Make-up Mayhem

Week Forty - one: Sunday 8 July – Saturday 14 July

It's game over for me.

A wise lecturer by the name of Derrek Hines mentioned at the start of the MA Professional Writing course that girls suss sexuality and other issues of importance by about the age of three. Boys, he added, on the other hand get a rough handle on such matters by the time they are thirty - if they are lucky. I had to agree, based on my own experiences with my now three and a half year old daughter. Not a problem; one of the main reasons I am pleased to have a daughter and not a son.

Last week Auntie Sharon came to visit from Scotland. While Mama Bate wears very limited make-up, preferring the natural look and having had herself caked in make-up for years while she was a semi-professional model, Auntie Sharon is a thoroughly modern woman on the make-up front. Each morning was a ritual of application and refinement of a seemingly never ending range of beauty and skin care products.

My little three going on thirty year old watched Sharon's every move, soaked it all in, as she does everything, and before long was getting Sharon to apply a little of everything on her. Everything being: blusher, mascara, nail varnish, lip stick, eye shadow, foundation, and so it goes on. Now whether by accident or design, Sharon left a couple of items of make-up behind when her visit was over. Knowing Sharon as I have for over twenty years, it was more accident than design - I think!

Anyway, Kumali covered herself, me, her Mama, and a couple of her dolls in all that Sharon had left behind, thank God it wasn't a waxing kit, mimicking what she could remember from her daily observations. And now she talks about make-up all the time, asking if she can buy some of her own!

I'm afraid, very afraid!