as promised, rundown on Sephora tranny makeup course which I took very early today in Bumfuck, near Pokesan's house.
He lives in a pretty nice area. Nearby I witnessed a nervous man urinating in a McDonald's parking lot in the nook of his open car door at 8:00am, but the strip malls were all very well kept and I got a generally positive impression.
anyway lol
there were 7 or 8 of us and 2 instructors. The girls ranged from obese barely-able-to-function autistic to a really very charming older dude using a masc name, and my favorite, this adorable very shy total nonpass with a Hitler Youth I shared a table with, who naturally used my aura to shield herself during socializing. We all sat down at tables-for-two with mirror, products and utensils laid out. I felt very comfortable and welcome and indeed subtly dominated the scene. My phobia about Sephora was that it'd be filled with rude snobs who are all prettier than me and I'd be terribly embarrassed; not so.
The content kind of sucked. They concentrated too much on "skin care", by which they meant cleansing with an oil soln, using an exfoliating pad, and then applying a single moisturizer. That took like half the class and I already have a superior skin care regimen to theirs and didn't care.
Makeup content was the other half of classtime and it was also totally useless except that I happened upon some products I like. Pretty much we were taught the order of foundation application, with very little instruction on technique: primer, color corrector, foundation, concealer, powder, setting spray. Then let off to apply on our own. Wow! No eye instruction. But I found a foundation I dig a LOT so that's cool.
The really irritating thing: there was one particular issue I needed help with and I got conflicting answers from the two instructors. Maybe some nerd who reads tldrs will help me. I have this recurring thing with undereye concealer pilling up, which happened again using their recommended product combo. It appears to settle into creases in my undereye and I get this zebra look. I wiped it all off, applied it again while one of them watched, and it occurred a second time. One individual told me I was too dry there; the other too wet. No combo of product worked in 4 attempts. And because so much time was blown on nonsense earlier in the class we ran out of time before this was resolved. So, I walked out looking a *bit* of a goofball, upon close inspection anyway, with a nice basket of freebie samples.
The gains:
- big reduction in fear of makeup counters & shops by virtue of exposure. I found them completely terrifying a few months ago.
- Learnt some products
- Exposure to trans women who have it worse & soldier on, and trans women who although nonpassing are totally charming & attractive.
- Freebies bag is pretty dank. There's like 10 smaller-scope items in here, eye liner pencil etc and a lip shade I like, full size. Probably 50 bucks of stuff retail.
- Time Spent Out In Public With People Who Understand
Totally worthwhile. Cecily, doubt you'd learn anything, but you'd profit still just thinking of it as a social habilitation expedition (+free product)