Skip to main content

Magical Elixir

Let's start today's post with a fact: I don't wear make up. That may be a strange opening line, but I mention it so that it's clear that I have zero first-hand experience with the stuff. The little knowledge that I do have comes from overhearing some video that the Mild Fiancée is watching. So take everything that comes after this with a grain of salt.

Okay, with that disclaimer out of the way, I have actually learned a few things about make up over the course of this relationship. Some of it is really easy to remember, because it's led to some interesting discussions. Guys, if I asked you whether primer or foundation goes on first, would you know? My female cousins and friends immediately know that it's primer, but the really amusing part is that half the time, they scoff at the fact that a guy wouldn't know. I mean, it's called "primer," for crying out loud. Whenever you paint something, you put the primer on first. Of course, after the guys politely point out that whenever you build a structure (e.g., a house), you build the foundation first, the guys get cut a little more slack. Both of those words basically translate to "do this part first."

Other times, I've actually seen the Mild Fiancée use, or talk about, a particular product. For example, she's trying to figure out how she wants her make up done for the actual wedding, so she's been sampling various different products. One of those products was a "setting spray" (I tried to find a link to a simple explanation, but I was unsuccessful). Basically, it's something you spray on your face after you're done applying your make up. It's meant to be the very last step, so that everything stays the same (it "sets"). You can imagine that this might be useful for an hours-long event like a wedding.

Now, those two factoids above are roughly the extent of my knowledge. It's not like I'd be able to apply the Mild Fiancée's makeup correctly (there are apparently YouTube videos of this with hilarious results). However, those two facts were enough for a third bit of hilarity.

As it turns out, one of the products that the Mild Fiancée is sampling is something called a "beauty elixir." It purports to be both a primer and a setting spray. Again, I don't know tons about makeup. I have no experience in using or applying these products. BUT ... I am highly skeptical of any product that says that it can simultaneously be the very first item you use AND the very last item you use. There's a reason those are different steps, and I'm roughly 80% sure that you can't just substitute one product for the other. I wouldn't try to use paint primer as a final coat of paint, you know?

Yet, that's exactly what this stuff says you can do. It is so magical, that you can either use it as the first thing or the last thing, and it will work just as well in either scenario. Somehow, it just knows whether to act as a blank canvas or to keep everything from changing, depending on when you apply it.

Shenanigans, I say. I may not know much about makeup, but I'm pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to work. Shenanigans.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

From Scratch 2

A few months ago, I tried my hand at making home-made dumplings . It came out all right, and it was definitely passable for a first attempt, but we always said that we should have another go at it. After all, if we liked it all right when we made it with no first-hand experience, it should come out even better after having at least one rep under our belt, right? We found out this weekend. First of all, the Mild Wife helped with the dough preparation this time around. I knew to be wary of making the dough too sticky this time around, but because she has more experience with baking, she was able to guide us through the pitfalls. What really surprised me was just how little water you can/should add at a time. We're talking about a tablespoon at a time when you're trying to make a ball of dough. I mean, I knew not to overwater it from previous experience, but it still surprised me to add in that little water at a time. Still, there was a method to this ( including the trusty sanduk...

Inside and Outside

As I've mentioned before, the Mild Wife and I invested in a sewing machine during the pandemic. It was the most basic model we could find, but it was good enough for what we needed: to make a few masks. And now, over a year later, I still think that it was a good investment. Interestingly, even with restrictions being lifted a bit, we still find that we need masks. Some stores still require them, and neither of us wants to be in a position where we needed a mask and didn't have one. So, we still have to wear and wash them. And even though we've never run out of clean masks to wear, we did notice that we were close a couple of times. So, I recently broke out the sewing machine to make a few more masks. When we initially invested in supplies, we bought a pack of fabric squares. We figured we weren't going to need super high quality, and having a bunch of squares would give us options in case one of us screwed up (read: me). That also gave us the ability to add a little v...

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...