I'm a Summer

I haven't worn makeup for several years now. I used to never go without it. However, during the pandemic, I stopped wearing it, because who was going to see me? 

When the time came to reveal my face in public again, my skin had other plans. A new allergy had moved in while I wasn't looking. Makeup now makes my eyes itch and water. So my face is just my face these days. 

Recently, I noted that color analysis had come back around on TikTok. Once again, people were holding scarves up to their chins and declaring themselves Soft Autumns or True Winters.

It reminded me of the one and only time I went to have my "colors" done.

Back then, doing anything fashionable was completely out of character for me. But a work friend convinced me to spend a Saturday afternoon learning my "colors," a process which entailed taking off my makeup in public (a horror at that time) and having my physical self assessed. 

This was a lot of trouble for a woman who believed in blue jeans and Cover Girl.

Other women from work had spent small fortunes to be analyzed and "seasoned" so their wardrobes would match their personal coloring. As usual, I was twelve steps behind in the fad department, but at least by now the cost had gone down.

Many things can be said for humbling yourself in public. My friend and I ended up seeing each other in many different lights as the consultant ran us all over the downtown store. She led us, with bare, unmade faces, to opposite ends of the building to determine the best light.

As it turned out, my colors were not so easy to find. My eyes were an indeterminable color. I always called them hazel.

Apparently, they are not that simple.

The color consultant said my eyes were like "cracked ice." When she looked into them, she said, a person kind of fell in and kept going. Every time she placed a color near my eyes, that color became my eye color. 

She finally settled on some kind of combination gray-green-blue.

And what did I learn from this experience? I learned that I am a Summer and should wear dusty colored clothes. I also learned you're not supposed to take makeup off with soap and water, and that I should wear lipstick.

I did not then, and never have, worn lipstick. Lipstick has always bothered me, making my lips swell. I was a lip gloss girl, then and now.

The color consultant transformed my friend into a dashing sophisticate, a vision that fit her trim body and flowing hair. I thought she wore her makeup much better than I did. She bought a bunch of stuff to take home. I just paid for the consultation.

The true test of my new-found beauty came with my husband, of course. My face was tight, and my mouth tasted funny from the lipstick, but I needed his opinion before I searched for a washcloth.

He viewed me intently from afar. "Looks about the same to me," he said. He moved in for a closer look.

"Well, now I don't know. You've got it all smudged there in the corner," he said as he peered at my face.

I looked in the mirror. No, it wasn't smudged. It was applied as the color consultant had shown me, so as to accent a certain feature. "Move back and look," I said.

He did so, and admitted it looked all right from a few feet back. But up close and personal, where it really counts, all he could see was a smudge.

Looking back now, I have to laugh. I went through all that - the bare face, the comment about my eyes, the dusty Summer clothes, the lipstick that I could never wear - only to end up, years later, not wearing a speck of makeup at all. Somewhere my color consultant is weeping. But my husband? He says I look about the same.