Chapter 11

Mother had this thing she would say when she was getting ready for her day.

“I need to put on my face.”

Even when I was little, this sentiment rang with discord in my mind.  Why would you need to “put on” your face when it’s already always there?

I think I was still a small child when I asked her what she meant by that, because I remember looking up a great height when talking to her about it.

“I need to put my makeup on.  I can’t be seen in public without my makeup.  I’m not decent.”

“But it’s the weekend.  You’re not going to work.”  I think I was impatient to go do something, and I know I was genuinely confused that she felt it was some horrible thing to be seen by strangers without makeup on.  I knew I saw people without makeup all the time.

I do not remember exactly what her response was to that.  It might have been the typical, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”  She told me that frequently.  Whatever her answer was, it did not actually address my question, probably because it was something Mother did not want to question in herself.

Maybe it was a little mean of me, but it became something of a quest to get Mother to not be neurotic about needing makeup to be “decent” in public.  That was a word that came out of her mouth a lot when talking about her physical appearance.  In order to be “decent”, she needed makeup, and I am not talking just a little eyeshadow and lipstick.  I am talking full coverage base makeup and everything else short of fake eyelashes and contouring.  She obviously took no pleasure in doing this.  It was an obligation and a chore. 

Following Father’s example of how to get Mother to do something she did not want to do, I badgered her and nagged her to not take the time for makeup on the weekends, to just go out into the world and do what she needed to do without worrying about something so trivial.  I repeatedly pointed out that lots of women do not wear makeup, and she did not hold that against them, so why should she hold it against herself?  She justified herself by saying that many women did not need all those layers of makeup to look presentable, but she did.

Maybe that is one of the saddest things about that whole situation.  She did not do it to be beautiful.  She did it to be presentable, to be “decent”.  I cannot help but think she probably did not believe she was capable of beauty, though as a child that layer of implication was almost completely lost on me.

I think it was around the time I hit puberty that I wore her down enough she acquiesced and would occasionally go out without makeup on the weekend.  Maybe it is because she saw me going out every day confidently defying the societal expectations for women regarding makeup and shaving, and it gave her the courage to try it just a little?  I really do not know for sure.  She never said.  It was not the immediately freeing endeavor I had expected for her, but instead was an exercise in willpower vs. anxiety.  She did keep at it, though, and eventually entirely gave up wearing makeup on the weekends unless it was a special occasion.

I was genuinely proud of her for that.  If she had enjoyed the process of putting on and wearing full makeup it would have been worth her continuing, but for her it was clearly a chore, and one she did not need to spend time and energy doing on her days off.  I do not know exactly when it happened, but I know that years later she finally reached a point where she was only wearing the amount of makeup she genuinely enjoyed wearing, when she wanted to wear it.  She looked like herself, instead of looking like a curated caricature of herself, and she was visibly happier for it.

Mother’s hair was a similar ordeal, and I was also probably pushier about it than I should have been.

Mother came of age in the 70’s, and has naturally curly hair, which was anything but popular at the time.  Achieving the smooth, straight silhouette popular during her teens was an impossibility.  The closest she could get to acceptable hair for her age group required large curlers and an insane amount of hairspray, resulting in one of those awful big hair affairs associated with mothers in the child pageant circuit for the following three decades.  Once she figured out how to do that, she stuck with it.  The couple times she tried new styles it turned out disastrously (feathering, for example, just made her hair even bigger and less controllable), and she became petrified of trying anything else.

What killed me about it was that if she did not do anything to her hair, it was exactly, perfectly, on point curly for 80’s popular hairstyling.  If she just washed and conditioned her hair, and then let it dry on its own, she looked like she had the most expensive and skillfully executed perm job ever.  It looked amazing!  I was thoroughly jealous, and genuinely distraught that she insisted on ruining it Every Single Day with a style that was outdated, and she admitted she did not like.

But she could not let herself just be natural.  Something in her told her that to be “decent”, she needed to apply effort.  Her natural state, no matter what it was, was not good enough to allow her to interact with society on any level.

When she slowly started dipping her toes in the waters of minimal makeup, she also started doing the same with her hair, although that seemed even harder for her to let go of.  Most days it was still curlers and hairspray.

By the time I was in my late teens, Mother had enough gray in her hair to be clearly anxious about it, but she seemed afraid to try dying her hair.  I do not remember if it was concern about the chemicals, or that she might not like how it turned out, or maybe both.  After I was introduced to Henna hair dye, I badgered her to try it.  I was dying my hair natural red the more conventional way because mine was such a dark brown the henna would barely tint it.  Mother’s hair was slightly lighter brown, and I thought the silver would pick up the henna nicely.  It took some convincing, but she finally was willing to try it, if for no other reason than so I would stop badgering her about it (a skill I learned from her and Father).  Her reaction was less than exuberant, but she did take to dying her hair intermittently, even though I am not sure she really liked the bright copper tones that came out on the silver hair.

The last time I saw her, when I was in my 30’s and she was in her 50’s, she was regularly seeing a hairstylist to professionally dye her hair burgundy, had cut her hair into an asymmetrical bob, and was using a straightening iron to style it in the mornings.  She was wearing minimal makeup, and there was not a trace of the anxiety which used to accompany such an action.  Best of all, she was very delighted to tell me how much she loved doing her hair that way, and how nice it was to have it short.  The straightening iron was a bit of trouble, but completely worthwhile.

I might feel a little bad about badgering her to do things she was not comfortable doing and was not prepared to face, but if it helped her start on the road to being happier with herself and her appearance, I do not regret it for a moment.