BROWN MAKE-UP

Can brown-eyed women wear brown eye make-up? This issue has been hotly discussed with my sister, revolving mainly round a brown Yves Rocher mascara, which I felt was insipid and pointless, and she maintained was natural and elegant. In most make-up tips, you will see that blue or green eye-shadows are recommended for brown eyes, if you want a bit of punch and pizzaz, and peachy-pink or mild  orangey shades for daylight, office and natural moods. A make-up artist in Istanbul once recommended olive green for my brown eyes, and certainly she knew what she was talking about. I remember my mother had a brown eye-shadow, Max Factor if I am not wrong, left over from her glamorous days. I tried it once, and my grandmother asked me what was wrong with my eyes! Now my grandmother isn’t the kindest woman in the world, but that definitely scared me off brown eye shadow.  And I didn’t have a big child-bearing tummy in those days either. My mother later told me she was the only one who knew how to wear that eye-shadow, and it wasn’t something she could describe to someone else.

Yesterday, while spending at WalMart, we picked up a Bratz doll for my little girl. (It came with a free hot fuschia pink shiny mouse and silvery mousepad with hot pink rim and a hot pink and silver Flash……..so coooooooooooooooooool … And the mouse’s wire is pink too!!! The whole pack just 9:95!!!!)

I’m just thinking maybe a 33 year-old woman who is going to study International Development and is supposed to be interested in refugees and unhcr and things shouldn’t be inspired by Bratz dolls for make-up, but there you go, these are just contradictions in human nature… or maybe the refugee thing is just a show… 

Back to the point of this post:  the doll had enormous elongated brown eyes, with one streak of hot pink eye-shadow just above the eye, on the upper lid, and above that, a streak of brown. Exact same colour of eye. Which got me thinking about breaking stereotypes and clichés, stepping out of the frames, as you do, you know?

On the other hand, just until recently the Body Shop in one of the malls close to us had a huge poster of a tanned brunette wearing really stand-out shiny blue eye-shadow, almost fluorescent, getting out of a blue swimming-pool.

And then I went and DIDN’T buy a blue L’Oreal stick eye-shadow which was on sale for a dollar. Can you imagine? ? ? ? Have you noticed how things like this haunt you for the rest of your life?

Tags: Bratz dolls, eye make-up, eye-shadow, L'Oreal; max factor; eye-shadow;, make-up, make-up tips, shopping