Jimsy Jampots #175 - How I do my make-up
In which I put on battle make-up which ends up being entirely useless
Things I think
I like make-up. It’s fun. I’m lucky in that I like it without needing it - spending years filming and editing my own stupid face for YouTube has made me very aware and accepting of how I look, even if I don’t like all of it - so I can use make-up as a tool or a plaything rather than a crutch I grow to resent.
And it is fun. It is! It’s fun to mess around with different colours, to buy a new lipstick in shocking pink and paint your mouth with it and see how pretty it looks when you blow a kiss, or to shade your eyes with grey, black and silver and flutter your eyelashes at your reflection. It’s fun to load up your cheeks with blush and imagine for a second you could go out looking like Chappell Roan, before realising it’s probably a bit much for a trip to Lidl. It’s fun to run your fingers over bottles and tubes stacked neatly in rows in Boots and imagining the magical effect they’ll have on you. And it’s fun to stick glitter to your cheekbones at the slightest provocation. It’s silly. It doesn’t mean anything, but it adds a little joy to the day.
But it can, sometimes, be useful. Animals use their colouring to send messages to others - “don’t eat me, I’m poisonous”, “I’m fertile, wanna bang?”, even things like “I’m good at cleaning, fancy a symbiotic relationship ?” - and I do the same with make-up. If I’m having a day when I don’t want people to talk to me, I load up my eyelids with navy and black and leave my cheeks devoid of colour so I look unapproachable. If I’ve got a meeting where I need to be in control, I wear clothes that are boldly coloured but less childish and do make-up to match - coppers and golds on my eyes, deep berry on my lips, eyes lined with the darkest shade of eyeshadow. If I need people to gravitate to me, I go for candy pink lipstick, heavy on the blush, and black flicky liquid eyeliner so I look bright, pretty, almost cartoonish. It’s a way of signalling to the world who I am - or rather, who I want to be today, because I’m often projecting absolute bullshit.
Most days, my make-up involves rubbing a bit of CC cream over my face, drawing in my eyebrows and putting some mascara on, with eyeshadow and lip colour for my own enjoyment if I want it. But some days, I need to pretend. I have a big meeting or a difficult conversation to have and to get through it, I need battle make-up. Some days it’s exceptionally useful to be able to use cosmetics to let myself pretend that I am more confident, capable and braver than I feel. You might find it useful, too. So here is my totally serious, not-at-all ridiculous guide to doing the battle make-up I did today.
I always plan to do my make-up at home, in calm serenity, preferably wearing a silk kimono-style dressing gown while twinkly piano music plays in the background, so I can emerge from the house looking like a healthy, radiant human instead of the half-goat half-corpse I actually resemble. Inevitably I get caught up in providing breakfast for a demanding toddler whose whims change every two minutes/dirty nappies/feeding the pets/finding a bra that isn’t so far past needing a wash that little cartoon wavy lines come off me when I walk past people, and end up chucking my makeup in my work bag and either doing it in the car (as the make-up marks on the ceiling of the passenger side from where I was putting on mascara and we went over a bump will attest to) or in the toilets at work. For the rest of this, let’s assume I’m in the toilets at work
I take out my makeup bag. It is a cheap, tattered, metallic rainbow bag that I bought initially for Taron’s crayons but nicked at the first opportunity because I couldn’t bear to see it covered in the gunk and detritus that covers everything he touches. It is stuffed full, mostly with multiple types of eyebrow pencil as I search in vain for one that makes my eyebrows look thick and healthy but not so thick I’m cosplaying Oscar the Grouch, and the eyeshadow crayons I bought in bulk from Amazon because they were 6 for £9 and I was furious that the Bobbi Brown one I got for free when I worked at The Pool and has almost run out was 30 fucking pounds new. It is so full that I have to take most of the contents out and spill them over the top of the hand drier in order to find anything
Start with foundation. I pump it once onto the back of my hand, then take a foundation brush that I haven’t washed in so long there’s probably a small, technologically advanced civilisation buried in the depths of it, and swoosh it roughly into the pale-peach gloop. I brush it over my skin, starting with the bits that need the most coverage (usually chin, top bit of my forehead, and cheeks) and then blending it out to cover the gaps. I rub my hands together until they’re warm and then press them into my face to “melt” the foundation into my skin and make it look a bit more natural. Then I look into the mirror to check I don’t look too much like the ghost of a Victorian child
To try and put some life back in my cheeks, I use the Charlotte Tilbury make-up palette I got for my birthday. I start with the blush. There are two shades of pink - a lighter and a darker. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with the two shades, so I dab my blusher brush in first one, then the other, and repeat a few times. I tap off the excess and brush it from the back of my cheekbones towards the front. When I check in the mirror, I look like I’ve been slapped, so I do the same thing on the other side. Now I look like a Victorian child-themed sex doll rather than a ghost, so I feel like progress is at least being made
There’s bronzer in this palette, too. If I’m feeling brave I’ll put this on as well, but I’m haunted by the time I wore bronzer to film a cooking tutorial for my YouTube channel and in the final video it looks like I’ve got the beard of a 24 year-old banker who doesn’t understand that Patrick Bateman wasn’t supposed to be aspirational. I dab the brush in the bronzer (yes, the same brush I used for the blusher, what, you think I’m made of make-up brushes? Eeesh), shake off the excess, then brush it underneath my jawline from back to front to give the impression of a defined jawline, and hopefully not the impression that I’ve got the beard of a 34 year-old Quidditch commentator who is obsessed with Magic: The Gathering and calls any woman not directly related to him “m’lady”
If I’ve managed to get away with the bronzer under my jaw, I’ll be brave and put it on my face. I dab, tap, brush it once up and down my jaw, and then draw a figure 3 on either side of my face from jaw to underneath the apple of my cheeks to along the top edge of my forehead. I was taught to do this by the Deputy Beauty Editor of The Pool and have no reason to think she was out to sabotage me, so I do it any time I’m putting bronzer on now. The secret is to do this as fast as possible, so the bronzer doesn’t know what’s happening and doesn’t have time to plan to attach itself too darkly to my face and look odd. To be clear, Elle didn’t teach me that last bit, it is idiocy of my own invention. But hopefully now I look glowy, healthy, and a bit less like a sex doll because they tend to look slightly clownish, and clowns aren’t known for their beautifully defined cheekbones. Except It. But he was super pale, and remember, I am now glowing
I don’t use the highlighter. My face is shiny enough
Next comes eyebrows. When I was younger I had magnificently bushy eyebrows, the kind Instagram influencers in 2016 would be jealous of, and I didn’t even overpluck them to thin lines like so many girls in my generation did (Not due to any foresight; I just couldn’t be arsed) so I got to enjoy them all through my 20s. However, they were hit weirdly hard by post-partum hair loss with both of my boys, and they’ve not yet recovered. My face doesn’t look right without big thick eyebrows on them, so I try to fill them in as best I can without looking like I’ve been yassified. Whatever eyebrow pencil I am currently using and trying not to hate, I usually use a thinner one to outline them and a thicker one to fill in the middle. I brush through with the spooley (the little brush you get on the end of pencils) both before and afterwards - before to make sure they’re neat, afterwards to break up the pigment of the pencils so it doesn’t go on in big, clay-like lumps and look like I’m using a bad Instagram filter
I look pretty weird at this point. Adding eye make-up sorts it out. Again, the Charlotte Tilbury palette has eyeshadow in three shades, so it’s handy to use that. I use the palest one and brush it first over my eyelid, then cautiously up to my brow bone and try not to remember that chapter in Bridget Jones where she carefully applies make up and it looks like she has the “white cliffs of Dover smeared” across her face
Then there’s a darker colour. It’s described as “Enhance”. I sweep it somewhere around the crease of my eyelid, because honestly I’m not sure what the fuck I’m supposed to do with it, especially considering there’s also…
An even darker colour, described as “Smoke”. Smoke-y eye, I presume, because it’s a) a brownish-red colour, not the colour of smoke at all and b) not an eyeshadow you find sitting in Parisian cafe windows, holding a cigarette in black and white while a single tear drips down its cheek. Again, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, so I just sort of feather it on my eyelids a bit, immediately panic I’ve done it wrong and covered up the other two colours, and dab a bit of those on top of the dark. It works. I think. I dunno, no-one has ever told me it looks stupid, so I just keep going with it
Mascara the shit out of my eyelashes, because even though they’re a decent length they’re very pale without mascara and if I don’t emphasise them I look worryingly like my dad - and, in recent years, like my youngest son - in drag. It’s not really the vibe I’m going for
Look at the overall effect. Feel quite pleased. Especially when I leave the horrible work toilets lighting and take a proper look at myself. At this point I take a moment to smile fondly at this Charlotte Tilbury palette and how useful it is, and then remember it was bought for me by Ashley and Lauren for my 30th and I feel very fond towards my darling friends, and then I remember that that was four and a half years ago and I suddenly start both mourning the passing of time and my rapid descent into old age, and realising that I need to do a thorough clear out of my make-up bag because I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to keep make-up this long
And then I add lipstick, because I almost always accidentally foundation-ed my lips into nothingness during step 3. This is also a Charlotte Tilbury one, also very old, called Walk of Shame (so old it’s from before they renamed it to Walk of No Shame because…feminism???) and one of my favourites. This newsletter isn’t sponsored by Charlotte Tilbury, btw. DEAR GOD I WISH IT WAS HAVE YOU SEEN HOW EXPENSIVE THEIR PRODUCTS ARE. They’re just very good staples and they last, so I buy/am gifted one Charlotte Tilbury item once every blue moon and I guard/savour it like a dragon
Point is, I’m done. Zhuzh the fuck out of my hair, because what else can I do with this hair apart from make it a total mess and pretend it’s the look I was going for, and I’m ready for battle.
BONUS STEP, NOT RECOMMENDED: cry the whole thing off in a very intense therapy session so you end up looking so weepy and puffy that everyone keeps asking you how you are all afternoon.
Things I’m doing
Ooo, new section.
Last year, one of our Senior Designers at Rare, George, organised a 24 hour live-streamed football match at St George’s Park (where the England team train) between teams of game devs from across the UK. It was heartwarming and it raised just over £30,000 for SpecialEffect, a charity very close to our hearts which levels the playing field for all gamers with disabilities. This year, we’re doing it again. And somehow*, I’ve been roped in.
*peer pressure from our Graduate Software Engineer Nadia, who is probably going to run Microsoft one day because of her sheer determination and excellence
You can read all about One Big Game here but the highlights are:
it starts tonight (Wednesday 25th September) at 7pm
you can watch the whole game livestreamed on Twitch here
you can donate here (and please do, I’m probably going to be sick on the side of the pitch at some point, let’s make that worth it, yeah?)
I am woefully unprepared. I haven’t played football since I was in secondary school. I have been doing well with the cycling and the swimming, but that’s very different from playing football on a full-sized flipping football pitch. I am consoling myself that there are some people playing who will really care about their performance, and I will be the person they can point to and say “At least I wasn’t as bad as her.” That’s a very important role to play, and I am more than capable to play it
My match is from 1pm on Thursday 26th. I am a sub at the moment so no idea when I’ll actually be on. That might change, though, because the majority of the women’s team are currently very sick, so I might end up playing the whole 90 minutes and will definitely, definitely cry. Again, this is all being livestreamed on Twitch here! It will live on the internet forever!
George has promised me that he’s going to drag me into the commentator’s box at some point on Thursday and I am terrified of the nonsense that’s going to come out of my mouth. When I get nervous, the filter between my head and my mouth short-circuits: the first time I ever met my fellow Rare producers IRL I used the phrase “Teletubby bukkake” and I don’t think St George’s Park or Twitch would be very happy if I did that here
Anyway, I’ll be at the stadium from about 10:30am, so may leap on to commentate at any point
seriously, please donate here
That was a long one, wasn’t it? You would be astonished by how many times I misspelt “bronze” and all its varieties in this email. Have a good week!
Love, Amy xxx