Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames

Author:Elizabeth Willard Thames
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

I figured out that if I put my makeup on while riding the number 64 bus into work, I could sleep an extra ten minutes every morning. After stabbing myself in the eyeball with mascara, I learned to wait for red lights. I started to exaggerate my snooze button usage and cut it closer and closer, to the point where I had fifteen minutes between crawling out of bed and sprinting to the bus stop five blocks away at an unassuming spot on the sidewalk in Central Square, Cambridge, between the India Pavilion and Falafel Palace restaurants. One morning I climbed onto the bus out of breath, owing to the fact that as I came down the sidewalk, I’d seen the number 64 sitting at the red light before my stop and bolted to intercept the bus so that I wouldn’t have to wait twenty minutes for the next one. I sank into a seat near the back, frustrated with my job and this rushed, ridiculous routine to get to my desk every day by 9 a.m. I pawed around in my purse, absentmindedly at first, then with growing franticness, and then took everything out slowly, one item at a time, knowing but not wanting to accept that I’d forgotten my makeup bag. I leaned my head back onto the collar of my coat and moaned.

I considered getting off at the next stop and walking back home, grabbing my makeup bag, and then catching the next number 64 that was due in seventeen minutes. But I was frazzled and already late. So I came up with a plan. I got off the bus at work, walked across the street to the CVS drugstore, and bought $50 worth of moisturizer, powder, concealer, blush, eyeliner, eye shadow, mascara, and lipstick. I hauled my goods over to work and went into a bathroom not on my floor, hoping to avoid having one of my colleagues see me unwrap this pile of brand-new makeup and apply it right there at the bathroom sink while I was supposed to be in my cubicle. I hadn’t considered going to work that day without makeup for even a moment.

Starting my freshman year of high school, I never went anywhere without makeup, because I harbored a deep-seated belief that something was wrong with the way I looked naturally. I thought my hair was either too oily or too dry or too full or too thin, and my skin was plagued with incidents, like old chicken pox scars, that I wanted to plaster over. At fourteen, I foresaw a lifetime of defects I’d have to fight against. It started with my acne and I figured that, soon enough, I’d need to combat wrinkles and gray hair. In my early twenties, I had an earnest conversation with my friend Alisha about whether we should start using antiwrinkle cream under our eyes as a prophylactic. I’m not sure where this self-loathing originated—whether from beauty industry ads targeting every part of my

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