Pam: One of the women in my business meeting yesterday definitely had fallen victim to the ‘middle-aged make-up cumulative layering syndrome’.Ann: Had it on a bit thick huh?
Pam: I think she used a trowel.
Ann: That happens…as women get older they seem to go one of two ways. They either accept that they have wrinkles and people will see them, or they try to spackle over them.
Pam: Well this lady definitely went the Home Depot route. But she should have consulted the paint department while she was there. Her face was at least five shades darker than her neck.
Ann: Ahhh….the dreaded line of demarcation. Women with a real sharp jaw line can sometimes get away with it. But have you ever seen it where a woman’s cheek fades right into her neck and then she tries to create a jaw line with make up?
Pam: Is that what they’re doing? I always assume they just don’t own a hand mirror and never see how they look from a side view.
Ann: Sometimes women just use the same foundation all year long and never switch colors to account for getting less sun in the winter months.
Pam: I don’t even wear foundation. When I put it on I look fine until I actually crack an expression of any kind. Then it shows every last crinkle and wrinkle to the max. I’m better off letting my blotchy skin, freckles, and age spots just shine on through.
Ann: Well no one’s going to make money convincing women as they age that they need less make up. That’s for sure.
Pam: When I was about fourteen, back when a fourteen-year-old was still a kid, I went on a weekend trip with my high school. It was Sister Robert Ann and about thirty of us from my Catholic girl’s school… or the home for wayward girls, as my dad used to call it.
Ann: Well it’s good to know you didn’t just suddenly become willful and disobedient as an adult.
Pam: Very funny! So anyway, I was assigned a hotel room with a girl named Kim who was always very popular with the boys. She was fifteen and always wore lavender eye shadow and heavy black mascara. We all thought she was so glamorous.
Well she stepped out of the bathroom after her shower and I was literally shocked. I hardly recognized her. She looked so different without her makeup on!
Ann: Hey, give her a break. She didn’t have her face on.
Pam: She didn’t have one of her faces on anyway. Throughout the trip I told her how great my boyfriend was and when we got back home she promptly stole him.
Ann: Wow. I bet that hurt.
Pam: I just knew if my ex-boyfriend could somehow see what she looked like without all that makeup that he’d dump her in a second and return to somewhat-plain-but-at-least-all-natural me.
Ann: Since when did men care about natural?
Pam: Yeah, I figured that out the hard way. I invited everyone to a pool party where I knew he’d see her without all the goop on her face. I wasn’t sure if she’d accept, but she was pretty enthusiastic.
Ann: What’d she do? Wear water-proof makeup?
Pam: Let me put it this way…make up wasn’t her only enhancement. The guys never even glanced at her face!
Ann: She had quite a body huh?
Pam: She confessed to the other girls that she was wearing silicone inserts in her bikini top to create her cleavage.
Ann: Well I can see why the guys never noticed her lack of makeup.
Pam: What can I say? I was playing way out of my league.
Ann: The kiddie pool’s over there.
