A friend contacted me during the
stay-at-home phase of the COVID-19 pandemic to participate in a Zoom meeting
with several other women. She described it as a chance to do hair and makeup,
adding LOL at the end. LOL is right, thought I.
I keep my hair very short, getting
it cut at least every 6 weeks. It will be 12 weeks out from its last cut when
we Zoom. As for the makeup part, in a typical year, I put on makeup maybe five
or six times. That’s not per week or month. That’s per year. It pretty much
depends on how many weddings we go to. I stopped putting on makeup for funerals
years ago. The mourners at funerals these days have eyesight as bad as my own.
They’re just glad I can still show up and share memories.
So this “do hair and makeup” for my
friend’s Zoom party got me thinking. Exactly what should I do to prepare for
this event? I color my own hair. It’s a few weeks past its prime, but the roots
aren’t really due for a while. Will the emerging gray show up more on the
computer screen? I know those cameras magnify the tiniest details.
More importantly, how do I do the
“styling?” I can’t just mush it with my fingers like I can when it’s short. It’s
an understatement to describe my current look as raggedy. It’s more like extreme
bed head. Years ago, I cut my own hair, but I’m not that flexible anymore. I’m
sure I can’t reach around to the back now. I could draft my husband to help; I
cut his hair, after all. But he has challenges to his vision for which the treatments
are on hold during the pandemic. It would tempt fate to let him near my head
with our barber shears.
I suddenly had a great idea. I’ll
wear a hairband to push the wayward locks back from my face. It was a look I
wore often when I was young and I still have a basket of bands in different
materials and widths. A test run showed my hair isn’t long enough yet for those
to work. I have plenty of scarves I could try tying on my head, but would I
look like Rosie the Riveter?
I decided to defer a decision on my
hair and move on to the makeup part of my friend’s suggestion. The other women
on this Zoom call are all at least five or ten years younger than I am, so they
have less mileage on their complexions. As I already mentioned, I never was one
for a lot of makeup. I have a bottle of base coating from decades ago and
lipstick that’s almost as old. Mostly I just do my brows and lashes and dust
some color on my cheeks.
As I lean in to the mirror in my
bathroom, I see that there are now wrinkles all around my eyes. When did they
arrive? Probably about the same time as the crinkly lines I see around my
mouth. I guess I haven’t leaned in that far in a long time. I realize there
will be virtually no chance of hiding any of these without a major spackling
job, and I’m not about to get into that. It’s not like I’m going to someone’s
wedding, after all.
The close-up does remind me that
I’ll need to pluck all my chin hairs the day before the call. Ditto for shaving
the fuzz on the sides of my face with that special device I found in the “As Seen
On TV” section of the local drug store. I decide I should also spend some time
thinking about the lighting around the area where I plan to sit when we Zoom.
I get my laptop and try out a few
locations, being sure to do it at the same time of day as the get together is
scheduled. We have windows on four sides of our condo, but only two sides are
options that make any sense. I try out a few spots, having first removed a cat
or two from the place I plan to sit.
Good grief! My neck wattle shines
like a distress signal in the fog! No matter how I angle the laptop or reposition the chair, there’s no getting rid of that glow. It seems like the only solution
will be a Dr. Brix-type camouflage—I have plenty of scarves, after all. Of
course, that means I’ll have to coordinate my hair scarf with the one on my
neck, which will take some doing. Then the perfect idea came to me: I’ll just
wear my COVID-19 facemask. It hides everything.
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