Sunday 9 June 2013

Being Beautiful

(Author's Note: I first published this online under another profile. I can assure you, I wrote it. It's me in the picture!)

I am beautiful.

I tell myself this dozens of times a day, because Society constantly conspires to tell me that I can't be. After all, I am over 40 and bigger than a size 2! However, I stopped trying to stuff myself into a societal pigeonhole some time ago, and I determined that beauty was a state of being, not just how I looked. When I am presenting myself to the world, I do so with the attitude in my mind and my heart that I am beautiful, and being dressed to the nines and in full makeup does the same thing for me that putting an oil painting into a stunning frame does for a landscape. It takes that beauty I feel inside and showcases it so others can see how great I feel.  Sometimes I see other women in the grocery store, and I recognise myself in them. Tired, overweight, unhappy; careless in their appearance because it is so much easier. Feeling beautiful shouldn't be hard work; it doesn't have to be, and looking good doesn't have to be an onerous task. I can do my face in under 10 minutes and feel so much better about myself, and it takes minimal effort.

MY favourite new beauty product is the BB creams that are sweeping into the marketplace, and I understand why...This single product is a foundation, sunscreen, primer, and all kinds of things rolled into one. If my face is a canvass, then this BB cream is the Gesso that preps it to create the masterpiece. Because I am concerned about under-eye circles and how thin my lips are, I always use just a little cover-up under my eyes and over my natural lip line. The BB cream brand I use currently is called "CathyCat'; it's imported from Korea, and the only English on the tube is the name. I swear it's why Korean women all have such beautiful skin! It does an amazing job with fine lines and large pores too! Now that I have flawless looking skin, there are only 3 things I need to do; eyes, cheeks, lips.

I don't bother with full eye makeup for daytime usually. Otherwise, it's just   mascara and eyebrow pencil; what could be easier?  The hardest part is the eyeliner, because I am getting shortsighted. I have to stand closer to the mirror to do the deep black eyeline look I love. Having the right liquid eyeliner product helps. The L'Oreal eyeliner I use has quite a long thin brush, so I can get the line right in three stages. First, I lay the line from the middle of my eyelid to the outer corner. Then, I reverse the brush and go towards the very inner edge with the thinnest line I can get. Finally, I wing out the outer edge to emphasise the almond cats'eye effect. On my cheeks, I use a little MAC creme blush right on the 'apples'. That takes 30 seconds, but it brightens me right up. For lips, I use a lipliner slightly outside my natural lipline. After I fill that in, I use a lipstick in the same colour family all over. Done!


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