I just made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I bought a 5x magnifying make-up mirror yesterday and I haven't stopped crying since. Every single pore ... every single hair ... every single wrinkle ... every single age spot -- they're shown off in their glorious imperfection. AND, since the mirror I bought is also lighted, it's like there's a heavy-duty spotlight bringing everything into even clearer focus.
It's really depressing.
I was wanting something that would help me pluck my eyebrows ... help me keep my mascara from getting all over my face as I put it on ... help me with my lipliner ... and help these 51-year-old eyes be able to see well enough to put my make-up on. Is that too much to ask? I mean, seriously. Is it? Let me answer my own question: yes. The whole point was to actually LOOK BETTER. Read that again. To look better. That's all I wanted. Well, that and to look like the girl on the right.
This is what I got. When my face is magnified, it looks like my skin is made out of lunar material ... and when I say lunar material, I'm being polite to myself. My face looks like the surface of the moon. My eyebrows would make Andy Rooney of
60 Minutes jealous. Honestly, I didn't know I even HAD that many hairs in my eyebrows ... OR that they managed to grow halfway down my face. Practically every single color of the rainbow can be seen on my face in my horrifying new make-up mirror, and that's BEFORE I put any make-up on. And yes, I thought I had a few stray hairs that would pop up on my lip or my chin, yet I took care of them before other people could notice. Ha!! Even as I write this, I'm laughing hysterically and wiping the tears of mirth from my eyes. I now know the sad truth. I've grown a full beard and mustache and no one ever had the good graces to tell me. And to make it all even worse, I was aware of the "few" wrinkles that I was "gradually" getting -- the smile lines, the cute little marks around my eyes and nose when I laughed. Yeah, whatever. They're not wrinkles. They're deep crevices that a small child could crawl into and get lost.
My new 5x magnifying make-up mirror is still sitting on the vanity, but it's closed and unplugged. Yet, it still taunts me whenever I walk by it. It's almost like I have this crazy addiction to checking out what other horrifying things it will reveal. But I've managed to avoid that temptation. At least, until tomorrow when I have to put on make-up to go to work. You know, who ever said I had to wear make-up to work? I hear the new rage is to wear a paper bag over your face so people have to guess who you are. If it's not the rage yet, it soon will be.
