[Review + Notes] Makeup From First Principles

As an astute reader, you might be asking, "Hold on, shouldn't this belong on your main blog? This is something that aspires to be useful, it's a bunch of field notes on makeup!"

Actually, the more correct explanation of main blog vs alt blog is this:

Main blog: anything that I'm okay with ascribing to my legal name

Alt blog: anything that, should I ever become a public figure who needs to curry favor from important, influential people, I can disavow this with "oh, that's JJ's Not a Bluejay, not me," and they say, "ah, that's just her JJ's Not a Bluejay persona" instead of "she wrote THAT?"

basically, JJ's Not a Bluejay is a baggie I keep by the door, ready to chuck the moment it gets smelly :P

...and this makeup post falls squarely into the latter.

Why do I not want this ascribed to my legal name?

Okay, to put it bluntly, I'm worried that caring about makeup makes me look less serious.

A Brief History of Not Wanting to Be a Girl

And bluntly, there was a period in my life where I actively did not want to be perceived as a girl. Not in a gender-questioning way, but a self-misogynistic way.

I grew up in a family with role models that didn't put much stock into dressing up or making a fuss over appearances, so I was nerdy and unathletic and looked the part, and I liked to think it was because I was too busy thinking about "actually important things" to bother with things such as my appearance.

And I was, on top of all that, just a late bloomer.

I had some friends in a space where "you're not even a girl" was a bit of a running bit, alongside little comments that, in retrospect, were sorting girls into two piles (this is just how I saw it at the time, not an accusation on anybody's intentions), and the second pile got treated more abrasively than the first but seemingly more valued for their competence/usefulness, and I decided the second pile was the dignified one to be in, never mind that neither pile was actually a good place to be.

In high school, I remember the exact moment of deciding, okay, fine, I'll own it, after a particular afternoon where some guys ranked all the girls they knew by looks by pulling up some photos without asking anyone, and when they got to me, someone made a snarky little save of "well, she's worth keeping around for different reasons" — the implication being, of course, that I hadn't placed anywhere on the looks list so much as gotten filed under "other reasons" (translation: I was "useful," in the academic-striver-culture sense).

I decided that the more dignified way to exist was to lean into the bit, this bit of not being interested in boys (true), obviously a lesbian (false), why yes of course I wouldn't be attracted to anyone of your gender or anyone at all (false), ha ha, I'm so above it all!

I also hid behind some handles and alts where people just assumed I was male, and every time someone mistakenly used he/him on me, I felt a small, stupid glow of pride and didn't correct them.

None of this is stuff that I'm proud of now; I was a far edgier person than I am now.

And the Recovery Arc

So fast forward to today, I'm now a peaceful, (externally) much-less-edgy young woman who has a skincare routine and wears contact lenses and dresses up for the occasion, all of which are things my teen self would've balked at. Y-you sell-out! - I can hear her say.

Before you send me a link, out of the kindness of your heart, to a video essay by a sisterly influencer girlboss... yes, in my time as a citizen of the Internet, I've already absorbed an entire genre's worth of "yeah girl, of course it's fine and even empowering to care about how you look" content!

...and in spite of having absorbed all of that, and agreeing with most of it, I have not quite reached a point where I'm comfortable talking about makeup on my main blog, under my legal name, alongside the work that I actually want to be associated with professionally under my legal name.

Even today, I go through this strange bookkeeping system of

I have done a very serious and rigorous thing, which gives me insurance to do silly/frivolous/"girly" things!

that I then blow through with

I spent my insurance on this silly/frivolous/"girly" thing, now I must earn it back with a serious and rigorous thing!

Now, I know it's problematic for me to group "girly" in the same bag of words as silly/frivolous, but this is where I'm at, alas, and the best I can do is put it in scare quotes to signal that I know better, that I'm saying "girly," not girly.

Makeup

Anyway! I'm going to keep this dead simple. All you need to do is

• find the ONE product that matches your skintone
• find the ONE product that matches your lip color

That's it, really! You have everything you need for everyday makeup, when you need to cover up some blemishes or you just got off your period and your lips are pale and yada yada.

Advanced. When you know these two crucial pieces of information, of your skintone and your lip color, you unlock the secrets to the rest of the universe. From here you can graduate into more advanced arts, such as

• shapeshifting / sculpting
  • now that you know your skintone, you can do a lot of shapeshifting by virtue of having (1) a product that's several shades lighter, (2) a product that's several shades darker
    • you can sculpt your face in wicked ways!
    • you can literally change the shape of your eyes!
• picking some unconventional colors
  • w.r.t your skintone and lip color

Your Skintone

This is one of those tricky purchasing decisions where I think it's indeed worth it to go to a specialty store rather than just grabbing something cheap.

The one thing keeping me from wearing makeup for years was that the skin-color-y products (concealer, foundation, BB cream, CC cream, whatever) didn't match my skintone; they were either too pale and made me look like a ghost, or too brassy. When I put those on, it was obviously not a match and jarring to look at.

The summer after my second year of college, determined to find something that would cover up my acne, I walked into a drugstore and to my dismay, it didn't allow me to test their products on my face, so I had no way of knowing if a shade would work before buying it. Then I walked into another store that did allow testing, and I tried on like 4 different colors that all seemed wrong, and I didn't have the hours to trial and error through the shades to get the right one.

So, upon exhausting all other options, I finally walked into a Sephora. There was this extremely animated guy working there who took pity on me; I remember his name was Jacky or Jackie (?) and his face I can only describe as having the eyelashes of Kate Takenomiya from Prison School, and he punctuated every sentence with "love~" like "Let's find your shade, babylove~" "let's get you sorted out, babylove~"

He pulled out a little scanning device, scanned my face, and recommended a very specific shade of concealer, and boom! It matched my skin tone perfectly, pretty much a 1:1 match. Now I just default to that shade every time.

If you're curious at all, it's the Too Faced Born This Way Super Coverage Concealer, of the Nude shade, covers all my acne without a hassle.

(not a sponsored ad for Sephora) This is the one product category where I think it's worth the trouble of getting a professional shade match, especially if you are a beginner who just wants a straight answer instead of guessing. A ~3 minute scan can save you hours of trial and error + money wasted on shades that are unused. There are probably other places that offer this too, but Sephora is the one I know of that worked for me, so I'd start there if you don't already have somewhere you trust.

For everything else, I think you can get along swimmingly with drugstore makeup, or if you want something a little nicer but still less expensive than Sephora, I currently go to Ulta Beauty, since they too let you test the products before buying.

Your Lip Color

Lip color is also something that took me a lot of trial and error to get right.

This one is thankfully easier than skintone; I think there's a lot more wiggle room, in that you don't need an exact match, but merely a shade that flatters your natural undertone, which is why people can play around with higher saturation, lower saturation, pinker, redder, more coral, less coral, and still have it look good.

After much testing, the rule of thumb I have is this:

After applying the tester color, pull down your lower lip, and compare the tester color with the inner part of your lip. If the two colors blend into each other smoothly, rather than clashing or looking like two distinctly different hues sitting side by side, that's a shade that'll work on you.

For me, this tends to be lip colors that have the words "rose" or "nude" in their names, not so much the colors "coral" "berry" "peach", etc. :) and I'm not at all opinionated about the brand and form factor as long as it works with my natural color.

Q: "What's the point of lip color if it just... matches your normal lip color? Isn't it just invisible?

A: Yeah, fair question! The main thing it does is standardize and even out the color and texture. Personally, my lips are prone to going patchy, and a swipe of the right shade smooths that out into a consistent color. Plus most formulas add a bit of sheen or moisture on top to make dry lips look healthy.

The other thing is that your actual lip color fluctuates a bit. If you've been running a lot and not eating enough iron, or you just got off of your period, your lips can go noticeably paler than their usual color, so it's to restore your lips to the baseline color they'd be at on a good day.

So you don't need lip product every day, just on the occasional days when you notice your lips are drier or paler than usual. If you're bolder you can choose a lip color that's somewhat redder or more prominent than your natural color!

[Advanced] Shapeshifting and Sculpting

For this I can only point you at Alexandra Anele's "DUDE" playlist. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, let me just show you her thumbnails:

Her thumbnails basically explain more than any text-heavy tutorial would, and when you click into the videos, they live up to the thumbnail, straight to the point with how a different bone structure emerges with the power of shadow/highlight/etc placement.

She is thus far the only resource I've found that so clearly demonstrates how makeup changes the actual perceived geometry of a face, not just a personal vlog of what happens to work on one specific influencer's specific face (even though those are lovely too!), and it was what convinced me that makeup is a science and a craft.

I currently observe this from the POV of "cool that you can do this" - I don't own many products on this front, aside from one shade that's skintone-but-darker.

However! I wish to master this dark art and in no time, you will find me in various disguises, from boyish prettyboy to womanly woman, from elderly dowager to young Victorian child, whatever the mission calls for, and you would be none the wiser.

[Advanced] Unconventional Colors

Don't cover your dark circles, but if you do, color-correct them with a warm tone like orange/yellow/gold. Perhaps this is bizarre and more of a personal preference, but I don't like how I look when I cover my dark circles, that I usually just leave them be.

I think that the covering of dark circles, especially if it's with a color that matches your skin color exactly, makes the face look more washed out and the eyes smaller, sorta like Jeff the Killer:

You were pretty cute already, you didn't need to cover your dark circles, Jeff!

But I do notice that it looks slightly more normal if, when I do put something over my dark circles, it's with a warm tone like orange/yellow/gold, not my exact skin color, since it cancels out the blue/purplish color of dark circles.

Currently I like Face Bond Luminizer Waterproof Liquid Highlighter of the "Golden Hour" shade - it's super light, so the golden tint stays sheer and almost translucent, so your actual skin tone still shows through. It also doubles as a bit of skincare, since it's formulated with niacinamide, which helps calm inflammation and redness.

Instead of skintone-but-darker or skintone-but-lighter, try a color that carries a more distinct hue! Okay, hah, there isn't really a science behind this, I just choose the colors I like.

Currently the look that I'm absolutely a <3 of and think is super glowy (not for daily wear but when I occasionally want a little more flair), I dabble in this:

• for highlights, recently I'm super into this purple lilac color
• for shadows/contours/whatchamacallits, instead of using skintone-but-darker, recently I like playing with golden or rosy colors
  • by "golden", i really just mean the Golden Hour bronzer that i linked for my undereyes, lol
  • and by "rosy" i really just mean the thing i'm using on my lips, which is technically not intended to be used on near the eyes or as contour, but blends well with the face regardless
    • after all, you picked your lip color to match your undertones!

The Lacy Lilac highlight - it's actually not too in-your-face, and it quite sparks joy for me to put on :D

If you do want a science for choosing colors, though, my closest "science" would be to encourage you to browse artists who use colors that are NOT just black-and-white for shading and lighting. e.g. their shadows might carry a purple undertone, or their light might carry some warm gold in it.

Source: jdebbiel on Twitter.

When you find a color scheme you like from your favorite artist, you can borrow the same hues for your own highlights/shadows and see if you like the look on yourself!

Instead of nude/understated day-to-day lip colors, try bolder colors! I actually... think I'd like the look of black or dark purple lipstick for a day? And I guess, of course, there's Taylor Swift's signature red ;o

Though, disclaimer about unconventional lip colors: from my observation you can get away with unconventional hues for the rest of your face (eyeshadow, under-eye, highlights, etc.), but the same isn't true for lip color. If you have a lip color that's significantly bolder than the rest of your face, it will make the rest of your face look washed out, unless you balance it out with, say, more prominent eyeliner and more color/blush elsewhere, so the lips don't end up dragging all the visual attention to themselves and leaving everything else looking flat by comparison.

Anyway, this is everything I've derived about makeup thus far (from first principles), and happy experimenting!