Funny.

Counter Attack
by Mary Roach

Primed, sealed, luminiser, cleansed and taken for a ride

It is my personal belief that the people who install the mirrors and lighting in department stores are direct chatoos with the cosmetic companies. All down the rows of rooms, you hear sad moans and horrified gasps of women confronted with their own fluorescent-lit reflections. My eye bags, I realised the other day while shopping with my friend Wendy, had ceased to be an anatomical feature and were approaching the status of an actual luggage. “You can almost see the little handles,” I wailed. Wendy was in the next room trying on a jacket. “My skin is green,” she was saying. I assured Wendy it was light reflecting off the jacket. “But the jacket is brown,” she said.

We went directly from there to the makeup department, where a facialist determined that we needed help; a whole new approach. As with all major renovations, this one was to begin with foundation. I told the salesgirl I don’t like foundation because it sinks into my skin into my wrinkles and makes them look deeper.

“That’s because you’re not a primer,” said the girl. Her name was Elaine. Her company actually sells a product called Face Primer. “You wouldn’t paint a room without putting on primer first, would you?”

“Of course not,” I said because my husband was not around to expose me as a liar.

In keeping with the home repair theme, this brand of make up was to be put on with brushes. Their salesgirl, who had got me into the chair, was applying primer with such brush. She suggested buying their four-pack of specialised make up brushes, which came in a pink leatherette case. “It is an investment,” she said. Did that mean that over time the brushes would become more valuable, and one day I could cash them in and retire? It did not. It meant they were expensive. The foundation brush alone cost $42.

“What is it, mink?” I asked. I was trying to be funny, but the line landed far shy of its mark, for the brush was in fact, Siberian blue squirrel. “I’ve never seen a blue squirrel,” Wendy commented.

“Now you know why,” I said. I pictured entry-level makeup company flacks, sent out to stalk the northern forests with pallet guns.

“Maybe they just trim their little tails and let them go,” Wendy said charitably.

Elaine said to my brush portfolio would last to 12 to15 years if I took care of the bristles. This entailed using the company’s Brush Bath and Brush Cleanser. “You want to treat them like your own hair,” Elaine said. She was wrong. I wanted to treat them like squirrels treat their own hair. Shouldn’t that be enough?

Elaine wasn’t listening. She had moved on. She was applying a $35 skin luminiser which she said, “minimises fine lines.” For instance, the fine line between luminous skin and highway robbery.

“That’s so pretty on you,” said Elaine. Notice the structure of the sentence. It is the makeup that’s pretty, not me. Wendy told me that’s I looked fabulous. She handed me a mirror. I had t admit that I looked, if not fabulous, a bit less washed out.

I considered buying it all: foundation, makeup, makeup remover, primer, sealant, luminiser, cleanser, moisturizer, brushes, brush bath, brush cleanser, brush masseuse, brush finishing school…Instead, I went down the street to the hardware store and bought some 25-watt bulbs.

Article taken from Reader Digest January 2005