The Eyelash: Fur or Hair?

Those of us who daily make our pitiful gestures toward being beautiful have noticed a creeping tendency on the part of our mentors in the beauty business to become a little hysterical about ornamenting the eyes. All other features of face and body are, we are told, as nothing. Lips may go. Hair may hang in long, straight hanks like moldy hay, as the poem goes. Clothes may touch the body only at the shoulders, concealing any concessions to beauty that Nature may have made (preferably revealing the knees, of course, where the concessions are unbounteously bestowed according to my census). But the eye, that light of the body and window of the soul, may not be left untrimmed.

This is all known as “the natural look.” Red in a lipstick, for example. is much too obvious and unnatural. One should have a mouth that is — and I blush as I quote “honeyhued.” Or, as another magazine puts it so charmingly, more of a putty color. Now. I don’t know if you’ve got any putty, but you’ve probably got some honey around, and I’d like you to take a good hard look at it and ask yourself if you wouldn’t look a lot more natural in that than in the fire-engine stuff you’re stuck with now. The haunting little worry that has so far kept me from rushing down to my neighborhood druggist and buying puttycolored lipstick is that I’m not absolutely sure I want to look natural. I’d always hoped that the little goodies I put on my face made me look a speck less natural and that it was all for the good. Now that I’ve actually put it down and thought it all out clearly, I recognize that I can save my money if I make the decision for putty-colored lips. I’ve got putty-colored lips. Au naturel. I’ve got a putty-colored face, for that matter. And putty-colored hair. Edmund Burke’s comment that we all are ruined on the side of our natural propensities makes quite a bit of sense to me. But I digress.

All of us have known from our youth on of various cunning devices to embellish the eye. The eyelash curler, for instance, many women have been using with success for years. (I shun it myself, as my eyelids, sparsely sprouted with straight, putty-colored eyelashes, have a regrettable tendency to let loose their hold on the lashes at the slightest provocation.)

There is mascara, of course, which, depending upon prevailing fashion, one daubs on heavily or lightly, from the roots out or on the tippy tips, on upper lashes only or on upper and lower, in daytime or at eventide, for better or for worse, in sickness or in health. Most brands are advertised as waterproof and probably are. but that doesn’t mean they stay on in water.

But in these latter days, the curler and mascara have been joined by a host of other necessities. Eye shadow is no longer just a little box of blue rouge. We need, according to my tutors, that “dappled, light-versusdark” look around the eyes. And while you may be permitted almost any color you can mention, eye shadow at its best is a mixture of — you guessed it — putty colors, to open up spaces or dose spaces or soften spaces.

And we also have eyeliner, which is not’ as my first quick mental picture always indicates, flannel to put inside the eyelid, but a cross between pencil and crayon that is for drawing lines. The lines arc to be drawn, of course, on the eyelids, just above the lashes, if any. “Stretch eyelid taut,” the directions say cheerfully. “Draw a line at base of lashes.” I translate this “above lashes,” but you can do it any way you want. I’ve put my own liner away with the curler, since I never could draw a straight line, even on nice flat, smooth paper — taut or not. Anyway, the shock of being written on makes my eyelids ruffled — literally.

All this is but prelude, however, to that crowning glory, that “essential ingredient for today’s eyes,” the eyelash. (We will not stop now to discuss yesterday’s eyes.) You may think you have quite nice eyelashes and can get along nicely without any extra, but I’ll bet you don’t have a thick fuzzy fringe. Well, you should, and furthermore, we are soberly told that if we are at all serious about looking glamorous we need a pair and a spare, thus saving one for evenings or for dropping down the drain.

As you may have guessed, I am willing to try anything once. After several months of wearing dark glasses to hide my shame, I knew that the time had come for my thick fuzzy fringe. I made a luckless search of mail-order catalogues as a first step, since I am the sort who hates to display a shameful need. When I buy undies to replace the tattered shreds, I manage to suggest to the seller that I am merely augmenting a great store of silken treasures laid away at home. I have never confessed, what is more, to buying new sheets because of having stuck my foot through the last one that will fit my bed. So the fleeting thought I gave to walking boldly into the one store in our town that might conceivably have eyelashes for barter and saying that I had come for a pair so sickened me that went back to dark glasses for some time.

But finding myself one day in great department store, I set my face in that unsolitary place toward the cosmetics and began composing sallies with which to amuse the girl at the counter, meanwhile also assuring myself that I need never see her again and certainly not give my name or hometown. I circled the counters, all displaying the expected assortment of garnishes, but not, to my disappointment, featuring any serve-yourself eyelashes. Eventually, sidling up to one counter that had no other customers, an advantage I insisted upon, I was greeted by a far more perfect creature than I who wondered if she could help me.

“I’d like to see some eyelashes,” I said cleverly, hovering behind my dark glasses and hoping that my lipstick looked at least a little puttyish.

“Fur or hair?”

This gambit took my breath away, but my quick mind instantly reverted to its natural dishonesty, and I allowed that I’d like to see the hair ones — I was getting a little tired of fur.

A number of scrawny little fringes were displayed, all with frightening prices. The thick luzzy fur ones were alongside, with even more frightening prices. Since I had so early committed myself to hair, I rather quickly made my choice of the cheapest, and limply handed across a good share of my wealth. There was a little sign about a free demonstration of how to apply, but my professed intimacy with fur clearly forestalled any exhibition of how to get into a pair of hair eyelashes.

Now, I’m about as good with paste and scissors and paper-folding as with a drawing pencil. Nevertheless, I returned eagerly to my boudoir (it being well marked with the spoor of small children less fastidious than I) and proceeded to install a hypnotic effect.” Although, as it turned out, the effect was hypnotic, cannot say that it was altogether successful. But I am anticipating.

“Hold lash strip in tweezers and apply thin line of adhesive” was the first advice. This shakily done, I next proceeded to the meat of the thing, which was to place lash strip as close to base of natural lashes as possible. After a long, despairing struggle the lash was securely attached except at the two corners, which defied sticking. I decided that to start all over was folly, so I applied a spot of glue to either end of my eyelid, mashed down firmly, and stood back to evaluate. Discounting the white glue all over my eyelid, the effect was pretty lush, and I went on to the next and last eye, somewhat handicapped by the fact that the first eye couldn’t see and that the second eye had to be shut to accept the trimming.

I was able to get off most of the extra adhesive (adhesive sounds a lot nicer than glue, I think), and after an hour or so the general redness in the area of my eyes had largely subsided. I fancied that the whole effect was glamorous yet subtle, and calmly greeted my husband, who came in for lunch, all unwitting. He stared briefly with a certain blank expression born of years of contact with feminine refurbishings and coupled with that hypnosis I have mentioned. “False eyelashes,” he commented, sounding at once alarmed and hopeless. I did not reply, and we did not touch on the subject again.

His departure was followed closely by the arrival of my children, both male and both as uncaring about my appearance as about their own. except on the occasion of parents’ visiting day at school, when they are anxious that I blend in nicely with the scenery, call no attention to myself, and in general avoid danger of blotching the family name. These I offered my usual greetings, which were fondly returned, not without certain disquieting stares. As they went upstairs, the younger asked the older, “What’s the matter with Mom’s eyes?”

The sweet sorrow of parting with money was too fresh a memory to allow me to put the lashes away forever with other discarded decorations. The corners came unstuck only two or three times during the afternoon, requiring a fresh spot of glue to prevent their jutting out from the eyes more or less in the manner of antennae. And at bedtime they peeled off smoothly with no skin at all, contrary to the fear that had been building up.

My directions bade me replace the lashes in their little box after washing with soap and water and removing excess adhesive with alcohol. This done, I examined my treasures and realized that I would have to proceed with the reshaping also mentioned in the directions, as the curl had gone from them and they looked, for some obscure reason, like blinders. I was to curl them, it said, around my finger or around a pencil. Now, though I am tall and bony and look undernourished, my finger, even my little finger, is not of the dimensions of a pencil. A lash that could curl around my finger would have to be affixed to a pretty monumental eyelid. I elected the pencil and found that the lash had no idea of what was expected of it. I wrapped it against the pencil with paper, and fell, too soon exhausted, into bed.

I will not burden you, gentle reader, with details of how the curl does not take as planned, of how practice in applying lashes does not make perfect. Nor will I burden you with details of the claustrophobic feeling that can overcome the one who has managed to glue an eye shut and feels in mortal danger of rending an eyelid asunder.

But I was reading the other day about this lash builder. It seems that if you just apply —