When Research Gets Giddy: Extreme Make-up Editon

Rescuing Children With Happiness, Onc... My Storied Food

When Research Gets Giddy: Extreme Make-up Editon

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. Zora Neale Hurston

Novels require texture. Beneath the surface should reside volumes of information which will remain untold, but which informs and enriches every page of your story. Research is the imaginary and real travel of writing. You can’t build your entire novel on it, but oh, the places you’ll go.

Research is addictive. Even grim-road explorations challenge me to find enough self-control to stop digging and start writing. I lost hours to melancholy horror while writing The Murderer’s Daughters I watched operations on line, read detailed accounts of autopsies—and revisited my years working with batterers. The book spanned three decades, so nuggets of bright-colored information joined the grief and blood. Hippie ponchos. White Rain Hairspray. Patchouli.

But . . . what if I could take research from merely addictive to a giddy side bar perk? Research ensued for my second novel, (time out for brief brazen self-promotion—today is the paperback launch* of The Comfort of Lies) as I chose careers for my point of view characters. I studied pediatric pathology, listened to surgical lectures on You Tube, investigated treatment of the elderly, and read more than thirty books on adoption, birth mothers, and experiences of adoptees. Fascinating. But grim.

Mind pop! I’d make my third character different—not working with death, depression or arrests. Didn’t she have enough mishegos? (Infidelity, a hidden child, parents who loved her less than they did each other?) I gifted her with a successful organic skin care company. Moments of fun sliced into my autopsy work, as I learned skin-care techniques, ordered books on lotions and potions, and made lemon sugar olive oil scrubs. (Nice!) Building the imaginary company (what color scheme should the packages be? What to name it!!) provided rhythmic changes, pleasurably crackling my brain.

For my newest novel (Accidents of Marriage, releasing in September 2014) I investigated emotional abuse, social work in hospitals, car accidents, trauma and a host of complicated medical and legal topics. I needed the occasional relief of researching men’s relationships to their cars and varied versions of the song “Voulez Vous Coucher Avec Moi Ce Soir“

Now, writing number four novel—a nascent work in progress—which, in a nutshell, is about the ways women torture themselves and are tortured around weight issues, you can only imagine the places I go.

This is not a topic without emotional resonance. A host of dark research holes threatened to suck me into a permanent depression. Thus, as one of my main characters struggles with rescuing lost kids, the other is makeup artist, whose worked in stage, film, and every other layer of work with cosmetics. Instead of only being surrounded by books I wouldn’t want a child to stumble upon, I have piles of books like Makeup Is Art with a cover that could double as a photo on the wall. (No having to hide it when the family arrives.)

Naturally, a choice like this must make sense, and I knew that someone who imagined herself ugly would and could fall into a career of building human facades.

Truthfully, I have a love affair with makeup, though, like any romance, we’ve had ups and downs. I wore white lipstick as a teenager (leading an English teacher to remark that it was “such a delight to see girls spending money to look dead.” Being hip and cool lead to a long stage of using a dab of mascara while considering lipstick an affront to humanity.

There was the beige look. And the eighties, complete with color-printing, led to fuchsia on my cheeks. I had a graveyard of cosmetics.

And now, there was a perfectly legitimate reason to fall full face into my secret love. I had a legitimate reason to learn about using layers of powder to set lipstick, covering up over-eagerly-applied blush with a scooch of foundation, how to connect the dots of eye-liner, and in which order to apply the products I layered on at bedtime. It was okay to treat my skin like an over-indulged pet.

After reading Allure, Vogue, and books for months, I pulled friends, with an emphasis on writer friends, into my web. Moving far beyond book-learning, I scouted Chestnut Hill’s Bloomingdale’s cosmetic counter for someone who’d get excited by helping an author learn glamour, and found Jacqueline Harper at Bobbi Brown, who took me from my usual school marmish bit-o-paint to a full face ‘smoky eye’ look.

While it was fun to be made-up, I wanted more opportunity to watch artists at work (without looking like a pervert stalking women who were getting their lips lined.) Jacqueline and I worked up an at home party, where she, and two other Bobbi Brown make-up artists (Jaime Perez and Elaine Duggan) came to my house (schlepping ungodly amounts of make-up.) I provided lots of wine, chocolate and various carbs, and bribed/dragged 14 friends (11 of them authors) into my research web.

Love fest. That’s what it was. I learned. (And quizzed people about make-up and weight.) A hush fell over the group as Jacqueline and Jaime gave a demonstration on Becky Tuch and Meredith Goldstein.

Jane Roper asked Elaine to make her up as though she had to go to the Grammy’s—which she attended. (I like to think Elaine gave her a karmic push.) Elaine provided Dyan DiNapoli with the perfect lipstick for her Ted Talk. (Perhaps Elaine can specialize in writers on stage.)

Grammy-worth Glam Jane Roper

Beyond The Margins and Grub Street colleagues generously provided their eyes, lips, and cheeks for my benefit. (Even letting me get involved, as I insisted on having Kathy Crowley’s and Ann Bauer’s eyes lined, Juliette Fay’s lips popped, Necee Regis giving it a try, and Iris Gomez made full glam. (Somehow Nicole Bernier managed to sneak back to her kids before the brushes touched her.)

Watching You Tube, reading books, and diving into archives, it all fills many information gaps we need to write a novel. Hands-on work provides another layer of authenticity. Walk the streets to find your characters house. Take a first aid course for a modicum of medical feel. If your character is a lawyer, get thee to a courtroom.

And have some damned fun.

“Randy Susan Meyers’s second novel is sharp and biting, and sometimes wickedly funny when the author skewers Boston’s class and neighborhood dividing lines, but it has a lot of heart, too. Meyers writes beautifully about a formerly good marriage — the simple joys of stability, the pleasures of veteran intimacy — and deftly dissects just how ugly things can get after infidelity. The battles these women fight take place on a small stage, yet they’re anything but trivial: saving a marriage, making a meaningful career, learning to parent. In the end, thanks to Meyers’s astute, sympathetic observation, we want these women to win.”

—Boston Globe

Gallery of Make-Overs: