Welcome to Skin Deep with Louise McSharry, my opportunity to put years of obsessing over beauty products and techniques to good use. I won’t tell you something is good if it’s not. I won’t recommend products I haven’t actually tried. As the magical sitar in Moulin Rouge said, I only speak the truth.
Sometimes in our lives, we will find ourselves putting on makeup, knowing that we’ll soon be crying. It might be a wedding or a funeral, or a final break-up chat. Perhaps, if you’re like me, it’s simply a relatively intense one-to-one meeting which you seem to be absolutely incapable of getting through without tears, no matter how hard you try. But one thing is for sure, tears are on the horizon.
These situations often make the application of makeup feel somewhat futile, but aside from the therapeutic value of the process, feeling like we look our best can help us find strength when heading into difficult situations. So, with that in mind, what can you do to make your makeup as cry-proof as possible?
First, it’s important to think strategically. You may like to wear perfect black eyeliner flicks every day, but those bad boys are not going to survive a real cryfest. Once the tears have dried, you can go and apply your flicks, but if you have them on during the crying it’s going to be black streak central, both in your actual eyes or running down your face. With that in mind, let’s keep things simple and emphasise the lips. A bold, matte lip won’t be impacted by crying, but it still provides a healthy dose of glamour.
- Dab, don’t rub. Rubbing will make a mess, dabbing will do minimal language.
- Rather than rubbing a tissue back and forth over your nose, squeeze it gently around your nostrils to soak up any offending liquid without increasing redness.
- Channel the Kardashians and get those tears right out of the gate. Dab your tissue gently in the corners of your eyes when the tears come before they can do any damage.
New Product
These days, many beauty fans are asking questions about the environmental impact of their habits, with packaging often providing pause for thought. Our massive use of plastic packaging certainly isn’t doing the planet any favours, so you’ll be glad to hear that Inglot have introduced a new flexi palette made of naturally coloured bamboo. You can still fill it with your favourite products, but you can feel a little bit better about what happens to it when you’re finished with it. The empty palette will set you back €18.
