Clueless in Cosmetics

Clueless in Cosmetics
a tribute to shopping with Peggy



My friend Peggy is one of the funniest people I know. Together we think
we are hysterical. Sometimes we can barely look at each other without falling onto the floor and rolling around in fits of laughter. Okay, not rolling around. But almost rolling around.

Not everyone thinks we are as funny as we think we are.

This is why we should not have gone to the Bobbie Brown counter for side-by-side makeovers. Our salesperson, let’s just call her Gidget, (darling and sweet a--double whammy for a makeup gal) was more than a tad horrified by the insults we tossed back and forth like so many brushes of blush.

Peggy watched the woman carefully apply base (okay, tinted moisturizer) to my face–no actual base, because, Gidget said, and I can barely write this without laughing—I had beautiful skin. This put Peggy and me over the edge, as we had just spent 15 minutes looking in the mirror, horrified.

I have an age spot the size of Iraq.

“Well, could you put the ‘tinted moisturizer’ a little heavier on her beautiful age spots?” Peggy asked. “And fill in under her eyes with spackle.”

At this point the “You Are Beautiful From the Inside,” lecture began—this, from a 23-year-old with skin that would make Snow White look weathered. This poor woman didn’t know she was preaching to a motivational speaker and a cynical Northwest Airlines flight attendant. A wicked combination.

We didn’t shut up. We couldn’t stop laughing. We started to draw a crowd.

An elderly and exceedingly made-up saleswoman commented, “How much have you girls had to drink?” We’d been at the Nordstrom Café having coffee and a salad. If she wanted to see how we behaved after drinking, well, she would have had to have been in college in 1979 during our “hang-from-the-balcony” escapade, when the police…

Well, anyway, we hadn’t been drinking.


It’s great fun to have your makeup applied by a beauty consultant. Especially when you have nowhere to go, so if you end up looking like a hooker/clown/State Fair Freak Show exhibit, no biggy. But as much as I enjoy the makeup counter and I enjoy Peggy’s company, quite possibly the two shouldn’t go together.

I learned that it’s impossible to part your lips for lipstick application when you’re laughing. Really. Just try it. The minute Gidget came at me with the “gloss wand” I lost it again. Maybe it was because Peggy was mouthing the words “gloss wand” in an exaggerated English accent. It took the poor woman 10 minutes to do my lips. I think I spit-laughed on her twice.

We made it worth her while. Two hours and much hilarity and hi-jinx later, I spent a lot on makeup from Bobbie Brown. Peggy bought the tinted moisturizer. And Gidget did her damnest to get us to love ourselves—from the inside.

The next time I have a spare 47 minutes to apply my expensive makeup, I’ll put on all my Bobbie Brown. Until then, it will sit in my cabinet and remind me how much fun a woman can have without drinking.