Guest Post! My Life in Make-Up by Abidemi Sanusi (@abidemiuk)

Writers are not supposed to care about make-up. They are not supposed to care about clothes, shoes or anything fun because, by and large, we’re either too busy putting the world to rights with our writing or having a breakdown because of our ‘art’.

Nonsense.

I am a writer. I have a lot of ‘arty’ female friends and none of us fit this stereotype. That’s because we’re too busy having fun with make-up, clothes and shoes to waste our time being miserable. Come on, life is short, right?

without_books_tshirt To be fair, it wasn’t always like this – for me anyway. As a child, I was an introvert and inveterate bookworm. It was easier for me to bury my head in a book than to be placed in social situations that required any form of interaction with people. It wasn’t that I didn’t like people – I just preferred books. As for my looks, well, I knew I wasn’t anything special, so I didn’t look into the mirror much.

Somewhere between primary and secondary school, I morphed into an extrovert, albeit one with a voracious reading appetite. Outside, I was self-assured and confident, but inside, I still didn’t like looking at myself in the mirror. Whilst my friends spent hours practicing their make-up and swapping techniques, I read more books and concentrated on being even more extrovert to cover my inward gaucheness.

University was no different. The only difference was that I finally dared to experiment with make-up. Nothing major, just eyeliner and lipstick. One day, I watched a friend apply some lip gloss and I fell madly, deeply in love – with the lip gloss, that is. The lip gloss was MAC Lipglass. Suffice to say, it was there that my love affair with make-up started.

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Where the love affair began…

Experimenting with different make-up styles and techniques has helped me rediscover my inner teen I have fun trying out new brands of eyeshadow and liquid eyeliner. I now know for a fact that I hate lipstick but I love lip gloss. I also know that I’m obsessed with having perfectly threaded eyebrows. In difficult times, I’ve found that the mere act of applying light make-up (eyebrows, eyeliner and lipgloss) can do wonders for one’s spirit.
My latest obsession is the holy grail of make-up – smoky eyes.

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The iconic Iman

To that end, I’ve watched countless YouTube videos of how best to achieve it and have found something that I think works for me. In the process, I’ve also discovered some quite good smoky eyes products and they don’t cost a bomb either (Rimmel’s Scandal Eyes Waterproof Khol Kajal and Waterproof Gel Eyeliner, Maybelline’s Volume Glamour Ultra Black Mascara and any black eyeshadow to use as a base, since you ask – by the way, thanks for the eye make-up recommendations nice Superdrug lady).

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My make-up philosophy is simple, ‘less is more’. But, I do understand that there are times when you have to vamp it some. For those who do, I salute you. And for those who have yet to embrace the life-affirming powers of make-up, what are you waiting for?

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>Abidemi Sanusi is an author and founder the Ready Writer copy writing service. She’s also on Twitter

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