a moment, she was soft and gentle, then said, "Enough of all that," and away we'd go.
While dolling up recently for an evening out, I caught the smile of a gentleman friend as he watched me "Bondo."
"You don't need any of that, you know," he said.
"I'll have you know I won't even check the mail without lip gloss," I replied.
Perhaps the most telling thing about a lady applying makeup is not the reflection she sees, but the one a loved one sees as they watch. But I'm keeping my Avon lady on speed dial all the same.
NAN Our Town on 05/09/2019