STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

So let's talk about eyelashes.

Quite truthfully, you guys, I have never given eyelashes much thought. I'm not sure where my lackadaisical view on the fringe framing our eyes comes from, and it isn't like they've been entirely ignored. Oh no. I have sensitive eyes, so sensitive that wearing the wrong mascara causes me to grab at my eyelashes in a blurry, literally-seeing-red-nightmare-of-a-frantic tug to get it back off again as it rolls down my cheeks in my tears. I have my eyelashes to thank for that, for blinking the offender back into my eyes. And the offender itself, of course--mascara. Mascaraaaa.

I remember when I was young, and becoming that age where Everyone Else Wears Make Up, So Why Can't You Too? It typically happens around the December after an 11th birthday, most researchers and child psychiatrists have found, right in between Everyone Else Has A Bra, So Why Can't You Too? and Ma, No Really, I Need A Bra. It's Embarrassing.

I wanted to wear make-up and I felt that I was most certainly at the right age to wear make-up; my mom, however, had other ideas.

"Here. Try this." she said, tossing a silver contraption out at me.

"What...is...this?" I asked.

"An eyelash curler. Just press hard enough and it'll work."

So I think that almost everyone knows that just pressing an eyelash curler to your eyes doesn't work, you need mascara to help keep the curl, but people with that vast bucket o' knowledge are usually 12, 13, maybe even 23. Not 11. So I'd sit in front of the mirror, tongue pressed out of the corner of my mouth, squeezing like the dickens and waiting for that magical moment that I'd be transformed, maybe it's Maybelline, and you know what?

Not a darn thing happened. Nothing.

(We'll just skip right over how strange it was that my mom trusted me with an eyelash curler first and not actual mascara, 'cuz apparently she thought that maybe having a child missing an eyeball was better than a child dressing like a whore. I'm not exactly sure about her reasoning, though; I keep meaning to ask.)

And, well, then I got old. I got old, readers, and I got a job. I bought mascara, I learned how to properly use the eyelash curler, and I even found a Husband. Done and done, look at me, I had it all. Right?

Until one day, a few months back, I was sitting inside the comfort of my home watching something totally brainless on TV when suddenly Brows Shields popped up on the screen. I know, I think it's weird her name is "Brows" too, what parent could be so cruel, but who am I to judge given my own name? "Your mom must have had a sense of humor," an old man (a customer) said to me at work one day after reading my name tag and asking for its pronunciation, and well. Brows' mom musta had a sense of humor, too. Did Brows' mom also give her an eyelash curler to scrape her eyeballs out with as a child?

No matter. Brows Shields was on my TV, blinking a lot with a loud voice piped over that was screaming, nay, commanding, "Grow lashes!"

Which was weird, because I thought I already was growing lashes. I tugged on a few just to check. Yup, there they were. Eyelashes, and I grew 'em. Mental note to pat myself on the back later.

"Grow Longer! Grow Fuller! And Darker Lashes!" the voice continued to scream, a snappy trumpet blaring behind it.

"Grow How Is. That. Possible?" Brows' asked, her head shaking and convulsing all over the TV screen as she awkwardly enunciated.

"How is that possible? 'Cuz you're human? And not a cyborg? You grow eyelashes 'cuz that's what humans do? Grow eyelashes?!" I asked Brows incredulously, waving my hands through the air and doing that thing where I talk to myself while Husband is also in the room; sitting silent and watching me nervously.

"I use Latisse!" Brows' interjected, interrupting my tirade and rather rudely too, I might add. She continued, her head still bobbing as she spoke, "The first and only FDA approved prescription treatment for inadequate, or not enough lashes."

Whoa whoa whoa. Treatment of inadequate or not enough lashes?

What's next? Joan Rivers chirping, "Do you smile when you're happy? Frown when you're sad? Does your face move when you emote? Use Botox! The only FDA approved treatment for inadequate or not enough facial paralysis!"

So I did what any intelligent, smart, free-thinking 28-year old would do. I sat for a few minutes and seriously thought about getting Botox. Oh wait, I mean, um, I went down to the mirror in our bathroom to investigate.

And what I saw horrified me, readers, the horror! I had eyelashes, alrighty, but let's be honest- -being of what I am, something of a Natural-Blonde-Norwegian-Scandinavian-German-Native-American-Truck-Driver descent, I got a bad deal in the hair department. For every time I have laughed at my hairier cohorts and peers (I honestly didn't realize until about a year ago that most people have hair on the top of their toes- for real. 'Cuz I don't! And...waxing?), I've silently cursed myself inside my head for not having any hair. None on my head, none on the tops of my toes, and...well, none for eyelashes, either.

Some might even call my eyelashes...(gasp)...inadequate.

And then an awful thought popped into my head. Maybe...but...wait...wait...but...oh no. Oh no! The blonde in the Latisse commercial! Blowing out the birthday candles at the very end with her beautiful friends nearby cheering her on, her newly-thickened eyelashes brimming and incandescent in the glow of candlelight. Brows is standing awkwardly to the right, of course, but no matter because she has newly-thickened eyelashes, too!

I bet...I bet only people with newly-thickened eyelashes were invited to that birthday party!

I knew it.

I had myself convinced then, readers, I HAD to GROW LONGER DARKER, AND FULLER EYELASHES, just in case I'd never be invited to another birthday again to blow out some birthday candles due to my blatant and vulgar eyelash inadequacy. Just in case someone might decide to write on my tombstone, you know, after I die- "Here Lies Chloe. She Had Inadequate And Not Enough Eyelashes."

And so, my darling readers, I am quite happy (and excited!) to report that I've been (scarily) using the (non-FDA-approved) RapidLash for the past four weeks and...drumroll, please--my eyeballs haven't fallen out yet.

Hooray!

(I'm still working on the 'having more facial paralysis' thing, though; I don't quite have Husband convinced.)

On to the outfit. We have a Capacious Closet for today; I was having fun playing dress-up and mixing prints. If you want to create a similar look, it might be easier to mix an animal print with a floral bottom, given with what I've been finding on the internet lately:

loving her outfits, and i swear she should write a book! i laughed so hard when i read this!