Photo: Michelle Spollen
Well, at least he tried.
By Micki Spollen — Last updated on Jan 31, 2021
My boyfriend is a web designer. He spends his days perfecting everything he works on down to the minutest detail, turning something technical into a bona fide art. You know what else is art? Makeup.
Mastering the art of makeup takes time, patience, and practice. There are so many different techniques: natural, smoky eye, contoured, and even clown contoured. You not only need to know what color best matches your skin tone, but what will bring out your eyes, how to pick lipstick that won't make your teeth look yellow, and how not to poke your eyeball out with eyeliner. And don't even get me started on "fleeking" brows.
For the most part, I'm awful at all of the aforementioned. Ninety percent of the time, I stroll out into the world fresh-faced, unless I have a giant pimple that desperately needs concealing.
But since my boyfriend is technically an artist, and makeup is technically art, I figured I'd give him a shot at (AKA annoy him until he agreed to) doing my makeup for a week.
Here's what happened when I let my man do my makeup for a week:
Day 1: Covering my designer dark circles
Sometimes I wake up and my face is just not cooperative. This was one of those days. I'd only had about 2.5 hours of sleep, so the bags under my eyes were undoubtedly designer. I asked my boyfriend to make me look less zombie-ish so I could go to the grocery store without causing a mass apocalypse panic.
He succeeded in removing the under-eye circles and instead made it look like one of my eyes was drastically larger than the other.
Day 2: Following advice from a makeup tutorial
Feeling a little on the ambitious side, my boyfriend turned to YouTube for a makeup tutorial. He chose Manny Mua's Glam AF Holiday Makeup Tutorial, which we sat and watched together — and quit about 1/4 of the way in because I had exactly zero of the first 15 products he used.
Still determined to make me look, well ... glam AF, he went to work on my eyes. He chose a nude palette, which really just makes it look like I have liver spots above my eyes. I've never had so much eye shadow on at one time. In fact, I've probably never used that much eye shadow in my whole life combined.
It's also worth mentioning his attempt at contouring. I don't own bronzer, which didn't discourage him at all — he just put eye shadow on my cheeks instead. To finish off the look, he chose a bright pink lip that didn't match the eye makeup (or my pasty winter skin tone) one bit.
Day 3: An attempt at a Gothic look
"I want to make you goth," he said. Sounds easy enough, right? A little black eye shadow here, a little black eyeliner there and you've got yourself a goth look. Nope. Instead, I ended up with this horrifying, no-good, VERY BAD Joker-like makeup look. See for yourself (if you dare).
Day 4: Making Bronzer the star of the show
Obviously unimpressed with my makeup collection, my boyfriend and I made a trip to CVS to re-up. He really wanted to contour my face (I blame you, Kim Kardashian), so we searched the aisles trying to find the right product. It took us forever because neither of us knew what bronzer even looked like.
We finally found a cheap option, along with a little eye shadow palette that had a diagram of where to apply each shade on the eye. The bronzer didn't show up as much as he would've liked, because he was decidedly disappointed with today's look. But who wouldn't be after yesterday's masterpiece?
Day 5: Forgoing makeup and staying fresh-faced
Lacking any major acne issues and minimal under-eye baggage, today was as good a day as any to confront the world makeup-free. My boyfriend did my makeup and added some moisturizer and let my skin run wild and free.
Day 6: Taking a shot at a blue color palette
Officially out of revolutionary ideas, my boyfriend went for a new color palette (blues) and a pink lip (my favorite pink lip, FYI). He's got colors down — it's the application that still needs a little (cough, a lot) of work. For example, no, these aren't tears streaming from my eyes. It's the eye shadow that somehow made it from the brush, missed my eyelids completely, and landed on my cheeks.
Day 7: Finally, Photoshop to his rescue
At this point, my boyfriend was totally over my makeup supplies (or lack thereof) and decided to beautify me using Photoshop. He tamed my brows, added a pink lip and eye shadow, and highlighted my cheeks. And apparently, he also decided he doesn't like my natural eye color, so he changed them from green to brownish.
Note: he asked me to specify that this is the first time he's used Photoshop for makeup, and this is in no way a reflection of his design skills.
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Micki Spollen is an editor, freelance writer, and travel blogger.