I was caught in that awful L.A. traffic. The start-stop kind that drives people insane. It was in one of those long pauses where no car moves, not even an inch, that I started looking around.
To my right there was a man fiddling with his phone. I don’t know if he was looking for a way out or just texting someone (probably to say he was going to be late). But over on my left something much more interesting caught my attention. A woman, by no means ugly but not a model either, was adjusting her makeup.
I watched her, entranced, and very reflective. It made me think of all sorts of things. At first I was struck by how human it was. “Isn’t that everybody?” I thought to myself. Doesn’t everybody look at themselves in the mirror and wish they could make some kind of adjustments.
I realized at that moment that people wear makeup for themselves, not to look good to anyone else. They wear makeup so that they look the way that they want to. Makeup is just a symbol. Maybe women knew that already, but as someone who never wore makeup I never got it.
It made me think of the masks that we all put on in society. Everywhere we go. I think it was Proust that made the point that there are as many versions of yourself as there are people you know. He mentioned that when his mother died, so did the version of himself that she held onto.
You are a certain way with a certain person and you are another way in a group or with someone else. You wear a different mask. Different makeup in different situations. Funny too, isn’t it? How often you hear people say “I want someone who really gets me” or “I want someone real” as if anyone could ever really get you. As if everyone isn’t actually real in some sense.
Those eighties rock and rollers with their purple cheeks and black eyeliners came to mind, but I didn’t think about that for long. Sometimes the sooner you get an image out of your head the better.
She shifted her hair and moved it back. She added lipstick then took some off. It was such a personal moment. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be looking. Like I was breaking some kind of law watching her go through the process of herself. The process of constructing the mask she was going to wear that day.
To be honest I can’t put it into words. Why such a simple thing affected me so much. I can’t fully explain what it meant to me. Other than to say at that moment it felt like everything and everyone.
I thought maybe I should pull out my book and start reading instead. But of course the traffic began to clear. Cars started to move. Slowly… ever…so…slowly.
Take control and start really being different for different people. Fun ensues. It's all a game , we make the masks