Myth America
published in the "Face" issue of Rudolf's Diner
If it were really the olden days, I would be powdering my face. Max Factor was a real person who photographed movie starlets. He created a pressed powder that diffused the light on your face, and invented the compact case so starlets and wannabe starlets could carry it in their beaded purses. I have powder, but it’s talcum powder, so I’m using a hand-me-down foundation from my costume box that I got from my stepsister three years ago. I have to shake the bottle vigorously to get the lumps out. I cover my skin with dots of cream and smear them in until my face is all one color: pale. Even my lips. I look like I’m dead.
The eyebrows of the era were well-defined. Unlike the furry Brooke Shields brows my generation emulated, Art Deco eyebrows were as stylized as the furniture and the trains. In different years there were different looks. In the forties, for example, Joan Crawford wore her brows thick and dangerous. In the early thirties, Marlene Dietrich plucked hers out of existence and drew them on again, half an inch higher on her smooth, round forehead, so her expression was permanently aloof. I’m going for an earlier eye tonight, so I sketch my brows in with a pencil so you can’t see any skin through the hairs, then I extend them beyond where they end, winging each one with a thin line all the way back my temple bone.
I was at the Paramount Ball, selling drink tickets, and Jade let me come into the dressing room where the Aquabelles were putting on their makeup. Minnie, Miss Perfection, who is always in the center of every routine, was patting down the corners of her false eyelashes and pulling out her eyebrow pencil. Her brows are more on the Marlene side. She isn’t exactly approachable, but I was standing there waiting for Jade, feeling doltish, so I tried to make conversation. “I could never pluck my eyebrows,” I blurted out. I couldn’t. I took an oath when I was in high school, with my girlfriend Shari. We would never do it.
She glanced at me only long enough to see I was no threat, a quick up-and-down with her heavy lashes to my too-late-for Deco gown and unruly, 1990’s hair. Her hair had a crisp, disciplined wave in the front and was pulled into a smooth bun in the back, a jeweled pin in each side. She turned back to her brows and her own thoughts. “You don’t have to,” she shrugged. Why not? I wondered. Because I wasn’t one of the bathing beauties? Because I never would be? Good job, idiot.
I examine my brows in the mirror. The winged look actually would work just... a little better if I cleaned up the shaggy hairs under the arch. Just two or three of them. I wouldn’t have to tell Shari. I dig my tweezers out of the medicine kit.
God Damn it! I need ice. Or a shot of bathtub gin. This is what they must mean when they say “beauty takes pain.”
Yesterday, when I worked the Art Deco Society booth at my first Art Deco Sale, or “High Holy Days” as the in-group calls it, I was able to listen in on all the lectures. Nora Dimond gave one about makeup in the twenties. She read from an article in a vintage magazine.
"Women, wear makeup,” it said, “teach yourself the latest techniques. Go outside with a bold face. Do not listen to your husbands’ complaints; they will become used to it. In effect, be more than you are told to be, be daring, be visible. Our faces speak so loudly we don't have to say a thing!"
I was so surprised to hear this. Who knew lipstick was such a great step for womankind? My mother threw all her makeup away just before she left my dad; she taught me that women don’t need makeup to be beautiful, and shouldn’t have to apologize for being themselves. This is why I feel so sorry for Minnie. She doesn’t know this. She shows up in shiny, colorful eyeshadow, even at non-events. I’ve heard she keeps her nail polish in the refrigerator where the eggs should be and her apartment is filled with back-issues of Vogue. But it’s not like I can ever get a word in edgewise to tell her she should read a real book sometime—like the Great Gatsby, maybe—since she’s always in the middle of a crowd. Talking about vintage clothes. That’s all they ever talk about.
I’m more of a watcher. I do have a life of the mind. I only have about three vintage pieces in my closet, so I don’t have much to say to these people. Today I’ll let my face speak loudly instead.
I draw a dark brown line just above the tops of my eyelashes. Nothing on the bottom—the stated goal of post-flapper makeup is to “open the eye up.” If I were a Hollywood starlet, I’d now smear my lids with Vaseline to make them shine. No thanks. But I do use a little to smudge the eyeliner into the creases of my lids. Nora Dimond says they only really had three colors to work with before Max Factor built his drugstore empire: black kohl for the eyes, red for the lips, and white face powder. I put the tiniest dot of lipstick on each eyelid and smear it in to add a little warmth, and touch of white talcum powder on the lid just above my iris. Then little more white under the arch of my eyebrow—hiding the red, traumatized skin where the straggly hairs used to be—and drawing light to the area. It looks good. And then mascara. (Minnie hates mascara. She feels more comfortable in falsies. Yeah, right. It’s a habit that makes her eyes look twice as big as anyone standing near her.) Mascara for me, dark brown. Two coats. Bat, bat. I could seduce anyone with these peepers now.
Shit. I should have put my contacts in first. I struggle with this and then have to start over.
And now the lips. Lipstick styles changed, too, in the years between the wars, though the color was always red. Clara Bow, the original “it girl” of the 1920s, exaggerated only her bow—the little peaks below her snot chute—and the pouty part of her lower lip underneath. They called it the “bee-stung mouth”. Lauren Bacall, siren of the forties, put as much color on her mouth as it could hold, painting past the natural ridge that outlined her lips and all the way to the corners. That’s what I’m doing today, using a tiny brush to define the edges.
I bought the brush on impulse when I bought my first tube of red lipstick in the perfect shade. Red lipstick—Who would know there are over a thousand shades? Some are orange-y, some are blue-reds; very few are true reds. I had to try them all, of course, and my hand looked like it had been roto-tilled by the time I narrowed it down to five. Jade had shown me a video of The Women the night before (“It’s our movie,” she and Nora had said), and I was wishing there was a shade marked “Jungle Red.” The five I’d narrowed it down to were Ferrari Red, Ruby Nights, Cardinal Flame, Lucky Red, and Very Cherry. I chose Lucky Red—just for the name.
After I bought my Lucky Red, I started noticing how other women wear lipstick. Jean looks in her rearview mirror and puts a dab in the center of her lip, then smushes her lips around. Minnie pulls out an enameled mirror and inspects her mouth for five full minutes until she gets it perfect. Nellie, a new volunteer who is working the booth with me, has melted the leftovers of her favorite shade into a tiny silver pot, perhaps an antique pill case. She makes an “o” with her mouth and smudges it on with a fingertip. I also started observing how women wear down their lipstick differently. After she’s used it for a month or two, Jade’s lipstick turns up out of its tube with a gently cultivated slope on one side. Nora Dimond turns her lipstick evenly when she puts it on, so it wears over time into a cone at the top. She uses the point at the tip to line her lips, and the sides to fill them in. And then there’s Maxine, who smoothes the upright pillar of her lipstick along the fullness of her lip the same way each time, which wears it into a suspicious concave with a knife-like edge. I drag the paintbrush across the top of my Lucky Red. I’ve already worn mine down flat.
When my lips are as lucky as can be, I kiss my fingertips and smear some of the color onto my cheeks, shining them like apples. Then I kiss a piece of toilet paper, pressing my lips together on it until it hurts. Then I apply more lipstick and do it again. Then I put some powder over the top and press one final time. I learned this from the lecture.
“This lipstick will now stay on there until it’s kissed off,” according to Nora Dimond.
“Could be there for years,” I think. I dust a little powder all over my face, so the rest of it sticks on, too. I look like I’m done.
But I’m not. There is one last thing. I take the eyebrow pencil and drill it into my cheekbone under my right eye. No self-respecting beauty of the era would leave the house without a beauty mark. A mouche.
I remove the pins I put in my hair last night using the handout from the “Deco Hair” lecture given by Ginger. Soft curls fall in waves around my forehead and jawline. Staring back at me from the mirror is a face from another time. The Sweetheart of the Nation. A face that could Bring the Boys Back Home. A girl with whom you’d want to sit under the apple tree. She smiles at me, oozing charm from every powdered pore. Even my mother would be proud: this is not the face of a woman who puts on makeup because she has to. No, this is a new persona: Myth America.
I have just established a ritual for entering the company of this new society of eccentric and seemingly shallow bohemians. This is a mask and I’m going on stage from the minute I walk out my apartment door. Something special must happen today. I’ll be most disappointed if it doesn’t. Music! Lights! Action! Applause!
© Kristen Caven 2006
“Tangerine, with her lips of flame. (If the color keeps, Louie Felippe’s to blame.)” —J. Mercer
This piece became the beginning of the second chapter of Balls of Gold. Which I may retitle "Myth America..."
And yes, in the novel, the names will be changed to protect the innocent...if you could call them that.