My Deep Love for Mascara

I've had an ongoing love affair with mascara since I was 13 years old. My best friend's mom was the Avon lady.  She hired us to hang Avon catalogs on every door in her territory in exchange for free make-up samples. We would slave away carrying  huge bags full of catalogs up and down every single driveway in the blistering summer heat for an entire day, and then she would let us pick something out of the catalog for ourselves.

My very first payment was a tube of clear mascara.  I wasn't old enough to wear the colored stuff,  but clear mascara = OK with mom. I couldn't wait try it on.  I went straight to the bathroom mirror and applied the stuff the way I'd seen it done in the beauty magazines.  I turned to my friend who was applying her new tube of cotton candy flavored lip gloss:

"How does it look?" I asked.
"It makes your lashes look totally cool!" she said.

I was hooked.  Instantly.  What 13 year old girl didn't want to have "totally cool" eyelashes? Looking back, I don't think that clear mascara actually did anything at all for my lashes, but it definitely had some sort of powerful placebo effect.  Just wearing it made me feel like a super model. It also satisfied me for a few more years until my mom would let me wear the real stuff.

Now that I'm a grown woman, I don't leave home without it. If I have to make an emergency trip to the store in the wee hours of the morning, I put on dark glasses, and speak to NO ONE.

You could outlaw all other make-up products in this world and I wouldn't care.  But if wearing mascara became a crime,  I would seek out some type of black market make-up dealer. Once the price on it went too high, I would search out homemade mascara recipes on the internet and try outlandish things like shoe polish mascara with a pipe cleaner applicator.

Mascara is on my list of items to take with me on a deserted island.

I know that we're not supposed to get caught up in our outward appearance, and 1 Peter 3:3 is always in the back of my mind  when I think about things like mascara.  I do try to keep the "imperishable beauty" of a gentle and quiet spirit at the forefront of my thoughts, but I have to be honest: a little mascara goes a long way toward helping  in the external department.

This is only a temporary infatuation, though. I won't have to worry about wearing mascara in heaven. I think that we'll all have perfectly beautiful, long lashes like Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street.




Do you remember Snuffy?  He kind of freaked me out as a kid because I couldn't quite figure out what in the world he was supposed to be. He looked sort of like a woolly mammoth, but he didn't have any ears... or tusks, for that matter! Regardless, I was always mesmerized by his long, beautiful eyelashes. They really made his eyes look big and friendly...and he blinked them a lot! It was eyelash love at first sight!

Does anyone else share my love for mascara, or am I the only one who gets excited about frivolous things?