Make-up

I don’t have a very long train ride in the morning. It’s about 12 to 15 minutes long and usually moves a pretty good clip. It almost seems like there isn’t even enough time to start reading the paper because it’s doubtful you’ll get to the end. I didn’t have a paper this morning (the damn newspaper boxes were empty) and I just had to take a seat and stare blankly about.

I sat next to a woman who had a large book open on her lap. The book appeared to be The History of Illinois Bell, or the old phone company. It was a thick tome and she was spending considerable time reading through it. I didn’t want to try and read over her shoulder as that’s considered rude but I was curious. I was curious why in the world any person in this day and age of cell phones and wireless everything needed to go back and review the complete history of telephone service in Illinois. But then again, I was also curious about it myself because I like knowing that crap.

As I was pondering these questions, I noticed the woman sitting in seat in front of us who was putting on her make-up. She was not what one would call a terribly attractive woman, but she certainly wasn’t Quasimodo. She did however spend what seemed like an inordinate amount of time applying her make-up. There were brushes and pads and mirrors and liners and smaller brushes and touch ups and more liners and powder and looking in her compact mirror and more rouge and more brushing. My eyes started to water with the flurry of make-up floating about in the air.  She even checked her lips once more in the reflective surface of her iPhone.

I was sitting behind her for all of this, in fact she was putting her make-up on the entire ride, and I could still see one blemish just behind her jaw line that no matter how much make-up she put on, she kept missing. When the train finally pulled into the station I made it a point to try and see what kind of masterpiece she had unleashed upon her visage. Amazingly it didn’t look like she had put on any make-up at all. She was still pale with tired eyes, her cheeks still looked pallid and her lips seemed dry. I couldn’t believe after all that work nothing looked accomplished.

I was reminded of the Gloria Steinem documentary I watched on Monday night and the struggle women had for their Civil Rights, or at least the Woman’s Lib movement. I thought, “This woman, a working, liberated woman, just spent more time putting on fictional make-up for work than I’ll spend writing about it. Is that liberation?”