Makeup Games

Newsletter 2025-02-10

As you might have heard, there was a major showdown over the weekend. No, I’m not talking about the Super Bowl, although I’m sure that was fine if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m referring, instead, to my daughter’s show choir competition. She and her squad of dancing singers (or singing dancers. I don’t know which one comes first, but I’m sure I’ve somehow slighted both skills.) faced off against other schools in their first official performance. As with the Super Bowl, I wasn’t important enough to be there in person. That job fell to my wife Lola. I was merely part of the support staff, alternately fetching things or staying out of the way depending on the needs of the moment in the week leading up to the big day. Putting twenty girls on stage takes far more work than getting eleven players on a field. NFL starters don’t have to worry about their hair and makeup.

To the surprise of no one, I have zero knowledge about foundation, blush, or any of the other compounds or powders a person might need to beautify themselves. Lola wears makeup sometimes—or all the time. Men think women are lying when we say that we don’t notice if you’re wearing makeup, but it’s true. The main thing I pay attention to with Lola’s face is whether or not she’s mad at me. If her eyebrows aren’t in attack position, I breathe a sigh of relief and immediately turn my attention back to whatever screen is most interesting at the time. Gazing lovingly into your partner’s eyes is no match for college basketball.

I might not appreciate the importance of makeup, but, as with most of life, it’s not up to me. There’s a reason I’m not in charge of literally anything. Show choir requires the girls to use makeup. That seems like the wrong message to send. We spend their entire lives teaching them not to judge others on their appearances, and then we turn around and have a competition where they’re scored on how they look. There’s an official point total and everything. Maybe makeup isn’t scored separately, but your overall look definitely factors in. It could be the extra element that puts you over the top of your competitors. In a superficial world, only the shallow survive. Makeup is vital to the competitive scene. Past champions bare that out. Past show choir national winners include both Kiss and Insane Clown Posse.

That’s how dramatic the makeup would have to be for me to notice it. I have trouble even telling which kid is even mine from a distance. During a performance, there’s a bunch of girls of similar heights and builds dressed identically and crowded together on stage, twirling around like their lives depend on it. Figuring out which long-haired brunette is mine from halfway across an auditorium is a challenge even for my twenty-twenty vision. At non-competitive performances earlier this year, I may or may not have spent entire songs watching the wrong kid. The problem was that Betsy wasn’t wearing black and white clown makeup. If she had been, I would have immediately been able to spot her—unless the other girls all wore it, too, in which case it would have canceled out. For the competition Saturday, all the kids were expected to have less makeup than Juggalo nation, but not by much. The colors had to be visible from a distance to make sure the judges knew you met the minimum criteria for vanity. Betsy’s team expected everyone to showcase their individual talents by pulling off identical looks. That meant a supply run, which is my specialty. I make myself useful by having a driver’s license and a pulse.

Photo by Tyler Callahan on Unsplash

Earlier this week, I took Betsy to Walmart to acquire the necessary beauty products. It wasn’t exactly Sephora, but it got the job done. (I’ve never been to one, but Lola told me that Sephora is an expensive makeup store. Please disregard that last comparison if she was messing with me and it’s actually a paper mill or car company.) Lola did a tutorial with Betsy and then sent us out the door with a list of everything we needed. Betsy scoured the makeup aisles while I bought cottage cheese, which was just as important. That part doesn’t have anything to do with this story. I just like dairy products. Back at home, Betsy experimented with her new makeup on herself. There’s no animal testing in this household. (Even if there were, I doubt the animals would cooperate. Putting lipstick on a pig is easier said than done.) From time to time, Betsy would emerge from the bathroom to show off her handiwork. Sometimes, it was just her normal face. Other times, it was her normal face with extra blue. To me, that color indicates a lack of oxygen, but apparently it’s also a sign of beauty. Hopefully the judges would be coming from the fashion industry and not medical school.

I thought we had all appearance related concerns squared away by Friday night. Betsy spent the evening packing the nine hundred individual items she would need to get ready on site. Meanwhile, I burrowed into my couch and prepared to rot in place. I was wearing no fewer than three layers plus a blanket with the Purdue-USC game in my earbuds and Halo fired up on my Xbox. I didn’t plan to move again for the rest of the night, or possibly ever. There was a very real chance I would never leave that cocoon of my own free will. That’s when Betsy burst into the living room in crisis mode. She needed fake eyelashes. The issue was of the utmost importance. News about assassinated archdukes has been delivered with less urgency.

I didn’t understand the conundrum. Why would someone want fake eyelashes? Betsy already had a perfectly fine set of real ones. Would the competition venue have an especially high amount of dust filtering down from above? Perhaps the auditorium was still under construction. According to Betsy, that wasn’t the case. All of her friends would be wearing fake eyelashes, and if she didn’t have them, she would stand out. That made me question how closely the judges have to look at these kids to notice the status of their eye hair. I assume everyone sitting ten feet away at the judge’s table was watching the competition through a telescope powerful enough to see Neptune. Otherwise, how could they tell these kids even have eyelashes? It’s certainly not a feature I would detect. I don’t say that out of jealousy. In fact, I have some of the nicest eyelashes in the world.

I know that because a woman told me. Back in 2008 (I receive so few compliments that I remember when and where I got each one), the female reporter in the next cubicle said she wished she had long, girly eyelashes like mine. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a compliment, but it was a statement of fact. I asked Lola about it, and she confirmed that I have the kind of lush, feminine eye coverings that any lady would be happy to have. You probably didn’t know that about me because they’re only visible if you’re standing a few feet away. If you’re that close, it’s a good time to take three full steps back and possibly to slam a door in my face. I don’t know what to do with the knowledge that I’m blessed in the eyelash department. If I were to wake up tomorrow without eyelashes, I wouldn’t notice—until I was partially blinded by a random speck of dust. Even that wouldn’t be so bad. I’d look cool with an eyepatch. I assumed that I had passed down my magnificent eyelash genes to my offspring, but I guess I never checked. Apparently Lola’s regular eyelash genes got in there and mucked everything up. If only I had known that would happen before I married her. Then again, that would have required me to look at her face for more than just an anger check. This was all a very long way of saying I wasn’t getting out of an emergency trip to buy Betsy fake eyelashes. With a heavy sigh, I emerged from my blanket cocoon and grabbed my keys. A girl dad’s job is never done.

Except that my job actually was almost done. Saturday morning, I woke up early and took Betsy to school. She had to be there by 7 a.m. to get some extra practice. Apparently all the other practices I drove her to all week were just practice for the main practice on the morning of competition. After that final tune-up, the girls needed a substantial block of time to do their makeup, apply emergency fake eyelashes, and drive to the competition site an hour away. The full group wouldn’t compete until noon. Lola volunteered to be there for that part. If Betsy’s group made it until the final round, they wouldn’t be home until after midnight. Show choir has too much action to pack into a single day. The earth would slow down its rotation around competition time if it knew what was good for it.

It was better to have Lola on hand than me in case Betsy needed help with any last-second touch-ups. You don’t want the leader of your pit crew to be the guy who doesn’t know how to drive a car. Actually, I have a better idea: There should be a show choir competition where dads—and only dads—are required to do their daughters’ makeup. It’s not that fathers are incapable of correctly applying it; we just don’t have any experience. We start out ugly and stay that way. Society is okay with that. It’s the single greatest part of being a guy. Letting us take the helm in a situation we know nothing about can only lead to good things. I wonder if it’s possible to apply makeup with a paint roller? There’s only one way to find out.

There are enough competitions during show choir season that they could afford to let dads ruin one. Betsy has a competition every weekend from now until the end of time—or just the end of the school year. I’m not sure if that’s when things wrap up or if it’s just when the printer for the calendars ran out of ink. That’s a grueling schedule by my standards. I’m not a fan of all-day anything. My favorite competitions to watch are cross country meets. Almost every kid is done in less than half an hour. There are no extra innings, double headers, or overtime. You run, and then you go home. Its efficiency incarnate. It’s a shame other sports added extra stuff like balls and rules to slow things down. Show choir sounds like all of the rules and none of the running. It also sounds like a chorus of angels. Betsy and her friends can really sing. They’re great dancers, too. I’m writing this Saturday night before I know how the competition turns out. Regardless of what those judges say, she’ll be a winner to me. Especially if, next time, she lets me do her makeup.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James

Addendum: I just remembered that I didn’t take Betsy for that first makeup run. I drove her to the store for a bunch of other things (that’s my main job as a dad), but I didn’t handle that specific one. She went with her mom that time. I know I handled the eyelash trip, though, because I really didn’t want to get off the couch. That should set things straight. Let the record show that I would never lie to you on purpose, except for all the times I totally did. Anyway, that’s all—for real this time.

James again