About Ashleigh McKenna
After first subscribing to sweetspot.ca to get to know her new city, Ashleigh McKenna now gets to help find the sweet stuff worth sharing as Editor and General Manager. Go behind the scenes from favourite manicure spots to product sneak peeks and more.
What Age Did You Start Wearing Makeup?
girl about t.o.: playing dress-up to growing up canada
(Jun.10.11)
Flavoured lip gloss was my gateway cosmetic.
I don't know which of my friends had a Lip Smackers first, but at some point not that far into junior high, we all had them. Strawberry did a somewhat shiny pink thing and Grape gave a deep(ish) purple tint that we all loved.
Next thing you know, we had graduated to something more sparkly and applied with a wand (I was partial to Vanilla), soon the lip liner was added (and yes, later regretted) and full-blown makeup wasn't far off.
I don't remember any hard and fast rules about when I was allowed to wear makeup (or any fights) and I'd say I was in my early teens when I really started to wear any outside of the house. (And even then, it was mainly some odds and ends that were cast-offs from my mother's collection, added to my oh-so-mature lip balm.) But I'd been playing with it for long before that. And still trying to perfect what suited me long after.
Makeup was (and still is) fun; sometimes a challenge (I don't even think I attempted liquid eyeliner until university); and always a balancing act of finding the right colours, not adding too much and adjusting it depending on the time of day or specific situation.
These days I like how my skin looks evened out with a little tinted moisturizer but still looks like my skin, plus some SPF (the attempts to hide my freckles are history). I'm usually adding eye makeup as more of an evening thing in the hot weather and lips are left to whatever is in my purse most of the time (though that's rather an arsenal of glosses).
So, what age is appropriate? I don't really know. But I sure had fun trying to figure it all out.
What about you — how old were you when you really started wearing makeup?
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