Elizabeth Drakes's Site

Fantasy Romance

Makeup

My Secret Envy

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Envy is never a good emotion. It’s one of the seven deadly sins, after all.

Still, I gotta admit to it, especially when it comes to my male co-workers. Here are six things I really envy.

 

1. Shoes

I cannot tell you how envious I am of my male co-workers’ shoes. They are not expected to sport heels of any sort. Their shoes are designed for comfort, and it’s easy for them to get shoes with non-slip soles for our floors. We’re a heavy manufacturer, so we don’t have carpet anywhere except the CEO and President’s office. That’s it. So, those leather or synthetic soles on the bottoms of most women’s shoes turns the floors into an ice skating rink. We’ve actually had several women slip and fall on the floors.

 

Seriously, which looks more practical to you? Which do you want to walk the shop floor in? Or even walk to the bathroom wearing?

So yes, I buck this trend, and I accept the “hit” to my professional appearance accordingly.

 

2. Hair

Men can “do” their hair in about 2.3 minutes. The concept of a bad hair day is about as alien to them as putting their feet in shoes designed for Barbie rather than the anatomical realities of a human foot.

Men don’t have to blow dry, straighten, curl, or figure out which products do what. Best of all, most of the men I know get their hair cut for under $25 including tip. Yeah, that’s less than half the going rate in my area for a woman’s haircut.

If you talk to most guys about coloring their hair, they’ll look at you like you’re speaking Swahili. Yet, women over a certain age are expected to color their hair. Heck, it doesn’t even matter if you’re of a certain age. The moment that grey starts to peak through, you’re expected to take care of it.

I hate going to the salon. Not only is it expensive, but I have to sit there while people I don’t know touch me and try to make conversation. Is there any more of a nightmare for an introvert?

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I am fortunate that I don’t yet have any grey hair. Yeah, I know, odd, but true. When I do start to go grey, I will have to make a hard decision on whether or not I buck the trend. Given my allergies, I am not sure I could even tolerate the chemicals.

Still, I’m jealous of my male counterparts that are considered distinguished with grey hair rather than just “old”.

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3. Make Up

As I confessed in this post, I already don’t wear it. I can’t.

As a professional woman, there’s a price to pay for this. My male counterparts are expected NOT to wear makeup. A few lines or wrinkles adds distinction.

If only…

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4. Pants

I work in heavy manufacturing. Wearing skirts or dresses, while possible, is pretty impractical. Even if I didn’t work in manufacturing, dresses are really impractical. I want to see a man put on pantyhose just once. Or having to sit with their legs just so. Or worrying about skirt length as they’re walking up or down stairs.

However, buying pants as a woman is a nightmare.

I can buy my husband’s khakis in about 3 clicks. Wrinkle resistant? Yep. Waist size? Yep. Inseam? Yep. Click buy and 95% of the time they fit perfectly.

Women’s pants don’t come in inseams. Or waist sizes. I think this is a ploy to keep tailors in business. See, I have to scour the internet to find a pair of weirdly sized pants (what exactly does 8, 10 and 12 relate to?!?), and once I find a pair that fits  (the size of which will vary by brand, by cut, and by phase of the moon), I then get to take them to the tailor and have them hemmed to fit me and the waist taken in.

I once asked a sales clerk why the pants were so darn long as I walked on the hems while trying them on. I’m average height for an American woman, so why don’t the pants fit me? She explained that they’re designed for women to wear shoes like the ones above. Um, yeah. I’ll just keep paying the tailor.

 

5. Bras

My male coworkers don’t wear them.

I cannot explain the “joy” of wearing one, or how long and hard you have to look to find the right one. I once told my husband to imagine having to wear a jock strap constantly. But, having never had to wear one, I have no idea if it’s accurate. The way he squirmed when I said that made me think it’s at least part way there.

 

6. Underwear

Men buy them in packs of 6 for under $20.  ‘Nuf said.

 

How about you? Ever feel envy for something, even if it was something small? What was it and why?

10 Steps to Younger Skin

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I came across an advertisement like this, and I’m not really sure how this is even allowed. I mean, no matter what I do, I am going to have the skin of a woman who needs yearly mammograms. I could do 10 steps, 20 steps, 100 steps, and my skin will not go back in time.

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And frankly, why should I want it to? Why does my skin need to look younger than it is?

To be attractive. To be beautiful. To be desired.

To be loved.

There is the reason. The real reason I’m supposed to want younger skin. I feel like I’m inundated with messages constantly telling me I’m not “good enough” to be loved. I’m not pretty enough, thin enough, rich enough. I’m just not enough.  So I must buy their product to look better, to be thin, or to appear rich. Their product will help make me enough.

Of course, that’s complete crap.

But if they can convince us to believe it, they have a market for life. A market that won’t be terribly sensitive to price.

Makes me wonder if this is part of what feeds the escapism some of us find in romance novels. In these stories, however old you are, whatever you look like, it’s always enough.

Outside of our fiction, advertisers are doing whatever they can to make us feel we need their product. Most likely because what they’re selling isn’t chocolate cake. Rather, their wares are something we don’t want or need intrinsically so they must create a market for it.

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And create a market they did. While there was almost no cosmetics industry in the early 1900s, the global cosmetics market was worth $460 billion in 2014   Let me show you that with the zeros:  $460,000,000,000. A year.   By 2020, it’s estimated to be a $675,000,000,000 market.

I want you to think about that for a moment.

California’s state budget is $171 Billion.

Okay, so bigger than the entire state of California’s budget. Not just bigger. More than twice as big.

I did some looking, and the cosmetics industry is scheduled to surpass US military spending of $598 Billion.

Could you even imagine if we spent that much money on anything else? What would the budget be to colonize Mars? To end global hunger?

Perhaps I see it this was because I have nothing vested in cosmetics. I don’t “put” on my face every day. You see, I have a strong allergy to most cosmetics. You don’t really want to know what’s in most of them. Even Web MD has warnings.

I can only use dye-free, scent-free products. The dye is an issue, but the scent in most products causes me huge issues. Given what cosmetics are made of, the makers have to use scent to cover it or no woman would put it on her skin.

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I used a bunch of different products, desperately trying to find eye make-up that didn’t make my eyes swell. Or foundation that didn’t make my skin red and itchy. Or lipstick that didn’t my lips hurt and make them swell. It didn’t matter if it was L’Oréal, Clinique, or Channel. Nothing played nice with my skin.

One afternoon many years ago, my soon-to-be-husband asked me if I needed to wear it at all. He told me I looked exactly the same with it as I did without, and besides, he hated wearing my lipstick if he kissed me.

That was the last day I ever wore make-up. I threw it all away, bought some dye-free, scent-free lotion that my dermatologist had recommended, and I never looked back. Do I sometimes miss making my long but fair lashes look dark? Yes. Do I miss my eyes swelling, or getting red and angry? Nope.

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About what my eye and the skin around it looked like after a bad reaction. 

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve changed the lotion I use, but it’s still dye and scent free. And my skin never reacts poorly to it. This says a lot because my skin reacts poorly to a lot of things, including the soap in public bathrooms. I have to carry hand-sanitizer in my purse or risk soap getting caught in my wedding ring and making my finger swell too large for the ring.

Abstaining from cosmetics hasn’t meant perfect skin, and I do get a bit of redness or an occasional breakout, but I stick with a gentle cleansing routine and lotion and it clears up pretty quickly.

I’ve seen other women who struggle with their skin and use cosmetics to combat it. I’ve often wondered if wearing makeup has actually made the skin issues worse for them, forcing them to buy yet more products.

Interestingly, science says my inner skeptic is in on to something . Yes, there is evidence that cosmetics are not good for your skin, which can lead to needing more products. Of course, there is no cosmetic company willing to fund such a study. Or, if they have, they haven’t released the results. So there’s only a handful of research out there.

But, there is also a such a thing as withdrawal from makeup. Because of course there is. You get customers to buy something they don’t need, and it has addictive side effects that include the release of testosterone when you quit using their products. This testosterone spike causes more skin issues, so you go back to using their products.

This isn’t growing into a $675 billion dollar a year industry because people need lipstick. They’ve made us want their product,  but it isn’t an innate want.It’s a manufactured one, and they’re going to make it hard to quit them if you ever choose that route.

Not condemning wearing make-up. You do you. Heck, I was so into the stuff at one point that I suffered elephant eyes to wear it. I miss mascara the most. I’ve got long lashes, but they’re fair. Really miss the mascara.

We all make choices and get to decide how to spend our hard earned money, but perhaps it’s something to think about before buying your next tube of lipstick or bottle of mascara. Remember, even in the early 1900s, make-up wasn’t popular and was mostly used by prostitutes. War paint indeed.

The rise of make-up came right along with the rise of advertising so they could make us want it.

Whatever you choose, it’s never unwise to take a moment to think about why we do what we do. To make sure it’s our choice, and we’re really doing what we think is best for us rather than what an advertiser may think is best.

Looking at you, commercials.

 

How about you? Ever get sucked into a product because of an advertisement? Do you regret it? Or maybe you came to love the product?