Summer Makeover
I love YouTube and my algorithm loves me back. A few weeks ago it gifted me a Vogue Salma Hayek GRWM Video in which she applies-removes-then-reapplies various skincare serums and makeup products in a haphazard fashion that will be familiar to anyone with a chaotic brown mom.
My mom never wore much makeup. Just some Pond’s cream and Coty loose powder that she would dab off with the soft backside of whatever giant granny panty she had within reach before dashing out the door. This video of Salma so reminded me of watching her get ready for the weekend Indian parties of my childhood. Her routine was always hilariously complicated even though there were virtually no products. There was a lot of staring and plucking, yelling at my father to come up and change instead of dawdling with a ciggy outside, picking up and putting down the comb after adjusting some wisps, squeezing of superfluous arm fat and lamenting, and the final step — peeling off a dark red felt stick-on bindi from the vanity mirror, adhesed since the 1980s, and attaching it to her forehead as my sister and I shuffled around her hugging her silky hips.
The Salma video made me rest easy in my face at 40. I didn’t have a chance to stare at myself in the mirror when I crossed the rubicon in April, so I did recently. Did I look different? Do I have jowls now!? 😱
I look pretty ok still, I think, but my face is undeniably changing. My under-eyes are darker than they used to be as my adult worries intensify. Even the tiniest blemish scars linger for much longer, and spots and tiny indentations appear with no pimple at all. Oh, and I have 3000% more white hairs than I did a year ago. (I blame fascism for this.) Salma talks about all of these things and adorably calls the darkening of her eyelids with age “natural eye shadow that the years have gifted me.”
She speaks to a lot I believe in about beauty. Mostly, looking decidedly underproduced in an age when everyone looks flawless. I learned this from a Bobbi Brown makeup book I read in my early 20s that taught me to apply makeup like Bob Ross’s wet-on-wet painting, no two productions being the same, and it all being about finding and blending what looks natural as opposed to using fancy tools and materials. I also abide by the “one-off” rule of something about a look being deliberately off kilter. My go-to one-offs are leaving out lipstick and mascara, two steps that can overpower a face, taking you from librarian to hooker in an instant if you choose the wrong color or press even a little too hard.
It has to seem effortless to be sensational. That’s the real deception. The true seduction.
What I love most about Salma’s routine is the fleeting nature of her hacks. Her dotting of various concealers from dirty tubes onto her cheeks like a drunk person stippling with a thick Sharpie. Her sweeping of grays with old goopy drug-store mascara.
These small acts signify a healthy embrace of impermanence with just the right amount of harmless delusion missing in beauty today. Everyone’s trying to permanently dial back time through radical procedures and self-harm. Fuck — I just want to lie to myself for a couple of hours.
Anyway, this is all just a long, to-outer-space-and-back preamble to what I’m actually making over: this newsletter.
I’ve decided to resuscitate my newsletter writing by retiring The Mustard Sandwich and launching Somethingburger, a handheld newsletter about whatever's on my mind - work, food, change-making, and the messy spaces in between.
Somethingburger is not much different than The Mustard Sandwich, so if you liked this, stay subscribed. I wanted to mention the change to my tiny crew of loyal readers though so you’re not like, “WTF IS THIS!” when I send out the first official Somethingburger in a week or so (to this email list and anyone new who subscribes in the coming days, so share it if you love it!)
I’m also not trashing The Mustard Sandwich. It will will remain here, decaying as it should, just like the 14 year-old Dior Sun Couture face palette I bought duty free in Rio that still lives in my makeup bag for when I’m in the mood for a breakout.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for Somethingburger!
