"I just wanted to tell you," the girl said breathlessly, "that your face is orange."
She was a cheerleader, of course, flouncy and ready for that afternoon's pep rally in a pleated skirt while her friends giggled behind her.
I had been very excited when she approached me. "Maybe," I thought, "she wants to ask me to hang out with her after school! At the mall, perhaps? Or we could just go to her house and listen to some cassette tapes. I have the new Tiffany album, which will probably impress her a lot."
It was the moment I'd been waiting for all of my 12 years. The popular kids had recognized the special spark in me that marked me as one of their own, and I congratulated myself for wearing makeup to school for the first time that day. Surely, I thought, that's why they had noticed me.
And I was right. "It's all cakey," the cheerleader added. "You should learn how to apply base the right way if you don't want to look like a freak."
Ever since that day, I have been frightened of makeup, or any other attempt to look anything but utterly bland. My face has been inoffensive and invisible, like a pair of pleated khakis.
Even in my early 20s, as I flitted in a totally non-alcoholic way from bar to club to bar, the most I could manage was a smear of strawberry lip balm. Mascara? Too flashy. Rouge? Maybe if I were employee of the month at the local bordello. Lipstick? Whatever, you Ronald McDonald fetishist.
Unfortunately, as I enter my 30s, I find that my skin is not exactly what we'd call smooth and uncratered anymore, and I actually kind of need to wear something on my face, preferably spackle (which does not come in a shade that matches my olive undertones).
I capitulated reluctantly, dropping an embarrassing amount of money at Sephora, where the salespeople asked me unselfconsciously if I were male or female.
And to no one's surprise, my product of choice makes me look like I'm not wearing makeup at all.
But I still live in fear of the critical cheerleader, especially since my mom threw away that Tiffany album in 1992.
Jessica likes the annoyingly spelled Bare Escentuals brand of facial spackle. E-mail her at jburgess@quickdfw.com.
