As many of you may recall, I’m allergic to mascara. That means that if I want to have anything resembling eyelashes, I have to either cook it up myself or wear falsies. And since cooking it up left me essentially with a pile of black goo in a cup that I then couldn’t re-use, I decided to go ahead and try some falsies.
My first concern upon deciding to undertake this…undertaking was that I would spend the day looking either like Marnie from “Girls” or like a heavily made-up drag queen (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just not the look I’m going for — I prefer a more natural type of scene, and yes, I realize that false eyelashes are a contradiction either way, but just shut up about it already).
To avoid those pitfalls, I decided to go with the most reserved pair of lashes available to me at Rite-Aid.
Upon arriving home with my new acquisition, I stumbled across this hugely helpful <a href= “As many of you may recall, I’m allergic to mascara. “>WikiHow (I love you, WikiHow) page explaining how to put falsies on. I guarantee you that without such aid, I would have fucked the whole thing up.
So I followed the steps. I trimmed the sides of the lashes to make them fit, the ends to make them more realistic, and then glued them on with some ease, and before you know it, voila! I had on fake eyelashes. It felt a little weird and unnatural, but I sallied forth just the same.
Now, here’s the first thing about wearing fake eyelashes — suddenly, I felt underdressed in every other area. Before leaving the house, I felt I had to put more make-up on, a nice pair of shoes, and brush my hair (I KNOW, RIGHT?!). It was kind of lame — I’m not sure I’m a fan of dressing to match my fake body hair.
After getting more dressed up, me and my eyelashes decided that the first thing we would do is go get coffee. Once out in public, I immediately assumed that everyone knew my deep, dark secret. It’s like you have a sign on your face that reads: ONE OF THESE THINGS WAS NOT GIVEN BY NATURE, and you’re just daring the world to guess which thing it was. It feels, I suppose, very theatrical, too, and overdone. I was waiting for the weird stares, like, “damn girl, someone got out of their tech rehearsal early.”
But I got no such stares, which only led me to wonder whether fake eyelashes are becoming more popular or if I just looked super weird and nobody told me. Either way is frankly not ideal.
But coffee went well, I did not drop a lash into anything, and no one seemed even remotely shocked by my crazy, extreme appearance.
I got back in the car, feeling emboldened and actually feeling, for the first time in years, like I had eyelashes.
The rest of the day went similarly. I wore my falsies, felt a little bit less like everyone was staring at them, had a few moments of worrying that one had slipped into a jaunty angle, and then felt like I had the best-kept secret in the world resting on my eyelids.
By the end of the day, I could confidently say that I would do this again. It did feel like kind of a lot of work for everyday — anything that you have to glue onto your face takes the old beauty routine a little farther than I normally would — but for nights out, or important days, this is a go.