The Brigitte Bardot Makeover

In Los Angeles the other week Jane gave me a makeover, which is something I’ve been dreaming about for as long as she and I have been friends. And we were going to turn it into a beauty-tutorial video, too, except I freaked out and made it weird.

Here’s what happened: she got the whole thing ready, with the makeup laid out and the camera set up, but when I sat down I wasn’t prepared for the computer’s reverse-mirror-image effect, which is that when you look at the screen you see all the facial asymmetry you’re normally immune to, and as soon as I started talking I couldn’t see anything other than how lopsided everything was and how twitchy my expressions were, so I tried not to talk, smile, or move my face in any way, which made me seem incredibly uncomfortable, which I was, and made the video a little unpleasant, which it shouldn’t have been. It kept getting worse (“is this how I really look; I’m acting weird for the video; I’m going to ruin it, I’m ruining it, I ruined it”), but then it got better, because ultimately Jane put a lot of makeup on me, and I looked great. So we turned it into a photo thing (i.e. Jane was sensitive enough to my vain panic that she let me turn it into a photo thing).

It’s weird to have a lot of makeup on and look nice, because partially you’re like, “word,” and then partially you’re like, “ah, I need all this stuff to look this way,” and your vanity beats its fists against the inside of your head, like, “why can’t this just be how we naturally look all the time!?”

But it isn’t, Vanity, so go back to your room, and we’ll keep pretending you don’t exist, and that your room isn’t actually a cavernous palace/prison that never ends.

Anyway: the Brigitte Bardot makeover! She’s so pretty (and so bad these days — AHP?), and her hair is always so big and sexy, and I’ve always wondered how to accomplish these things. And so: Jane blew-dry my hair, sprayed it with a bunch of volumizer, attached a sponge insert to the crown of my head, and pinned my hair to the side to give me fake bangs. (It’s all in the video, but the video is forbidden.) All of which took about 30 minutes.

Bottom layer: Make Up Forever HD Foundation.

And then: lots of eyeliner (see also here), loads of eyebrow pencil, fake eyelashes, Nars Orgasm blush (amazing stuff), highlighter, and — the key to the whole look, in my opinion, and what made me look like a stranger to myself — slightly darker lip liner outside my natural lip. Ingenious. Not the most natural look, but holy shit.

Jane, I love you, and thank you. You are an artist. These pictures would be the right ones to pick for an online dating profile, yes?

If you live in or around Los Angeles and might want for Jane to make you look as much as possible like the celebrity you think in your secret heart of hearts that you maybe could possibly kind of look like with a lot of makeup and the right camera angles, let her know. This is an experiment.