When It's Good to Have the Blues

Back in elementary school, I was cool enough to be friends with Bridie Krishini. And trust me, folks, that was cool. She was exotic, her parents were divorced, and her dad lived in Hollywood and was married to That Chick From The Star Trek Movie. Being friends with Bridie was a big deal. We were going to start a band -- I wrote all the songs, she designed the costumes (and then I redesigned them).

Every summer, Bridie would go out to California and stay with her dad and His Famous Wife for a couple of months. She'd return tanned-to-a-crisp and fabulous, sporting whatever was the latest fashion of the Children of Hollywood Movie Stars. The year we started fifth grade, she showed up wearing Electric Blue Mascara.

I thought it was the most glamorous thing I'd ever seen. Electric Blue Mascara! I was completely awestruck, and knew I'd never have the guts to wear mascara that wasn't eyelash-colored. Wow. Blue. (Shortly after that, I stopped being cool enough to be friends with Bridie. Oh well, at least I went to college. And her dad didn't stay married to the Movie Star for very long anyway.)

Flash-forward twenty years or so. I wear brown mascara. I've worn brown mascara since about midway through the ninth grade. The only time I've ever really worn black mascara, even, was on my wedding day, and that was only because one of my bridesmaids made me do it.

So I will never know what came over me this past spring when I grabbed a giant tube of Benefit's Bad Gal Blue and threw it in my basket in Sephora. I purchased it. I brought it home. I put it on the next morning, just to see what it looked like on me.

And then I went to a meeting.

I wore that blue mascara the whole day. And the next. I wore it for a week, then two weeks, and suddenly a month had gone by. And not one person said anything to me about it. My bright-red toenails get all kinds of buzz at work, but my cobalt-colored eyelashes? Not a word.

So, it turns out that unless you are in direct sunlight, this stuff just looks like regular mascara. If I were to have meetings outside at noon in the parking lot and invite everyone to put their faces six inches from mine, they would be able to tell that my eyelashes were coated in blue mascara rather than, um, any other color. And I'm okay with that. It's like having my own secret superpower -- nobody but me knows that, in the blink of an eye, I can go from mild-mannered brown-mascara-wearing HolyKnitter to Fabulous Eighties Hollywood Moviestar Whose Stepdaughter Steals Her Makeup.

As the spring turned to summer, I stopped wearing the Bad Gal Blue every day. But I've also taken a hiatus from wearing much in the way of makeup right now. I like the Bad Gal Blue. The brush is oversized and therefore cumbersome, but has good bristles and a good tip. There's no real clumping.

And I've discovered that I can layer a tiny bit of brown on the tips of my lashes for a slightly more subtle effect when I know I am going to be out in the sun.