Makeup·
A lady I know, born in the 1960s, likes the way I do her makeup. I offered to teach her how to do it herself.
She said she would rather I just did it for her.
What about when I am not there
That was my answer, and I meant it plainly. What about the trip, the wedding in another city, the day something is happening and I am two hours away.
Learning it does not take away the option of having someone else do it. It takes away the dependence. You can still call me, and the difference is that you are choosing to, rather than waiting to find out whether I am free.
Hiring somebody is not one decision, it is six
Two calendars. A time that works for both. An address, sent and confirmed. Getting there, or being here early enough.
Doing it yourself is fifteen minutes and no coordination at all. On the days when everything else is already complicated, that gap is the whole story.
“I am not good with my hands”
That was my friend, my age, and it is the most common reason I hear.
It is also what I believed before I learned. Makeup looks like a talent because we only ever see the finished version. What it actually is: a small number of ordinary motions. Shown properly, most of them work the first time you try them. It is much easier than it looks from the outside.
My friend had gotten herself into one of the top universities in the States, and then two master’s degrees in England. I told her makeup is way easier than any of that. It is not even close.
I also told her about several well-known actresses and public figures who have said in interviews that they do their own makeup. They said they learned it because they did not want to depend on anybody either.
You do not get to schedule the days that matter
What finally moved my friend was a question about timing. I asked her: what if you walked into a room tomorrow and someone you had always wanted to meet was standing in it?
She said she would hire a makeup artist.
You cannot, though. The days worth being ready for do not give you any warning: the interview that gets moved up two days, the photograph taken without asking, an old classmate on the street, the morning you feel terrible and would like the mirror to disagree with you.
None of those days are on the calendar. Which is why the skill has to be somewhere you can reach it, and not in somebody else’s schedule.
Both of them learned
My friend lives far away from me, so I recorded videos for her. The lady born in the 1960s I taught in person.
Months later I ran into that lady again, at an event. She was wearing makeup, and she had done a beautiful job of it. It was hers: her hands, her morning, her decisions about what went where.
She looked polished, and bright, and happier than when I first met her, and I do not think the makeup alone accounts for it.
Looking after your own face seems to tell you something about your own worth. That is hard to measure: in one survey of 790 women, most said makeup improved their self-esteem, their mood and their confidence. It is not proof of cause. It matched what was standing in front of me.
That lady started in her late fifties. Nothing about that was too late.