Makeup doesn’t figure very largely in my life anymore; it never did, really, apart from the occasional fit I’d have for keeping my lids darkly rimmed with eyeliner during the “black is the new synonym for black” days. I did go through a period where I wore liquid foundation every day, but that was because I hadn’t found the drug that gave me my skin back yet. Now I usually dust on a light layer of sheer powder in the morning and leave it at that—I own a few other face-painting tools, but they’re getting kind of old at this point and whenever I use anything that’s lying around on the dressing table, as I had to to in order to take these pictures, I cringe a little bit. (I watched a lot of daytime TV when I was waiting for my work permit two years ago, and wouldn’t you know it but there was this one episode of the Tyra Banks show where they showed closeup slide images of mascara brushes and lip glosses crawling with intricately shaped bacteria; I’ve never quite gotten over it.)

I do remember being utterly fascinated with the stuff when I was a very little girl. I begged and begged to be allowed to have bright pink nail polish when I was about six or seven, and I’m pretty sure there was a phase, earlier than that, during which every time my mother left me alone for too long she’d have to come and find me in her bathroom, standing on top of the toilet with oily red marks all over my shamefaced cheeks, digging around in her cabinet. I used to open the tops of her lipstick containers and marvel at the strange shape her thoughtful kisses eroded them into, a steep mountain slope with a treacherously pointed peak. I remember particular cosmetic items I owned as a teenager: a deep burgundy lipstick, horribly misguided clear mascara. The funny thing is that makeup was never really about getting boys to notice you, and always somehow about becoming more of a girl. You could pick the kind of girl you wanted to be, though, and choose your color palette accordingly. There was at least that.

Someone in Utata said of this series of images that they seemed to reflect the string “makeup, makeup, hide myself.” In so far as they do, I’m glad that they don’t match my life—but I’m sure that for many other women that sequence of gestures is, in fact, rather commonplace.

What about you? If you wear makeup, how much of it do you put on? How often? How long does it take you? And what does it do for you?