Beauty Is In The Eyelashes Of The Beholder

At least once in her life, every woman embarks on a quest to find the perfect mascara. It's a far more complex and frustrating undertaking that it may first appear. How difficult can it be to paint your lashes black, you ask, and quite reasonably so - it's not like we're attempting to surgically widen our eyes or perma-glue on lash weaves. The answer to that is: exceedingly difficult. If you are a man, you will never understand just how much - unless you are a actor or a tranny, in which case I know we have your sympathy vote.

You see, mascara is not actually a generic product. Different mascaras have vastly different effects one one's lashes, and that's without taking into account the length, thickness and general co-operativeness of the lashes with which one was originally blessed. You can find mascara that volumises, curls, thickens, defines, softens, creamifies, maximises, optimises or augments your below par natural lashes - indeed, there is even one that promises to "help prevent the loss of lashes", which is great as I am always finding the pesky things are just dropping like flies.

I always start off a search like this by going online. There is a wealth of information out there about mascaras, as well as other products and services ranging from the ordinary to the very obscure, as is evident by Google searches such as "When should you throw out old underwear?" and "What is something which is good to know" - but that is clearly a topic for another post.

There are several ways to hunt down information. The first is the obvious one; enter the name of a mascara which has recently been blasted onto your radar by means of the terrestrially-lashed model on World's Favourite Make-Up Brand's new TV advert. Read all subsequent information. If necessary, open a Word document and copy and paste key phrases such as "adhesive waxes" and "quick dissolve tubular system". The second is for the more adventurous, where you expand your search to "UK's no 1 mascara" or "miracle mascara". Sort through the thousands of blogs, third party retailers and the inevitable subliminal marketing content that follows, and try to ascertain who is making useful points and who is talking a load of bollocks.

Create a shortlist in your Word document, or, if you are supremely anal like myself, a new excel spreadsheet where you can have endless hours of fun by sorting mascara brands into columns according to "smudge proof" and "clump free" properties. Inevitably, you will come out with about 5 mascaras that are voted not only face-changing, life-changing and guaranteed to turn you into the women you've always dreamed of being, but they make your coffee in the mornings too (skeptics, this is no place for you; only enter this realm if you are prepared to buy into the impossible).

Then comes the million pound question: which mascara to buy? You see, even in the top set, each brand still has haters. For every 10 people who adore Lancome Hypnose for its apparent bewitching effects on the male species (I say apparent because we all know that men don't actually notice what make-up we're wearing), there is one who says it is the worst mascara she has ever bought, and if we try it we do so at our peril. Then the next poster on the forum gets exceedingly defensive about her favourite product, and proceeds to tell the hater that she is incompetent and must learn how to use a mascara brush, as there cannot possibly be a flaw in her trusty Old Faithful. Then the hater tells the promoter that she is a skanky bitch who spends too much time on forums dissing people she doesn't know, and then the promoter tells the hater that her mother is a whore, and then....well, you get the picture.

While this example of camaraderie between women plays itself out on on your screen, you either head off to your local Boots to road test the top 5, or if you are a Defiant Fashionista who laughs in the face of the credit crunch, you order all of them on eBay. Once they arrive, you inevitably find something to bitch about for each one of them, and return to the forum to tell the hater / promoter that they are absolutely right / that their daddy was the milkman. 3 months later, once you have used all 5 products and are left empty and unsatisfied, it's back to square one as you start your fruitless search all over again.

And they wonder why women are the more fragile sex.