Mascara

Hola darlings!

For years and years and years, I used Maybelline's basic waterproof black mascara - the stuff in the white tube that hasn't changed in like 100 years.  Very interesting - I don't see it listed at all at the Maybelline website anywhere.  Maybe the stuff I was buying all those years was left over from WWII.

I liked it because it generally didn't smudge on my then oily complexion even after hours and hours, and I was able to wash it off with my Dove soap (which I began using at age 22 and continued using until 2001, when I switched to a generic brand of Cetaphil on sister Darlene's recommendation -- she was right, by the way -- and then in February 2010 switched to L'Bri products, which I've been using ever since.  More about that in another post.)
Somewhere along the line, I think it was as a result of an article I read online one day in a fit of fashion mystique, I switched to Maybeline's Waterproof Great Lash, and I liked it fine, except it dries out rather quickly in the tube.  I used that for many years and thought I was fashion forward...

And then, one day, well less than a year ago, I was trekking through the local Walgreens on the way to pick up a prescription refill and I stopped at the cosmetics display.  I needed some new mascara.  I reached for Great Lash and then stopped.  I thought - what the hell - and looked at other products and brands that I'd never paid any attention to before. I don't suppose it was any coincidence that this was a few months before the advent of my 60th birth year.  The upshot was that I purchased Maybelline Waterprooof but Washable Lash Stiletto, and have been using it for some months.

I like Lash Stiletto a lot.  It gives me great looking long lashes, longer than I ever had with any other product I've used before, that's for sure!  I find this more important now since suffering through major eyelid SAG.  EEK!  Eyelid wrinkles too.  But you never read about THOSE - not anywhere, darlings!  It's like they don't even exist, which is utterly ridiculous because of course they do!  I've got them, and I'm not the only woman who is suffering such a fate, either.  There must be millions of us going through the same thing, all at the same time!

And the make-up manufacturers are just ignoring us!  We're the chicks with all the money.  Twenty-somethings don't even have jobs these days - they don't have a pot to piss in let alone extra money to spend.  But chicks my age - yeah, we've got money and extra to spend.  So why are we being ignored?  Because we are - GASP - BABY BOOMERS????

I don't get it.  But then, that's why I've never got "fashion" either.  All this baloney worshipping "women" in their teens who have the bodies of seven year olds.  Yechy!  Perverted, if you ask me.  Well, you haven't, but I'm telling you anyway.

Soooo - back to mascara.  My Maybelline Lash Stilleto is just about "out" and I'm now on the hunt for a new mascara.  I wouldn't have thought twice about it before, I would just have purchased the same brand again and happily used it.  But now I'm a VOGUE reader, darlings.  All those ads, badgering me to try this, and try that, and buy this, and buy that...

Well, whatever...

One thing - it doesn't wash off easily, because I don't use "soap."  I use a gentle aloe-based cleanser formulated by L'Bri that has no soap in it whatsoever.  Taking the mascara off is a chore.  I can soften it up with the cleanser and get some of it off with gentle swipes of a wash cloth, but obviously I'm not going to SCRUB my eye area (or any other portion of my face, for that matter) with a wash cloth or anything else, like with a scrubby (GODDESS FORBID!).  So I'm left to letting the L'Bri cleanser "soak" into the lashes for awhile and then 'scraping' off the excess mascara between my fingernails.  Which leads to a whole separate problem - black crud encrusted underneath my fingernails!

Enter Gwen Stefani.  I love Gwen Stefani.  Even with her fake dyed white hair.  She has stayed more true to her core than Christina Aguilera, whom I also like, but no longer admire as I used to - she's gone far too commercial and diva for me but I did like her on NBC's "The Voice" and will watch again even if she's on because there are still occasional glimpses of the nice girl she is underneath all the glitz and crap and glam.  Anyway, back to the mascara --

Gwen Stefani is advertising L'Oreal products these days and among them is a new mascara called "Voluminous False Fiber Lashes Mascara."  I kid you not.  Who the hell can remember such a name?  Not me - I've got major dementia these days.  But - I saw it on special this morning in the local Target advert for like $6.99 - and it actally costs something like $8.99, which is absolutely ridiculous.  I won't pay that much.  Lash Stilleto costs like $6.99 not on sale and I'll stick with it, unless I can find VFFLM (whew!) on sale at Walgreens.  There is not a Target store within my easy reach so advertising it on sale doesn't help me.  I can't get to the store without trekking on the bus for something like 4.5 hours.  Not happening!  [Note: Interesting.  The L'Oreal website would not allow me to copy a link to this blog for the Voluminous line of mascaras!  Now wouldn't you think such a product would be more than happy to allow a link back? I've decided I'm NOT going to be buying this product after all, just because they're such schmucks about links-back!]  According to the images in the adverts, the lashes this mascara promises to deliver look positively fake!  Long, lush, yeah, absolutely fake.  Will it deliver?  Hmmm, well, if it ever goes on sales, I'll check it out and let you know!

No wonder dudes think we're crazy.  We must be fricking crazy, going through all this just for mascara!