Magnetic eyelashes – yes or no?

I keep getting adverts in my feed, does Facebook know I’m a sucker or does Mark Zuckerberg want me to look nice?

As you may remember last time I was drawn into thinking I needed sticky up eye lashes, a lash lift as it was phrased, I’m a Facebook dream. I seem to have forgotten that I’m well over thirty (insert cough here) and we have been in lockdown since I was at school, or so it feels, that every time something that reminds me of sweet freedom and high heels comes onto my radar, I’m all over it like Covid over, erm, the world.

So my newest purchase was magnetic eyelashes.

Not the top and bottom ones applied with pinchers that are now filling my feed, but the ones you simply swipe a winged eyeliner pen across and hey presto Ru Paul.

I have a new job. Am I really unemployable? if you need a refresher, and on my first day, wanting to make the right impression, and not look like someone whose eyelashes had been recently singed in a fire, I drew on the black eyeliner and hoped for the best.

And the best was gloopy.

Picture yourself drawing black cream cheese across your eyelid, aiming for the liquid liner look. Now picture yourself eyes cast downwards and not blinking until it was dry. Yes, sister, you can do it, and I did. Now stick those ‘natural’ look lashes on, and, drum roll please, yes they stick.

A miracle indeed.

I am well aware of my own face having been adorning it with slap for the last 30 years and, to be honest, the winged eyeliner wasn’t too big a task. I’m dark anyway so can get away with more than my fair-haired sisters-in-arms when it comes to tar on the minces. And get away with it I did.

Until mid afternoon…

When the buggers started to lift in the nose corner. I felt like Rebecca Ferguson on The X Factor, all lash and no sob story. However, today, having been there nearly a whole week, I asked my line manager if my eyes looked different.

“No, why do you ask?”

I’m taking that as a triumph, if a fellow woman didn’t know that I had fake lashes on that’s got to be a win.

Chameleon or Cheryl Cole eyes

I have permed my own eyelashes. Now there’s a sentence I never imagined saying, but it’s true. I did it and I’m actually pleased with the results. What I’m not pleased about is that I was so bored I even thought about doing it in the first place. I have been mindlessly scrolling through Facebook far more than is probably healthy but because I just want human contact. I am convinced that those folks at Facebook probably have an algorithm to see that I have straight eyelashes that were in need of perming and therefore filled my feed with targeted ads.

So after feeling compelled to buy a eyelash perming kit, I kept hold of the box for a few days before I felt brave enough to do it. I was wondering if I was actually bored enough to risk my eyesight before deciding that I wasn’t. Instead I watched reviews on YouTube and saw that the girls (I can call them girls because I am old enough to be their mother) had sticky-up eyelashes and healthy looking eyeballs with lids so perhaps I would be okay after all.

It was a very high octane morning: me, the kit, cling film (to wrap the eye, I kid you not), scissors and brown trousers and bicycle clips just in case my fear got the better of me. My stomach was in knots, I guess I could compare it to doing a bungee jump in a foreign country and not understanding the instructions or being able to ask how old the elastic rope was. 

Long story short, I did it, I can see, my eyelids didn’t puff up into burnt blisters and a week later my eyelashes are still firmly attached and in their new upright position. 

But did it solve my lack lustre life? What do you think?

So, then I watched all of Sex in the City, because I loved it back in the day, and I can confirm that I love it still. I marvelled at how out of date it was. I giggled at Carrie’s flip phone and I still envied her shoes. Oh the shoes, the outfits, the fun. I miss my friends so much. I’d love nothing more than to go out for lunch and have a giggle about stuff. You know the stuff I mean, you’d be cracking up, but if you tried to tell someone else they’d stand there confused waiting for the punchline whilst watching you laugh.

I ordered myself a pair of gold flip flops to see if that would help, to focus my mind on summer and potential freedom. They did, momentarily. I sat back looking at my gold flip flops and wondered if they understood how much pressure they were under, how much hope they hold, that I’m looking forward to a day when it does matter that my toenails don’t look like the window frame of a derelict house. That my moustache, which is currently up there with the Go Compare man, won’t be hidden under a mask. That me, my lip gloss and permed eyelashes will be asking a waiter for another cheeky glass of wine and deciding if we’re having starters and mains or mains and dessert. Cheers to that!