La Mala Educacion

The 1960s Glam Look

It took almost a month, but I managed to master the basic principles of make up application. You put a little eyeshadow here, a little powder there and you're more or less good to go. Pretty soon I was hungry for new challenges. Sometimes in life we need a teacher, someone both deeply skilled and profoundly capable of understanding our hidden potential. Helen Keller had Annie Sullivan. Jackie Chan had the drunken master. And I have Alyson.

A close-up of the fabulously well-groomed eyebrows

Alyson is an easy eight on the girlie scale, but at least fifty percent of her girlishness is invested in the cosmetic arts. She has worked in Los Angeles as a make up artist and she carries her supplies in one of those steel reinforced locking cases. It looks like the case that always holds the evidence, artifact or weaponized supervirus in every spy movie made in the last ten years. She actually has more than one case, but that one was particularly impressive to me. She explains her love of cosmetics in terms of childhood joy. “It's like it's Halloween every day!”

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