Spider Woman

I recently came across a picture of Kim Kardashian and was struck by her overly-long eye lashes.  They looked like spiders on her face.  However, this image prompted me to critique my own lashes, which I found to be woefully  inadequate.  With a photo shoot coming up in only a few days, I decided to delve into the world of false eye lashes.

Don’t get me wrong – I hate anything that’s fake.  Speaking for me personally (please don’t send me nasty emails) I do not have, nor would ever consider having fake nails, hair extensions, fake body parts, etc.  It’s just not who I am.  So the fact that I was considering fake eye lashes was a departure from the norm for me. But at 43, you start to look for any help you can get. 

I walked into Ulta and was struck by the many options of false eye lashes available.  Flash back:  as a child, I remember my mother sitting on the bathroom sink, seemingly effortlessly applying individual false lashes – her lashes always looked long and glamorous.  So I decided to follow in mom’s footsteps and try the individual lashes, even after the warnings by the cashier clerk.  “You know you have to use glue and apply these INDIVIDUALLY,” she advised.  Trying to sound patient and sage, I replied, “Oh I have lots of patience and I’m good with make-up…I’m sure I won’t have any problems.” 

Having zero patience, I rushed home and ran to my vanity where I have a make-up mirror that magnifies everything 10 times (yeah, I’m getting old).  I ripped open the packaging and gingerly picked up the first ‘clump’ of lashes..then read the directions.  “Apply a drop of glue to a piece of aluminum foil…dab a small amount of glue onto lash…”  Well I wasn’t going to run all the way downstairs for aluminum foil, so I applied the glue to the corner of the package.  I dipped the lash clump into the glue and stuck the clump onto the outer corner of my top lashes.  Now I purchased the ‘natural length’ lashes and used the ‘small’ size clump.  Well these fake lashes extended seemingly six inches past my natural lash.  I immediately grabbed a pair of scissors and trimmed them (yes, I had a very sharp object near my eye ball).  I trimmed and applied two more clumps to the outer portion of my upper lid only.  I wanted to keep the look as natural as possible.  Long story short, for the next two days I would find lash clumps in the sink, on my pillow, on my desk at work, on the cat, in my salad, etc., which caused me to re-apply the individual clumps repeatedly, and I wound up with gobs of glue dried on my natural lashes.  When the photo shoot was over, so was my experience with glued lashes.

However being a glutton for punishment, and thinking I could still somehow pull off this trendy look, I purchased a set of eye lashes already attached to sticky strips.  Again, natural length.  I didn’t feel I needed to read the directions since the application seemed pretty straight forward (I’m not sure it would have helped anyway).  I proceeded to stick the center of the lash strip to the center of my upper eye lash line, and slowly press the rest of the strip down, aligning the strip to my lash line.  With my eye half closed, it looked rather pretty: nice, even feathery lashes without glue globs.  And then I opened my eye all the way.  ACK!!  I looked like Liza Minelli circa 1974.  The sticky strip looked like a thick black caterpillar running across my eye.  I proceeding to rip the sticky lash strip from my eyelid.  The adhesive was so bonding that it had my lid stretching out away from my eye like a Stretch Armstrong toy.  And I think it took a few of my natural lashes with it. 

Sigh.  Thus ends my experience with fake lashes.  Kim Kardashian be damned.