jeudi 30 mars 2017
How to Deal When Your Little One Is Obsessed With Your Makeup
It probably started with the YouTube tutorials she watches - little girls experimenting with eye shadow and lip gloss and grown women turning themselves into Disney princesses and villains. Then my 5-year-old daughter discovered that a couple of her slightly older friends (we're talking second graders) had their own makeup sets full of powders and creams in every color of the rainbow.
She was hooked and wanted more, and the only place to get it? My makeup drawer.
I realize that little girls being intrigued by makeup is not exactly a new thing. I remember aggressively pushing my mom's blue eye shadow into my own lids in the mid-80s and being scolded because I had forgotten to roll down her new tube of lipstick before putting the cap on, smashing the contents into an unusable mess. I remember loving Halloween, not for the candy but because it was the one day a year my mom would allow me to put on a full face of makeup, inspiring me to pick boring, totally cosmetics-driven costumes like bride and hippie.
What I did not realize as an underage makeup neophyte was that my mom's reluctance to let me wear her lipstick and eyeliner was only partially because I was in freaking grade school, but also because makeup is expensive, and my forays into her cosmetics bag usually meant the destruction of one of more products.
I recently learned that lesson the hard way, when my daughter and some of her little girlfriends, the daughters of one of my close friends from college, locked themselves in my bathroom and went to town on every eye shadow they could find. Realizing it was way too quiet, we went upstairs to survey the damage, which I expected to involve a lot of clothes (doll- and regular-girl-size) strewn all over my daughter's room. Instead, after we convinced the little terrors to open the door, we discovered my bathroom covered in shades of brown, black, silver, and purple, with broken palettes everywhere and three little girls who were in serious need of a make-under.
"I'm so sorry," my friend sighed. "They destroyed almost $1,000 of my makeup a few weeks ago." At first, I wondered why this friend, who at the time wasn't wearing anything more than what I could only assume was a pretty pricey moisturizer, had that much makeup. Then I started doing the math of replacing every shadow, mascara, beauty tool, and lip gloss in my makeup bag and vanity, and it didn't take long to get to a grand.
My daughter, after discovering the sweet taste of makeup, became a little lip gloss and blush-stealing ninja.
Luckily, they hadn't found my good stuff, instead destroying a few drugstore palettes I'd purchased to create those dramatic smoky eyes I now rarely had a reason to attempt. We cleaned up, talked to the girls about both respecting other people's things and their own faces, and moved on. But my daughter, after discovering the sweet taste of makeup (like, there's no way she didn't taste it; it was caked all over her mouth), became a little lip gloss and blush-stealing ninja. And sending her to kindergarten with hot pink lips just isn't an option. A set of rules had to be established.
Here's how I handled it. First, I let her have her own makeup stash in the form of a few of my long-retired, light pink lip glosses. She gets to keep them in her room and wear them whenever she wants, at home only. They've held a place of honor in a little cup right by her bed ever since.
Second, following the old "they'll want what they can't have even more" rule, I told her she's occasionally allowed to wear a little blush and neutral-colored eye shadow, but only when I apply it for her. If she breaks these rules, her makeup games are over. After all, she's only 5, and my cosmetics budget just isn't big enough for the both of us.
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