To go out for a night in girl-mode I have to travel some considerable distance from home. The stark reality is that there are not a huge number of areas where I feel both safe and welcome. Some of that might be an abundance of caution, but I’m not intending to become reckless. Even so, sooner or later I’m going to run into an unsafe situation, and I’d rather it was on familiar ground where I feel relatively safe, or at least physically close to safe places.
Unsafe Situations
Let me be a little more specific about “unsafe situations”. I’ve been heckled walking down the street, and resorted to Paddington-style hard stares to avoid other situations (both covered here). I’ve had severely inappropriate approaches in the street from some men, but (like ALL girls and women must do, I now realise) I’m developing more of a spidery-sense for this and the frequency drops the more I pick up on this early and avoid the situations. It does upset me that even young girls clearly have to proactively avoid such situations – that’s a clear sign of a societal problem.
Whilst uncomfortable, none of the situations I’ve found myself in thus far have felt unsafe. Unsafe is a whole different level of risk – with threat of physical harm.
Safe Areas
Where was I. Oh yes, far from home. So when I find myself able to stay near a safe area for a weekend, but I have a cold on the verge of becoming a really nasty cold, it’s extremely frustrating. Instead of being out there strutting my funky stuff (or even just sitting quietly soaking up the atmosphere), I’m sitting in a hotel room nursing a Lemsip. And musing… no one ever told me that girl-mode had so many damn homework requirements!
Homework
Sciences are easy. You learn the principles, and apply them. How you apply them is pretty obvious most of the time. You don’t need to remember all the details like equations, you can look these up when you need them.
But make-up is very much an art. Yes, there are principles (but I’ve yet to find a single book which contains them all or even a good overview, even at a high level), but applying them successfully requires talent or judgement or experience or a combination of these.
Artistic talent have I none. Experience – minimal. Judgement – currently basic and rudamentary. Results are therefore inconsistent and unspectacular (at least in the good direction of “spectacular”). The most creative things I’ve ever done previously have been with words or code. Yet now I am trying to create subtle curves and shade gradients, some so subtle that I can barely see or judge the results.
It reminds me of a review I once read, all about using gold cables in HiFi systems. It was not a serious review, but the giveaway was perhaps too subtle for some of the intended audience:
“These gold cables are so good that you can almost hear the difference”.
So, after being told that the lessons I took recently would be pointless unless I practiced, I spend the day (when not trying to sleep off my cold) creating and destroying some basic looks. It’s probably just as well that some of my attempts never saw the light of day (or at least, that no one else saw them)… So this is part of my homework, another part is brush-cleaning with which I am finally having some actual success. Before trying my own make-up, the last time I tried to use brushes like these was painting at school, aged about 6. And all that paint was water soluble which, unsurprisingly, face make-up really is not.
Sophie Baskerville 