Beauty for Dummies: Compact in a Compact

I suffer from a syndrome I have recently identified as Stoop Kid Syndrome.

It earned its title from an episode of Hey Arnold! that chronicled the animated, namesake character-cum-incredible excuse for a living unibrow in mustard-colored socks. He spends the entirety of the 30-minute slot languishing on a stoop that he refuses to leave, harassing passersby in perpetuity as they come and go. Ultimately, we learn that he doesn’t leave the stoop because as a static social predator that is immobilized by fear, he can’t function off the confines of his comfort steps.

Though my comfort steps aren’t actually steps, they are a combination of the city and more acutely, the apartment that I occupy. When I am pushed out of the latter, I am more or less okay but when I resolve to leave this city — my stoop — everything I know about my judgement, my style, my ability to put an outfit together and self-maintenance flies out the window faster than a bird accidentally soaring through a slaughter house does.

Case in point: my most recent trip to France for fashion week where I decisively resolved that I did not need a) my most reliable pair of jeans, b) heels. Any heels at all, c) a computer charger and most important for the case of this story, d) any makeup independent of one Bobbi Brown eyeshadow compact. And a red lipstick. A red lipstick I fortuitously found in my jacket’s pocket.

So that’s ten days on another continent with a lot of eyeshadow and some rouge.

But I didn’t go to a makeup shop and fill the pronounced cracks that were staring me straight in the left eye that appeared in the form of dark circle and depleting eyelash. I just made like a lemonade squeezer and turned my compact plus lipstick into the beauty equivalent of a clown car that keeps on giving or as I like to call it, the complete, physical manifestation of every Beauty for Dummies published heretofore.

Using the white shadow at top left, I forged a fake under-eye concealer. A combination of the black and brown shadow served as eyebrow filler (trichotillomania is still winning), while the black, with a dab of water on the brush, worked nicely as an eyeliner. I used a combination of the metallic brown and center brown as eyeshadow proper and to give my cheek bones a little bit of life, after I finished applying my lipstick to my lips, I dabbed some of the extraneous color over said bones.

I’m still trying to discern whether or not this was a good idea but I do know that it worked, so, should you find yourself somewhere between your stoop and another with just a compact in hand, I think I have a decent idea.

Sweater by Prabal Gurung, neck scarf from Madewell.