Los Angeles was and is a nonstop kaleidoscope of faces. I walk down Ocean and marvel at the elderly lady with bright orange hair and matching flame lipstick. After encountering this walking inferno, I contemplated myself as a redhead. The Latina woman with the shaved eyebrows and purple liner—was that me? Could I wear gold earrings the size of coffee mugs? Intimidated, I stuck to the free samples and clumpy mascara I had carried with me for years. Whenever I tried something new, it always had disastrous results. (I had half an eyebrow missing for weeks after a plucking gone bad.) So for the sake of simplicity, I stayed with what I already knew didn’t work.
When I moved to Los Angeles, I encountered a new set of challenges. I’m pale, and nobody was encouraging that. I needed to be tanner. And to have bigger ta-ta’s, via plastic surgery, while I hadn’t even mastered concealer yet. Luckily for me, I was a model and was handed over to the professionals. And by professionals, I mean people who knew jargon like “smoky eye” and “She Uemura.” I would be asked what my likes and dislikes were and look blankly and say,” Whatever you think.” They were professionals, right? Not always. I was oiled and made dewy until my face looked like a vagina, or somehow coated in hues of cognac, hazelnut, and burnt toast, which drowned out any sign of eyes or lips. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t close my eyes with false eyelashes or that the blush made me itch—I remained silent. I was in awe of the notorious more famous models who threw brushes or smacked makeup artists when their luminosity wan’t perfection; I would just smile and pretend the tears were from eyelash glue and not humiliation.
Along the way, I saw clients who wanted me to look “just like my website photos.” Once again I was confronted with the tedious decision of whom to have spackle my face. Strangers were called in, entered my hotel room or the hotel spa with enough luggage for a trek through India, and they’d start applying and blending so frenetically you’d think they were contestants on a cooking show. To say the results were shocking is an understatement. I looked like a drag queen belonging at the top of a parade float, not a graduate school-educated and sophisticated dinner companion. Not even my own family would recognize me. But oh boy oh boy, I looked like those photos. If I scraped a fork down the side of my cheek, you’d have seen tiny white lines between the mounds of makeup. And horridly, men loved this high-definition version of me…this technology-created perfection that turned them on while reminding me of an oversealous stewardess from the 1970s. Fine.
So I decided to look fantastic when required and like something the cat would refuse to drag in during my normal life. I would get comments like “Wow! You look so different in your photos!” (which, translated, means “Wow! I thought you were so pretty with a ton of makeup!”) I felt I’d solved half the problem, and frankly, it fit my t-shirt and jeans lifestyle with caviar-and-champagne job.
And then I decided to stop smugly judging and actually learn something about makeup. As I did I learned there can be things other than slate eyes, salmon cheeks, burgundy lips. It can be pure, natural, me. And I became adept at putting on makeup, being in charge of my own face, throwing my head back, arching my back a little, and smiling for someone other than a photographer or client. I can live with that.