I’d barely thought about my eyelashes at all. Which is odd, really, considering I feel like in my four decades of existence I’ve thought about most things at least twice, matters of my body and self many many more, and more again at night. No, I’d taken these hairs for granted, that they would remain, protect, flap prissily around in their little mascara dressing gowns until, one day last month, I received an email about an eyelash serum.
Eyelash serum. It’s one of those things that just appeared fully formed in the mid-2000s, a mushroom that grew overnight. It was not there; our eyelashes grew without it. It became; our eyelashes required feeding at the roots. A withering cynic at the best of times, I had paid no attention. This was the era of the maxi-lash, extensions that ranged from Bambi to shelf-like, the size of black canapés or iPhones – the eyelash industry was worth over $1.5bn. I did take part, briefly. When I tried fake lashes I found the process tedious and the experience disturbing, my eyes heavy as if counting down an anaesthetic, so I’d sworn off the whole eyelash project, content with my lot. But when I received the serum email, I looked in the mirror, half-interested again, and good God. Good. God. Looking at the sparse field where great vines once grew, I felt first, horror, then a shiver of excitement. A project. I bought the serum.
When there is much around that seems broken, but very little that I am able to fix, a little project like this (where the stakes are so low that we are talking about the density of one centimetre-long hairs) is surprisingly thrilling. Fix the climate crisis? Too big, too sprawling, too many idiots. Cure disease? I’m not yet a god. Taking down a wall to turn my bathroom and toilet into a single room? Almost possible. Improve my eyelashes? Can do.
I paint the serum on my lash line every morning and every evening with a kind of reverence, waiting for the inevitable moment when my boyfriend rolls over in bed one morning and gasps at my cartoon eyes, eyes framed so thickly I look uncomfortably seductive, and attentive, and alive. On the fifth day he reaches over groggily with his thumb, “You’ve got a little… schmutz.” It’s very expensive eyelash serum, I explain patiently, crystallised perhaps due to the deep science it’s performed overnight. He nods politely.
I don’t need long eyelashes – I’ve been existing fairly well without them – but once the idea has taken root in my mind it feels like it would be more work to make peace with this specific aspect of my appearance than it would to try to change it. I do try though.
The lure of stepping out into the world with “barely there” makeup is strong, but the serum, well, it exposes the lie. Compared with thickening mascara, all the rage when I was growing up, the idea of “minimal makeup” is associated with liberation and progress. Quicker! More authentic! Free! But rather than avoiding bronzers or lipsticks, which read now as almost immoral, or desperate, women like me are pushed to spend money on deeper, more expensive adjustments to our appearances, like these lash serums, or Botox, or lip fillers, and makeup intended to make you look “clean”. By which I mean, adhering to cultural beauty standards grounded in racism, classism and ageism. Is it normal to contemplate these things while painting my eyelid?
I hadn’t realised eyelashes thinned as we aged. If I had, perhaps I’d have been focusing on them earlier as part of the relentless search for signs that time has passed or been lost, and with it, maybe power. In her book Intact: A Defence of the Unmodified Body, philosopher Clare Chambers talks about “shametenance”, all the things we do (like applying “natural makeup”) that maintain the idea that our unmodified bodies are shameful, and I wonder if this project counts. Remove the hair there, bleach the hair there, a dull domestic struggle. The seconds dragging serum across my lashes joins the minutes spent dying my roots, then the hours logged by all the women in my life, fighting quietly in the gym or bathroom or salon to get back to an I we recognise.
I’m overthinking it perhaps, but this is the tax I pay for spending money on “beauty”. And through the mist of these little politics, I am watching my eyes for signs of growth. I stand back from the mirror. I lean in close. I blink. I widen my eyes to try to see the follicles, straining, bursting with new life. One night I dreamed my eyelashes grew too long. Too wild and thick, tangling near my fringe, and I woke up at five, and scrolled on my phone until the nightmare had passed. In the morning I stared into the mirror for some time before applying quite a lot of cheap mascara. Now there’s something that works. I will carry on with the serum, though, the magic serum that uses vitamins, distractions and chemicals to hold back death, partly because once a new door to anxiety opens there is a long journey before it’s closed, and partly because, well, it’s good to have a hobby.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
