Friday, May 04, 2007

when collagen just won't do-from the myspace archives

As we rounded out a fun filled weekend in NYC my mom and I were killing our last 30 minutes in Times Square before our car arrived to take us to the airport. We have a laundry list of things we have to do when we go to NYC and while many of them are related to Christmas and didn't need to be checked off on our impromtu September visit, we did have to grab some cheesecake from Roxie's before we left.

As we made our way to the deli, we spotted a young lady getting her eyebrows waxed at the Anastasia salon in the 24 hour Sephora by the hotel. I was blessed with, I feel, fairly reasonable eyebrows, which I'm sure to everyone's dismay, I do not wax, or really even pluck save for the few stray hairs that clearly do not belong. I am a really low maintenance kind of girl and I'm just not that willing to commit to too much primping. I have, however, been considering a basic brow shaping that would be pretty easy to keep up and according to my mom, this Anastasia is apparently the shaper to the stars. She is the shaper of all shapers, so I thought maybe this was the time to check it out. I decided not to have the eyebrows done because it was 32 dollars and if I was going to spend that I would have bought the cute bag I'd seen on the street the night before. (While the spur of the moment trip was a lot of fun, it didn't allow much time to budget and save...so I did it on a shoestring.) I know I can get a brow wax for less than that at home, it may not be from the shaper to the stars, but I could get someone to do it with thread who will whisper sweet Korean nothings in my ear. As I worked my way out of the store, I paid homage to my friend Amanda, and checked out all of the fun products on display.

My matron of honor recently told me about her mother's venture into the world of lip plumping gloss and my mom and I had been talking about it on the way in. Mom swears she's allergic to the stuff, because it made her lips tingle when she tried it. On the way out of Sephora, I spotted a sample of lip venom and after considering the risks of sharing community gloss and weighing them with the benefits of buying more cheesecake with the money I saved, I smeared a little of the gloss on my finger and then on my lip (making no direct contact with the applicator.) It didn't really seem to do anything, but it did give a nice sheen.

A block down the street, I felt a slight tingle. Then the tingle turned into a burn. Now, I think my lips are actually normally relatively plump, but I thought if it was good enough for Paris it was good enough for me, so I decided to ride out the burn to see how I looked with Angelina's lips. Two blocks down the street, I caved. I had to wipe it off. My lips continued to burn. The pain was almost searing.

Mom and I parted ways as she headed off to find some fat pens (her souvenir weakness) and I went to get our cheesecake. After I woke the nice little cheesecake attendant out of his sleepy/drug induced dazed and assured him that I did not need an entire box of nine dollar slices, he noticed my lip rubbing. "I think you gotta rash", he said. "Oh, right", I replied, "yeah, I tried this lip stuff, not a good idea, are they kind of red?" "Yeah", he gestured, but not pointing to his lips, but all around his mouth, where I was feeling an incredible itching and burning. "I think you might wanna get somethin fa that. Ya might wanna try"...(SHUT UP YOU F-ING MORON AND GIVE ME THE CHEESECAKE SO I CAN GO CUT MY LIPS OFF WITH A BUTTER KNIFE AND BURY MY FACE IN A MANHOLE) 'maybe you should try soma that triple"..(seriously buddy, please stop talking because my face is on fire now and I'm pretty sure I'm starting to look a lot more like Ronald McDonald than Angelina Jolie.) "Hey, you don't gotta stand so far away. I'm not gonna bite you. Not unless you was a....a vegetable or somethin' (yes, he seriously said that. He's a quick one, that guy.)

Fortunately, about that time, my mom came in and I was able to pawn the cheesecake and the bill off on her, so I could step out of the store and stand in a corner. I hoped she would assure me that in fact, he was just making a big deal out of nothing, but instead when she saw me, she just laughed. I think maybe this is not a good look for me. And for the record, I don't think my lips ever actually got any more plump, the redness did, however, extend from my nose to my chin. It's good stuff, if that's the look you're going for.

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