I stared down at the package of false eyelashes lying innocuously on my bathroom counter. I’d be lying if I said they didn’t look like two creepy spiders, vacuum-sealed in plastic. Nevertheless, they were certainly feathery and lush, and longer than my eyelashes, so I figured that, spiders or not, I was going to figure out how to glue them on my eyelids if it killed me.
Just as an aside, I had not arbitrarily decided to torture myself. I had gotten an invitation to a big, fancy event and immediately knew I was going to have to step up my usual makeup routine to fit in. I pondered my options and decided this might be the perfect opportunity to try out false eyelashes.
I smartly thought it would make sense to practice a few times before the event so that I didn’t end up accidentally gluing them to my forehead. I went out and got five different lashes to try and brought them home for my Great False Eyelash Experiment. I figured, best-case scenario, I would become a bona-fide false eyelash pro, go to my event and have everyone swoon over my long and lustrous lashes. Worst-case scenario, they would fall off and stick to my upper lip and everyone would call me Groucho for the night.
In an effort to learn from my mistakes, I decided to keep a journal of my eyelash efforts.
Day One: For my first application, I thought I should try them out on someone other than myself, just to get the hang of it.
Conclusion: The dog looks amazing with false eyelashes.
Day Two: I took the next leap and tried them on myself. I did not do such a great job with the eyelashes, but I did master the fine art of gluing one eye shut. This actually takes a great deal more talent than one would think. Helpful tip: Have an eye patch on hand so you can disguise your mistake by pretending to be a pirate for a day.
Day Three: I got both eyelashes on both eyelids but forgot to trim them to normal proportions and looked like there were caterpillars on both eyes. I realized this when my husband tried to swat them off my face.
Day Four: I managed to get them on correctly and decided to take them out for a trial run. But I noticed that people at the store kept looking at me really strangely. When I got home, I looked in the mirror and saw that one of my false eyelashes had migrated up to my eyebrow.
Conclusion: Beautiful, long eyelashes: pretty. Freakishly long eyebrow: not so much.
Day Five: My false eyelashes stayed in the right place for the whole day, and I even slept in them to really test out their staying power. But one fell off during the night and scared the heck out of me the next morning when I woke up and thought there was a dead centipede on my pillow.
Conclusion: False eyelashes are stupid, and I should focus on what’s really important in life:
Eyebrows.
Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, “Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble,” available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.
