Enhance, Not Eclipse

I try not to attack "looks" head on—I'm quite chicken—but I will tentatively cluck my objections to the current craze of aqua eyeliner. 

 

Makeup is about enhancement, about taking what God gave you and making it go bang-pow-boom. 

Eyes are thankfully colored, and we are blessed with lashes, although some of us have more lustrous framework than others. Ergo, we make 'em blacker, so the iris hue is intensified. Lips are usually in the pink family, so we make 'em pinker, so they pop. We add a healthy flush of pink to the cheeks, fake sculpted cheekbones with bronzer and highlighter. We pluck and trim a chicer shape to straggly brows. 

But aqua liner sits uncomfortably on the face, not quite sure what it is doing there. The job of makeup isn't to call attention to the cosmetic itself, but for the admirable work it does in bringing out our natural best. I don't see the beautiful eyes when there is aqua liner; I only see the liner itself.

What makes it further perplexing is that aqua liner tends to be devoid of accompaniment: slashes of disconcerting blue on an otherwise bare, unpainted face. Look, if you are gonna go aqua, you gotta do everything else, too! 

(I'm still not crazy about it, but at least she went all out, right?)

Now, here is Karlie Kloss with a gray-brown-black based smoky eye: 

Via instyle.co.uk

 Whoo, look at those peepers! Now we're talkin'!

I can wander the aisles in a drugstore like any other warm-blooded gal and find myself looking longingly at a cheerful turquoise eyeshadow, but then I remind myself that I don't want my eyes to be upstaged, I want them to be the star of the show.