Making It Up As I Go Along (3 page)

Eyelashes. Such lovely things. The more the
merrier, thanks. Over the years, when I’d had my make-up done, I’d seen the dramatic
effect of false eyelashes, but I never got the hang of doing them myself.

Then I heard about eyelash extensions: false
eyelashes that are glued, one by one, to a person’s own lashes and last until the lashes
fall out naturally. No more mascara. Just constant, round-the-clock, dark-lashed loveliness. It
sounded like something from a fantasy.

So I went and lay on a bed and – this was a
few years back – to my great dismay, the extensions were so heavy they pulled my eyelids
down and, in the following days, I was told, more than once, that I looked like Salman Rushdie.

Also, I felt very ‘blinky’. Every
time I blinked (and I discovered that I blink an awful lot) it was as if it was happening in
slow motion. Worse still, the lashes were rigid and sort of crunchy, so at night I was kept
awake by them scritchy-scratching against my pillow and if I slept on them funny I awoke to find
them bent into strange geometric contortions.

Next thing – within days – they
started to fall out, taking my own eyelashes with them, and very soon my eyelids were bald. It
was a bad experience and I thought, ‘Ah well, we live and learn.’

But about nine months later, I decided to give it
another go. I went to a different saloon where they used lovely lightweight
lashes – so I didn’t feel heavy-lidded or blinky and no one looked like Salman
Rushdie. Except Salman Rushdie.

And I cannot tell you how
fabulous
I
felt. The effect was dramatic: the long dark lashes changed the shape of my face and made my
eyes ‘burst’. (In a good way.)

The long and the short of it is, you look GREAT
with eyelash extensions. You wake up looking fantastic. You go to bed looking fantastic. You can
go swimming and look fantastic. It doesn’t look like you’re wearing false lashes
– especially if you go for the more expensive silk extensions – it just seems like
you’ve got gorgeous long, natural eyelashes, with more va-va-voom than even the fonciest
mascara could ever give you.

However, with great power comes great
responsibility, and it’s no joke having semi-permanent eyelashes in your care: they are
highly strung, nervy beasts. Basically you have to avoid touching them at all because
they’re easy to upset, and when they’re upset they leave you, and that is more
unpleasant than I know how to describe.

So it’s tricky putting on eye make-up. And
it’s even trickier taking it off. To do my eyeliner I had to use a very, very long make-up
brush and use tiny, exquisitely delicate stokes.

You know that game where you have to move an
object on a loop along an electrified wire, without touching the wire? (Would it be called
Operation?) That’s what it’s like. My concentration was
intense.

Taking the make-up off was even more
nerve-racking. I used a cotton bud soaked in oil-free remover, and if I ever accidentally
touched the lashes, I had to shout, ‘Sorry, sorry! I’m really sorry!’

To be frank, living with eyelash extensions was
like being in a dysfunctional relationship.

After a few rounds of acrylic lashes, I upgraded
to silk ones –
more expensive, but even more lightweight and dark and
clustery. I fell even deeper in love.

‘They’ say that extensions are
supposed to last about six weeks, but that, of course, is a lie. Even with the gentlest care, at
around the three-week mark they would start to fall out, usually taking my own real lash with
them. And every lost lash felt like a mini-death.

I’d start filling in the gaps with mascara,
which needed to be removed every night, which interfered with the extensions, making them fall
out faster and faster – and long before the six-week mark I’d arrive back at the
saloon, looking for a refill.

The few days before the appointment were always
the worst. I’d feel utterly naked and lived in dread of being taunted, ‘Baldy lids,
baldy lids!’

In I’d go, looking all meek and blinky and
baldy-eyed – and two hours later I’d swagger out, batting my fabulous lashes left,
right and centre, interfering with the flight paths of planes, sending wheelie bins racing along
the road and crashing into each other, and generally feeling like the most powerful woman on
earth.

I was utterly addicted to the extensions and
couldn’t contemplate going back to a life without them. But the thing is, you’re
only supposed to get them for about six months and then you have to stop because you’re
depriving your natural lashes of sunlight and oxygen and all that other blah.

But when the six-month time limit arrived, there
was NO WAY ON EARTH I was stopping. So – like the true addict I am – I began to lie
and cheat. I started going to different beauticians, the way I used to go to different
off-licences when I was drinking, so no one would know the full extent of my habit.

When the beauticians would ask me how long
I’d been getting
the extensions, I’d say, with elaborate
vagueness, ‘Let’s seeeee, hmmm, maybe about … God, I don’t know, four
months?’ When the reality was, I’d been getting them for
a year and a
half
.

However, when I hit the two-year mark, it all
came crashing down. I’d gone to a beautician who was basically my enabler – she knew
that I was lying and she still went along with it. However, on this particular day she was away,
and in her place was what you might call a locum – and this new one was on to me
immediately!

She removed my mascara and the last few
extensions that were still clinging on, and made me take a good hard look at my own lashes
– and I was horrified. They were pale brown stumps. ‘You’ve got to
stop,’ she said. Basically she refused to serve me!

Then she cast me out on to the street with a tube
of some RapidLash yoke and instructions to apply it twice daily, and told me that I was now in
Eyelash Rehab.

It was a low, low moment: I’d hit rock
bottom and the game was up. No more eyelash extensions for me for a very long time.

I consoled myself by thinking bitter thoughts
about her and nursing elaborate plans to start again as soon as possible; but after some time
passed and I got used to having normal-style eyelashes again, I began to feel as if a burden had
been lifted from me. It had been hard,
hard
work maintaining the lifestyle of an
eyelash addict – and I’d been freed from it. I hadn’t wanted to be free, but
now that I was, I kind of liked it.

So, as things stand, I have no immediate plans to
resume the habit.

First published in
Irish Tatler
, November
2014.

Oh God, it’s that time of year again. Sooner
or later every year, the snows of winter melt and the daffodils bloom and the weather gets
warmer and before we know it, it’s fake-tan time. Or self-tan time. Or sunless-tan time.
Call it what you want, the smell is the same.

At first glance, self-tan is a godsend for the
likes of me, because I never enjoyed sunbathing. It was so boring, lying still, while sweat ran
into my hair, and I never had anyone to talk to because I always went on holiday with devoted
sun-lovers who believed that conversation cancelled out the efficacy of the sun’s rays.
Besides, sunbathing never worked for me because (am I the only one?) I have entirely different
types of skin on different parts of my body. This is how I tan: feet – golden. Stomach
– mahogany. Shins – Germolene pink. Face – bluey-white, offset with a massive,
red, peeling, Bozo-the-clown nose. At the end of two weeks in the sun I look like a patchwork
quilt.

And yet I refuse to bow to the inevitable and
remain my natural milk-bottle pallor, so you’d think I’d be thrilled with fake tans.
However, everything has a price and I can’t decide which is the worst:

If I may come back to the horrific smell.
The first time I ever ‘did’ myself, I went to bed, only to wake in terror in the
middle of the night, wondering what the unspeakable stink was. The devil? Wasn’t he
supposed to be preceded by dreadful, poo-type smells? Quaking with fear, I peeped over the
covers, expecting to see coal-red eyes and a forked tail, only to discover that the choking
stench was none other than my freshly tanned self. In recent years, cosmetic companies have been
working hard on diluting the ferocious pong, and now some brands even claim to have ‘a
pleasant fragrance’. Yes, indeed they
do
have a pleasant fragrance. But mark me
well here, that’s
as well as
, that’s
in addition to
, the extremely
un
pleasant fragrance that is the hallmark of all self-tanners.

I have made every fake-tan mistake in the
book.

Mistake number one: I was in a mad hurry for a
colour and decided that one thick layer would do just as well as several thin layers. The
result? My entire body looked like it had been tie-dyed and I couldn’t leave the house for
a week.

Mistake number two: forgetting to wash my hands
after ‘applying’, so that I ended up with the orangest palms on earth; if I’d
held them upwards, they could have been seen from outer space. However, I learnt one important
thing from this tragic omission: surgical gloves. Not only do they save me from the curse of the
orange paw, but I enjoy a delicious little ER moment whenever I snap them on – Nurse Keyes
to the rescue.

Mistake number three: I decided to do it
properly. I’d do wafer-thin layers and leave plenty of time to dry between applications.
But the thing is, I got a little obsessive about it and it took over my life. I’d apply a
layer, then do some freestyle dancing as I waited for it to
dry, then
I’d apply another layer and do some more dancing, and when the colour still hadn’t
come, I’d apply another layer. I’d even enlisted a floaty red scarf to waft about
over my head during the dancing. At some point, the end product of a tan no longer seemed to
matter: it was the
doing
that was the important thing (which, in fairness, is how
self-help gurus are always telling us to live our lives).

Then Himself walked into the room and yelped,
‘Jesus Christ!’ I thought it was the freestyle dancing and stopped abruptly, more
than a little mortified by the scarf. ‘Look at yourself,’ he urged.
‘Look!’

So I looked, and instead of the radiant golden
hue I’d been expecting, I was a nasty Eurotrash mahogany which probably went all the way
down to my internal organs. Again I couldn’t leave the house for a week. I mean, no one
wants to be humiliated in the street by strangers shouting, ‘Who’s been drinking the
fake tan, then?’

Mistake number four: the mud, administered in a
saloon by a professional. My first time, it was only when I was covered in the smelly muck that
I discovered I couldn’t wash it off until the following morning.

‘Obviously you’ll look manky this
evening,’ the girl said, ‘but tomorrow you’ll have a fabulous tan.’

‘Fine, fine,’ I said, in a high,
tight voice.

She seemed to pick up on my anxiety. ‘You
hadn’t planned to go out tonight, had you?’

‘No, not really.’ Just for my
mammy’s birthday.

At the restaurant I caused a bit of a stir. As if
the smell wasn’t bad enough, bits of the mud were going black and green and falling off my
face into my dinner.

So I’m asking myself, Is it worth it? Will
this be the year I embrace my blue-white Irish skin? Maybe …

Previously unpublished.

For the first time in years, I’m on a strict
skincare ‘diet’ – that is to say, I’m using one brand and
one brand
only
for every single thing: make-up remover, toner, night serum, eye cream, day serum and
day cream. It’s a French brand called Payot. I was persuaded to do the whole-hog thing by
lovely Mihaela at my local saloon, Pretty Nails Pretty Face, because for many years I’ve
been cherry-picking from a variety of brands that have caught my fancy.

Anyway, the Payot is perfectly lovely and I would
recommend it – my skin looks nice, it feels fine, and although the price isn’t low,
it’s not extortionate either. However, amigos, I cannot do this. I cannot do skincare
monogamy.

When my Payot stuff runs out – and
I’m hoping it will be soon because I am
bored out of my skull
– I will be
moving on. Because that is my way.

If I were a man and skincare brands were women, I
would growl sexily at each new one I meet, ‘Don’t fall in love with me, baby,
because I’ll only break your heart.’

I cannot be faithful. I will never be faithful.
My head is turned by each new brand I encounter – and there are so, so many. The market is
absolutely saturated with them, all fighting for my attention and my money, and I want every
single one of them.

The whole matter is very tricky and I’ll
try to articulate how I feel.

Okay, the biggest promise
from most skincare brands is young-looking-ness. As a feminist I have deep-seated objections to
the ‘You ladies must stay young for ever’ message, but in the last few years the
message has started being foisted on to men too. And I don’t think that makes things
fairer or easier; it means that the burden to keep looking young is becoming heavier on
everyone.

The point is, how can the efficacy of a face
cream ever be proved? I know most brands say stuff like ‘81 per cent of users noticed a
reduction in fine lines’ and ‘78 per cent noticed an increase in resilience’
and so forth. But the only way the claims can ever really be proved is when I die, right? If God
wheels out a far younger-looking version of me and says, ‘This is the face you
would
have had, if you had used Brand such-and-such every day of your life. But no!
Despite all the ads featuring lovely luminous ladies splashing themselves with slow-motion
water, you chose the inferior brand and you ended up looking like
this
. You big
eejit!’

I know that expensive skincare will not save me
from ageing and dying, but I still have a powerful emotional response to it. I love it. Like, I
LOVE it. Sometimes in the beauty halls in department stores, I get a funny taste in my mouth and
I feel really thirsty and like I’m going to pass out.

All those bottles and jars get me on some primal
level which short-circuits the rational part of my brain – because if it was simply about
a face cream’s efficacy, why would I be affected by the packaging, the colour, the smell
and the ‘story’? What does it matter if it comes with a little ceramic spoon or a
silver space-agey lid or a laboratory-style pipette? Or if it’s made from ingredients that
are only picked at midnight under a full moon by naked people who do the Lindy Hop as they work?

Here’s how bad I am: when I went to
Florence, I got far more
excited about a jar of night cream from
Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella than from seeing Michelangelo’s
David
. In the Farmaceutica, all they had to do was bandy around words like
‘friars’, ‘medicinal herbs’, ‘balms’ and ‘oldest
chemist in the world’ and I was utterly enchanted.

So here I am, stuck with a quarter-jar of the
Payot cream (which really is excellent). But I’m champing at the bit, dying to move on to
something new, while feeling terribly guilty. Which then makes me defensive, so every time I
have to engage with it, I’m taking more and more out of the jar and shouting, ‘Stop
looking at me in that mournful way and hurry up and be finished!’

First published in
Daily Mail Plus
, August
2013.