What's the deal with make up?

It has been a while since I have last written here. I was going through a transition of sorts, and was mildly disoriented and not in the mood to share my thoughts. Something did happen, however, and yesterday I woke up with a determination to start using make up!

Yes, I know... Most women use make up, but I have never used it before for some reason. As I mentioned before, I am not a hippie: I do all the other womanly things, like shave my legs, pluck my eyebrows and take care of my finger nails and, on occasion, even toe nails. Make up was just not on that list, but now I was bursting with desire to make myself pretty.

I told my husband that I will get hussied up and then he will take me out. While it made him laugh, he didn't like the expression "hussied up". He said that it has a negative connotation and that I should not use it. Internet to the rescue! I looked the expression up and Wikionary (which we all know is reliable) states the following:


"This term is used almost exclusively with regards to women. It is also often used with an air of moral superiority, insinuating that the fact that the person being referred to is inferior for dressing in the way that they do. It is also commonly used when the manner of dressing is a recent change in their normal behavior."

Since it is a change in my normal behavior, I could freely use that term. And I did.

I have encountered a problem: I don't own any make up. That means shopping. I am not a traditional shopper in that I don't necessarily enjoy browsing stores endlessly looking for some unidentified object to buy. So I have identified objects that I needed to buy, which were foundation (it's not for houses anymore), mascara, and lipstick. Now I can go shopping.

I went to a nearby cosmetics store to obtain the magical items that would make me instantly pretty. I walked in, looked at rows of beautifying items and began my search. There was liquid foundation, powder foundation, foundation on a stick, fair foundation, fairly fair foundation, brown foundation. There was mascara of all sorts: black, blackest black, jet black, blue black, brown black, brown brown, mascara for volume, mascara for length, waterproof mascara, definition mascara... I did not name them all. I was getting ready to cry when some kind soul who worked at the store looked at my disoriented face and took pity on me.

I ended up with Bare Minerals fair foundation, brown black mascara, and some lipstick. Now I need to learn how to apply those. I don't want to end up looking as a brightly colored parrot or Mimi from the Drew Carey show.
I will let you know how my experiment goes.