I sat in my dressing room at the vanity staring intently at my reflection in the dingy mirror. The big, bright bulbs bordering the glass illuminated my face that was caked with fair skin-toned tinted powder and livened with harsh rose-colored rogue. I had spent roughly the last hour and a half trying to perfect my hair and makeup for tonight’s performance, but something still did not look quite right. I ran my fingers horizontally along my pencil-lined eyebrows and smoothed the sides of my auburn, bobbed haircut down to ensure all flyaways were gone, then let my hands rest around my neck while I continued my inspection.
Finally, I spotted what was off; I had forgotten to plump my lips. While some girls were blessed with darling, lucious lips, I had a set of thin, open-wound ones passed down from my maternal grandmother. My older sister, Alice, had always told me that natural beauty was far more attractive than what makeup could ever do. I chalked up her ignorant opinion to the fact that she was still stuck in her old, southern Texas ways. I however was not, and defiantly drew near to the vanity, “Chinese-Red” lipstick in my left hand, prepared to overdraw my lips into the desired, rosebud mouth shape that was popularized by all of the famously beautiful cover girls I idolized.
Right as the stick touched my lips, Alice barged into my dressing room. This caused me to whip around in my creaky rotating chair and drop the lipstick on the floor with a sound that resonated from the metallic exterior. No matter how many times I reminded her, the dumb blonde never knocked.
“Essie, we’re on in five minutes!”, She gasped. “Now, you’ve got to be joking. Your lips are fine just the way they are sweetie and you don’t need that clown makeup! Now, wipe that bloody lookin’ mess off and get into your costume”. Her voice was rich and syrupy as honey, but her words were always short of sweet.
I rolled my eyes at her. What in the world did she know about cosmetic beauty? She was wearing hardly any makeup, just a base powder and some dully pigmented pink rogue. She looked completely elementary compared to me, yet I had to admit somehow still more glamorous than me in her own Alice-y way. She didn’t even have to try to look beautiful, she just was and this was something that always secretly made me envious.
Exasperated from her uncalled for reaction, I bent down to pick up the lipstick tube from the black, linoleum floor only to find it covered in lint and questionable crumbs. Disgusting. I decided to give up on my attempt to have perfect Clara Bow lips for the night and instead rubbed my lips against each other to spread what little lip stain I had on around evenly.
After one final glance in the mirror at my disgruntled and tired face, I stepped into my red, sparkly flapper dress, buckled my T-Strap high heels, and met Alice behind the dark crimson curtain to begin yet another “Alexander Sister Show”.
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