Once upon a time, there was no such thing as Youtube. (The first ever Youtube video went up in 2005 and it featured one of the teenage founders at the zoo - it's really not worth watching, no really, don't do it).
It meant that teenage girls had to learn how to put on makeup through a challenging, and frequently mortifying process of trial and error. It involved nicking foundation from mum’s cupboard, or possibly from Boots (ummm, just kidding). Many mistakes were made, green eye shadow being one of them. Baby blue eyeliner another. Navy mascara...you get the picture.
These days, there are more makeup tutorials online than you can shake a mascara wand at. It’s nice, watching smooth-skinned beauties play about with lotions and potions as they describe the “literally life-changing” effects of a tinted moisturiser, and say things like, “I’m just blending this cream into my eyelids, right up to the crease.”
As ever though, I have my doubts.
You see, when it comes to makeup, I believe that a certain amount of natural intuition is the best weapon against looking a touch clowny. It’s the same with clothes. Just as a short, generously thighed gal should steer clear of oh-so-fashionable calf-length culottes, so should some people never wear orange lipstick. In short, fashion is not our friend and trends conspire to make us look ridiculous.
The problem is, these Youtube tutorials make out that everyone can copy the same makeup style and still look good. There are tutorials that promise to make you look like Emma Watson or Taylor Swift or Bella Hadid that never acknowledge that those people have had their makeup meticulously matched to their faces.
It’s nothing to do with attractiveness, it simply comes down to skin tone. One of the most formative books I ever read about makeup (okay, the only book I ever read about makeup, I do have a life you know) was called Colour Me Beautiful (available in all good book shops, by which I mean, Amazon). It's an excellent tome, published some time in the 1980s.
The book asks a series of questions and then divides everyone into four seasons depending on skin tone, hair colour etc. It then provides a set of colours to suit each season. So, a black jumper that looks striking on a Winter will only wash out a rosy-cheeked Summer. Brown eye shadow that would compliment an Autumn, will look like poo when smeared on the eyelids of a Spring.
The book is, it has to be said, quite eighties. Some of the hair styles are frankly intimidating. But these women knew their stuff. Most importantly, they knew that blindly copying some else’s style is not a recipe for ravishing beauty.
Another thing the book offers is a sense of simplicity. Less is more and other such cliches apply. Is it me, or are there an awful lot of products around these days? Whenever the opportunity presents itself on the morning commute, I watch women go through makeup routines of alarming complexity. Pot after pot of flesh-coloured goop emerge from heaving, powdery sacks, probably home to more bacteria than the average toilet seat. At best, the products simply disappear into the general mass of stuff already on the face. At worst, they don't.
You see, humans are fairly good at seeing. It means we can normally tell what a person looks like beneath their makeup. An eight-out-of-ten might jump to a nine with a bit of mascara and concealer, but a nine is where they will stay, even if they apply fifty more products. And that is why, from now on, I shall be eschewing any product that calls itself "highlighter" with a firm hand.
P.s. I’m talking about real life people here. As we all know, people on screen are a totally different kettle of whatsits. And that is the trouble with screens. Whichever fool said the camera doesn't lie must turn in his grave every time someone applies a filter.
I’ll tell you what doesn't lie - sunlight. Which is why it’s very important to make anyone you admire for their looks stand in direct sunlight for as long as it takes for you to feel less bitter.
I feel unqualified to use Twitter.
It reminds me of living in university halls where the chief currency in social situations was one’s ability to crack a pun and engage in wisecrack banter. It was like a never-ending game of witty one-upmanship. Then, and now, the whole thing makes me want to lock the door, lie down and read a classic novel.
Thing is, I’ve always been crap at puns. I’m not sure I’ve ever made a successful pun in my life. Sadly, it was mostly the blokes at uni who were good at them. I'm starting to wonder - did they practice? Is there a place where boys go to learn puns, banter and the self-confidence to use them? Is there an old pun-master locked in a basement somewhere who'll give me the gift of the pun?
Don't get me wrong - I'm hilarious. I just don't pun.
Then again, maybe I'm better off out of it. Like most things in life, there’s a few good bits to Twitter. But in general it’s just a load of people pushing their own agendas, re-tweeting meaningless aphorisms and abusing famous people for being fat/left wing/female - the usual.
Every now and then there's a "movement", created by the temporary proliferation of a hashtag (we won't get into the ins and outs of hashtags here because I have neither the time nor the motivation to debate it or dredge up past harassment). But more often, when something big happens, the chief goal on Twitter is to say the funniest thing possible about it and then wait and see who wins the game.
I just have this sneaking suspicion that the whole thing is a fabulous waste of time.
Let's enter the confessional shall we. I've always liked the idea of airing my sins.
Once, several years ago, I wrote a snarky comment on someone's blog. It was one of those aspirational lifestyle blogs in which a woman makes money from good bone structure and a willingness to wear a bikini on the internet. And I don't know what happened, let's blame it on a bad day, but I just thought, fuck you and your success, I'm going to make an utterly unnecessary remark about this unjust situation. If I remember rightly, I said something along the lines of: "Don't you ever have to work?"
Not the most heinous comment the internet's had to contend with, but it was indicative of something pretty bleak lodged in my soul; the internet had brought out my darkness. Embarrassed to admit I was quite enjoying the blog, I felt the need to attack it. The next day I was filled with remorse, but mostly, with shame.
There's nothing sadder or more shameful than a troll. But most of us harbour the impulses that lead to trolldom. We follow people that we find annoying. We stare at people who we "love to hate". Most of us don't bombard the victims of our secret disdain with hateful comments, but if we wrote down the thoughts in our head they'd sound pretty sour. And yet we go back for more. We voluntarily read and look at things that annoy us, when all we really have to do is just - not look. But not looking at trash on the internet is like trying not to gawk at a car crash.
The internet has provided our troll-y thoughts with a place to call home. Most people manage to resist the call to put their thoughts to the page but many people apparently cannot. The comment section under any piece of journalism is a trove of nastiness.
The first time I wrote a piece on the internet I received, not exactly a torrent, but a small trickle of abuse. The piece was about my time as a lawyer and the commentators told me I couldn't write, was talking a load of utter rubbish and was clearly an idiot. Perhaps they were right (only joking, they were obvs wrong) and I was thrilled by the attention (everyone knows boys are mean when they fancy you, right?) but why were they bothering to harass me? What was in it for them?
I love a bit of hearty debate as much as the next woman but there are fewer skillful arguments to be found in comment sections than there are coloured gowns at the Golden Globes.
It got me thinking. The site I wrote my piece for was aimed at lawyers and most of the people commenting were presumably the sorts of people I used to work with. People who, on the face of it, don't spend their time flinging bile at strangers on the internet. In short: THE TROLLS WALK AMONG US.
It seems too simplistic to say that all trolls are nasty people, or complete weirdos. Evidence, including my own shameful tale, suggests that a proportion are normal people. Which makes the sheer level of vindictiveness even more alarming. Is a troll made, or is a troll born? Do we all secretly hate each other?
P.s. There is a South Park episode in which Kyle's dad becomes a troll which neatly encapsulated my suspicion that the trolls walk among us (and are probably someone's dad)...
http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/Skank_Hunt
