Bad Makeup

Just like any other high school teenager, I loved makeup! At that age of 16 I was starting to get into it all. Eye liner. Eye shadow. Mascara. And of course.. foundation.

Foundation was my favorite of my entire makeup routine. I remember loving the feeling of covering up the redness in my cheeks, chin and nose. I looked SO much better with makeup than without! (Now at 28 years old I could care less about wearing makeup everyday.)

In high school I was absolutely RELIGIOUS about having a tan! Tan skin was prettier than being pasty pale, right? If you had a tan, you were considered more attractive, right? Well, that was my train of thought in those days. I remember taking trips to the drug store every other week it seemed to get new makeup. As I wanted to build my tan, my makeup had to match am I right?

I picked up a new container of loose powder foundation. It was a medium toned color. I was sure it would match my current skin tone. I tried it on and all seemed well. However, it did seem a bit paler than my tan I was currently rocking everyday. I did NOT want to go back to the drugstore again and get another new container of foundation in the next color up.. I had a solution, though. I had a container of bronzing powder. “I’ll mix this into my new powder to darken it up to my shade to match!” So that’s what I did. It was the perfect color now, right?!

Wrong.

I woke up early for school just like every other day to spend that 30 minutes perfecting my “flawless” makeup. Of course I used my new powder foundation creation. I used this technique of covering up my more reddened spots of my face with a couple layers of foundation on those areas. I went over my face with my powder again.. and again.. and again. Perfect!

It was the middle of the school day. I remember I would always be checking my makeup at points throughout the day with my little compact mirror I always kept in my folder. However, I remember that I had not checked my makeup at all yet that day (I must’ve been SO confident I absolutely perfected my makeup before I left the house for school).

My classroom I was in in the middle of the day there was a full body mirror in the the storage area that my friends and I would always go to to check our outfits. So we go in as we always do. I took one look in that mirror.. and I could not believe what I saw.

My face was ORANGE! Was it the lighting in the room?! I couldn‘t figure it out. My gosh! My face was orange and my neck was white.. I was feeling so humiliated that I had been walking around school for half of the day with an orange face (ohh what people must have thought..). Naturally I did not have any makeup remover of any kind with me at school, nor did I have any different kinds of foundation with me to fix it. I flipped my sweatshirt sleeve inside out and I frantically started to rub off my foundation in hopes that would lighten it up and my face would match my neck.

It was from that point on, that I realized I needed to be doing my makeup in neutral lighting to avoid that potential embarrassment again. You live, and you learn.