Beneath the Skin
I bought new makeup yesterday. It’s a new kind from Almay called ‘Nearly Naked,’ which is supposed to hide the wearer’s imperfections but still let her skin show through. Obviously the idea is to make it seem like there is no makeup and that yes, this is how I look when I roll out of bed. Isn’t that what it’s about, though? Hiding one’s imperfections from the world while trying to convince the world that it’s the “real you”? So here I sit, face freshly washed and devoid of makeup, ready for examination to see what can be discovered about my life from my facial features.
Let’s start at the top: the forehead. Not too big, not too small (though I’m sure if I stare at it long enough that sentiment will change). Two little indents serve as a reminder to when I had the chicken pox, age eleven. During the sixth grade, all the kids in my class got chicken pox, and I was one of the last to get it. At the time we were living in England, and my mother’s friend was visiting from the U.S. I didn’t want her to see me with all these terrible little marks on my skin. I wanted to hide in my bed for two weeks. There were pictures of me during that time—I’m holding my hamster and not looking at the camera—but I cut out the little part of the photos with my hamster in them and threw the rest of the photos out. I wanted no reminder of how sick I looked during that time. So now, years later, small bumps and irregularities are scattered across the once smooth surface.
My shaggy eyebrows should be plucked in order to banish those tiny strays under the brow, but I can’t be bothered. I used to have very high-maintenance eyebrows back in high school. They were arched and tapered to a beautiful finish at just the right spot a little further out than where my eye ends. But I was a different person then—someone I’m not now. While those eyebrows were fun they represent someone else—perhaps someone who was not as comfortable with herself as she is now. Someone who was just coming into her own and feeling slightly awkward, and decided to make her eyebrows as pretty as possible, to give the illusion of maturity. I don’t remember feeling all those emotions back then, but looking back now I can clearly see them. But I like my eyebrows; they’re “natural” (and less of a pain to keep up).
Now onto my favorite part of my face: my eyes. They’re a light medium green with gold-yellow around the pupils. The only other person I know who has the gold-yellow is my mother, though the rest of her eyes are more hazel. My father has blue eyes. I think that my eyes are the ultimate combination of my parents, as the rest of my face is more my mother than my father. But my eyes, I think, capture both of them in two tiny orbs. I can’t decide who I am more like, otherwise: I sometimes think I’m like my father—carefree, young at heart, fun. But then sometimes I think I’m more like my mother—responsible, mature, serious. I can’t even decide which one I’d rather be like—they both have their good and bad points. I don’t know that I will ever decide. If you look close enough I think my eyes look like little Jade stones. Jade was going to be my name, but my father didn’t like it (and so began my parent’s eternal arguing). I think it’s interesting that my eyes are the color of what my name would have been. The lashes that frame these interesting little spheres are—I think—long, thick, pretty. I remember one day my friend Jenny and I were playing around with mascara, as we were just discovering makeup—she yelled at me for putting the open tube flat on the table because it would all pour out (I said we were just discovering it)—and she told me I didn’t need to use it because I had ‘camel’ eyelashes. Under my eyes hang those pesky, dull crescents: the bags. I attribute it to my family’s genes of just being regular people with regular skin and the problems that can come with it, and not having a team of professional makeup artists to carefully disguise the tired look I seem to have.
One last note about the eyeballs—look closely and the faint edge of my contact lens can be seen—an almost invisible solution to my horrific near-sightedness. I started wearing glasses at age eight, and had enormous tortoise-shell frames that were far too big for my face—but my best friend, Hannah, had the same style, so we thought we were cool. Hannah has since moved to Australia, and I saw her this past summer for the first time in seven years. Over the years, we have occasionally looked back on that photo of ourselves and laughed at how silly we looked but how cool we thought we were. I started wearing contacts in eighth grade, but, irony of ironies, I have now returned to my tortoise-shell roots by wearing glasses of same pattern I wore a decade ago (though the frame is much more suited for my face).
My cheeks sit unassumingly until I laugh, when they squish into tiny apples that signify a true smile. My nose doesn’t attract much attention. Freckles sprinkle themselves over it during the summer, fade during the rest of the year, only to reappear the next year. My nose is very different from my sister’s nose, which is a little ski jump and so pointy one could pop a balloon on it. We don’t, however, have the “Grune nose,” which is famous in our family. My mother’s family’s name is Grune, and they all have the same nose with the same little bump on the bridge, so they coined it the “Grune nose.” The oldest Grune generation, the one that started the “Grune nose,” has recently ceased to be. My grandfather and great-aunt died within six months of each other less than two years ago, leaving a void in my family that at once brought us together and tore us apart. It is almost an odd occasion in my family, except that part of it has happened before. But it won’t happen again, not after this. Because of the personal and almost painful reasons, I can’t explain it.
My lips, though fairly normal, have nice qualities—not too skinny and thin, not too large—just the right amount of plumpness for my face. My top lip comes to a little bit of a point that dips ever so slightly over my bottom lip. One thing that ruins these lips is my biting them. I have an unconscious habit of pulling and nibbling on one, only to realize I’m doing it when it gets raw and painful. I then vow never to do it again, until three days later when I catch myself doing it. From my lips spills a mostly American accent, with moments of pure British. I’ve found that where I am determines the accent I have: in America, people think I have a British accent; in England, people think I have an American accent. I don’t think I ever want to lose my British accent as it is one of the only connections I still have to my childhood, one of the only things I have to show that I once lived in a different country but had to make a huge adjustment at a young age and survived. But the fact that my accent is dwindling is symbolic of the fact that I don’t feel as connected to England as I used to. Eight years after we moved the only things that bring me back each summer are my father and the two friends I still keep in touch with. It’s sad, but I think that’s how it was supposed to happen.
Looking at my teeth, they seem straight. They should be, as I had a plate brace (like a retainer) when I was about ten. When I was thirteen I had my two canine teeth removed. The conversation between my dentist (an old family friend) and me went something like this:
“I’m taking these teeth out because their adult versions are just about to fall into place and we don’t want to risk pushing your teeth out of place.”
“Good, so there’ll be no waiting time.”
“Nope, they’ll come in real soon.”
As it turns out, they didn’t come in so soon. I had to wait two years until both my adult canines grew in. I was left with big holes on both sides of my front teeth for the first year of high school. My teeth are straight for one other bizarre reason: one of my teeth on the top left side of my mouth grew in sideways at a 90 degree angle. Because of this it looks strange but actually prevented me from years of orthodontic burden. If the tooth had grown in straight, it would have pushed my other teeth around and cause them to be uneven. I have only ever met one other person with this same strange situation: my current best friend, Emi, who I met two and a half years ago.
However, there’s one thing about my teeth that will forever plague me: they will never be white. Their perturbingly dull hue is due to my years and years of drinking tea every morning. Growing up in England everyone drinks tea with breakfast—never coffee. Even as I grew up and moved away from my childhood home I still kept the English custom of a morning cuppa, despite its teeth-staining drawbacks. I have thought of using one of those new teeth-whitening kits that are popping up everywhere, but the problem is that to avoid new stains, one is discouraged from drinking dark beverages like tea—something I would never be able to do, and would simply lead me back in a circle to the condition my teeth are in now.
The hands that I use to quickly apply makeup with, put my contact lens in with, and type this essay with, are also important. They are my ultimate instruments. They grasp the pen and help it to scrawl out feelings and hopes and fears when I write, serve as an accomplice to an annoying nervous habit I have, pull my Doc Martins on each day and rip plastic wrappers from drinks and CDs. My hands do more work for me than (I think) any other part of my body. And what do they get in return? All sorts of things: nail polish, cuts, scrapes, harsh weather, hand lotion, gloves. I am a lefty. I am proud to be a lefty, as it makes me a little different than most people. When I was young and just beginning to write, I startled and scared my mother when I picked a crayon up with my left hand (though it should have come as no surprise: my father, aunt and grandmother are all lefties), and then began to write backwards. That’s right, backwards. I don’t know why I did that (my mother doesn’t, either), but I have always been able to easily read and write things backwards (I have heard that is a common quirk of left-handed people). I also have a terrible habit of biting the skin around my nails. I never bite my nails—as I’ve heard it’s bad for one’s teeth, and I also just never got into that tendency—but have an uncontrollable habit of biting the skin around them, especially when nervous. I like to make sure my nails look nice—it’s a simple way to make sure one looks presentable. My short nails usually have polish on them, though I don’t always get the chance to do touch-ups during the week, so after three days the polish is chipped. As my hands are stretched out in front of me, I realize they are not knobbly like those of my grandfather and his children—the Grunes are also known for their large knuckles and wide fingernails (this is from their own assessment, not outsiders’ opinions). Each finger is similar to the opposite hand’s counterpart, except for my thumbs. My left thumb’s knuckle is slightly off-center and pulls up to the left a little—the results of having my sister accidentally slam it in a car door and fracturing it. My hands have a pale color—my English heritage—and a smooth texture, with a few beauty marks—from my mother. These ten fingers are usually adorned with nine pieces of silver, but I’m not wearing my rings right now. Though some may think it unnecessary to wear so many rings, each holds a memory for me. Like the Tiffany hugs and kisses ring on my left hand—a graduation present from my mother. Or the thick ring with the blue stone on my right hand—a gift from my friend Emi, mentioned before. Or the ring with the imprints of a rising sun that I bought from a Native American stand at Purchase College—I found out that they never make the design circle the entire ring, as it is a symbol for the soul always needing something more, something to search for; if the design circles around completely it means the soul has everything, which they say is not achievable. One must always be searching.
What has been learned from looking at my appearance? That certain things, visible or not, hold memories in one’s heart, and can be triggered from the most unlikely sources. Though one may not expect it, simply looking in the mirror can generate feelings, emotions, memories, even thoughts that had been temporarily lost in the vast drum of the mind. One’s past is inescapable: though makeup may temporarily hide it, makeup has to be washed off at night, and that’s when the “real” person is revealed. Without even realizing it, one can get lost in the memories she recovers when looking at the face she is so accustomed to and trying to see what is beneath it. But I don’t know why one would want to hide what’s beneath her skin; it’s what makes life, and the person, interesting.