Confession: at the age of twenty-eight, I am a total doofus when it comes to makeup. Part of this is the luxury of good genetics; I’ve been able to coast by without having to cover up any acne scars or too many pimples. (Commence hating, y’all). Every now and then, I will get a zit due to stress, and sure it bothers me, but not enough to actually do anything about it (just stress some more).
The other part is that I just don’t know how to do it. I never watched my mom putting on makeup when I was growing up, because I was busy writing stories and plotting new and horrible deaths for my least favorite toys. I was what you would call a “total loser” in middle school and didn’t have many friends to ask for advice. I did wear eyeliner once; I think it was Halloween, and I was probably trying to be Courtney Love or something. I remember Lauren and Emily, the popular bitches in my French class, telling me, “oh, your makeup looks so good.” I was caught off guard, and actually felt – flattered! Then I went to the bathroom and saw that my eyeliner was all smudged; half of it had somehow smeared over one eyelid. They’d punked me again. (I’ll reiterate my earlier wish, that they are happy with their fourteen kids in their double-wide trailers now). General fear of looking a total fool has kept me from even experimenting with eyeliner, to the point where I don’t even understand the physics of it. You’re supposed to draw around your eyeball with a pencil? How do you do that without it hurting?
When I want to look like this:

I end up looking like this:
Because I don’t want to induce nightmares for the people who I encounter in every day life, I just go natural. This hadn’t bothered me a whit until I came to Korea. Appearance is of utmost importance here. Nobody dashes out to the grocery store in their PJs and flip-flops – well, except maybe the occasional foreign teacher who just got here. She’ll be properly shamed, soon enough. Plastic surgery is rampant; almost everybody gets the double eyelid procedure at some point. It’s pretty weird NOT to wear makeup here. My co-teacher panicked and made me put on some of her lipstick on Photo Day (which she had not, by the way, bothered to warn me about in advance). She did this in front of some of my students, and they were clamoring for me to put on eyeliner and eyeshadow as well. But there wasn’t any, so when the photo is published, my lips will probably be a bright red gash in a bland oval. Nice!
So anyway, today I felt like taking baby steps into the world of makeup. First milestone: BB cream. For those of you outside Korea (well, all of you who read this blog), here’s an explanation of BB cream by the wonderful folks at Eat Your Kimchi. Basically, it’s like a miracle serum that fixes everything wrong with your face. Even things you didn’t know were wrong with your face. I was a bit hesitant about buying makeup here, as I am several shades darker than the darkest shade ever showcased in advertisements (translucent gray), but I decided to go have a look around the many makeup stores in my area.
(Fun fact: the word for “restroom” in Korea literally translates to “makeup room.” This probably accounts for why there are mirrors everywhere in a Korean public restroom, including one positioned on the stall door, hanging at eye level. So you can check yourself for blemishes while you eliminate. I guess that is efficient multitasking).
I went into the first of the eleventy bajillion makeup stores in the area, and of course it took the sales reps awhile to find the shade of BB cream that is closest to my own, which is kind of nutmeg. (My skin still remembers the lovely beaches in Vietnam). When I checked out, they gave me free samples, as these stores always do – a benefit of shopping in Korea. You get free random shit whenever you buy anything! I got some powder and a few face masks, which are these creepy masks that make you look like Jason from Friday the 13th, but transform your skin into smooth silk. I put one on, and after a few minutes my eyes were kind of stinging, which is maybe a giveaway that hey, something ain’t right! abort! abandon ship!, but I was busy cooking while looking like an axe murderer, so I paid it no mind.
I eventually pulled it off, and washed off whatever noxious cancer chemicals were roiling around my skin cells, and looked at myself in the mirror. Alarmed, I double-checked the label on the packet, and sure enough, I had ripped right through the word in big, bold capitals: “WHITENING.” I am NOT going to take a picture of myself in this state, but trust me when I say that I can pass for an extra in the next Twilight movie*, if it stays like this: white face, contrasted with much darker neck and rest of skin. Not a good look. Thankfully, I have a turtleneck that I’m going to be wearing to school tomorrow.
* – even John Wayne Gacy looks better than these fools. The makeup in the last movie is better than it was in the very first installment, but it’s still distracting: “hey! your face is not the same color as your abs! What gives?!”









