My Long and Winding Road Getting Dolled Up

My first makeup lesson came from my late beloved uncle, Sekuru Aggrey, may his soul rest in peace. Someone had been kind enough to paint my nails and he took one horrified look at my fingers and said, “You painted your nails!” He asked me to sit down so that he could explain a few things to me. “Cutex (back then all nail polish was referred to as cutex) and lipstick are used as a statement to men. In Shona (my home language) they have the same name – Musandizeze. Loosely translated, Musandizeze means Oh please, don’t be hesitant, come hither, I’m easy! From that day onwards, I never viewed cutex and lipstick the same again, thanks uncle for ruining my life.

At this ripe age, it would be weird to a lot of people that I only just started wearing makeup. Part of it is because of innuendos I grew up hearing from those around me regarding the subject. No one ever really sat down with me to talk about makeup, except my uncle, and I think it’s an important conversation that girls ought to have with someone who’s knowledgeable on the politics of the subject.

In the township we lived in were a lot of prostitutes. We actually knew them. Rusape is a small town so everyone knew them and what they did. We weren’t allowed to mention their trading name, which in the vernacular is mahure, derived from whores, or pfambi, probably stemming from kufamba (walking). Therefore, pfambi would mean those who walk (the streets). We were only allowed to call them vanhu vekubhawa, Beer hall people.  So if my sisters and I wore something skimpy, or sat inappropriately with our legs open, instead of crossing them to cover up, my mother would say we were sitting like vanhu vekubhawa. I just knew the beer hall people but I didn’t quite know about the transactions that took place there. I just thought they went there to drink beer and dance, activities which I also began to associate with immorality.

We could identify the beer hall people from the way they dressed – bright nail polish, high heels, and pants. They wore bright lipstick on faces that were plastered with foundation incongruous to their skin tones and reeked of cheap perfume. That rendered credence to SekuruAggrey’s proclamation about lipstick and cutex.

As I grew up, I slowly realised that wearing pants had nothing to do with your morals. If anything, pants actually covered up more than skirts. The lipstick one must have stayed stuck to the back of my mind, because I only bought my very first lipstick in my early 30s, but all the lipsticks I got would always get lost or damaged without being used. My sister, Tadiwa, gave me a lip gloss in 2003. I still have it. 

On the day of my bridal shower, I rocked up at the venue with nothing but vanishing cream on my face. My cousins’ cousin,Tapiwa, whisked me to a spare bedroom to powder my face and zhoozhed it up with eyeliner, lipstick and I don’t remember what else. When I walked back to the lounge where a number of people were sitting, there were a few ooohs and aaahs at the remarkable transformation. Afterwards, my cousin’s sister-in-law, Joyce, remarked to my new husband how pretty I looked with makeup. He agreed I did look pretty and asked for the breakdown of the cost of keeping me looking that way. Upon receiving it, he immediately proclaimed, “I think she’s pretty with or without makeup,” his fist tightening. I stupidly believed him.

I did take care of my skin by occasionally cleansing, toning and moisturizing, but would never wear makeup after that. I concentrated more onfragrances because I liked to smell nice. Now I want to smell nice AND look nice.

One of the bags I made

For my wedding, my high school friend, Mudiwa, paid for my makeup, I hadn’t even made arrangements for that. If she hadn’t thought of it, my mother-in-law’s church choir which sang as I walked down the aisle would have had to singHere Comes Plain Jane. My ears only got pierced two weeks before the wedding after I had failed to find clip-on earrings and only kept coming across exquisite ones that required piercing. My sister got keloids after some backstreet piercing and I was scared of having them too. Since getting my ears pierced, I will never pass the earring section of any shop. And there’s always a pair that matches a clothing item or handbag at home.Speaking of handbags, I never carried any. I would just wear pants with as many pockets as possible to stuff everything I needed, and a bra to stuff my phone in. If I needed a bag, I’d carry one that I made for myself because a proper handbag would look bizarre with jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers. I wasn’t even trying to look Boho, I wasn’t following any trend, I was just being me. My mother would always buy handbags and ask me to carry them on the basis that it would make me look like a lady. Until now, I still struggle with handbags even though I do carry them around, and I still make my own bags sometimes.

I only started using makeup consistently after a good friend said I should wear some, not too much but enough to make me look like a girl and not one of the boys. It’s a miracle I managed to get so many dates in my heyday. Those guys, bless their souls, must have genuinely loved me for me to see past all that plainness. It also explains why I had so many male friends who treated me like one of them and always introduced me as their sister and I’d go, “Sister! Huh?” in my mind. It must have been an if-it-looks-like-a-boy-and-dresses-like-a-boy-then-it-should-be-treated-like-a-boy kind of thing. Maybe I didn’t feel the urge to wear makeup because I spent time with them thus had no inspiration. Or maybe I ended up hanging around them to avoid being around dolled up girls.Going to a Catholic girls boarding school where we were forced to keep short hair and where we spent time with nuns who we thought were super cool might also have thrown a spanner into the makeup works. My graduation pictures at the University of Zimbabwe have me unadorned as usual, with just horrible lines drawn by a cheap eyebrow pencil on untrimmed eyebrows.

When I become pregnant with my daughter, I had this sudden compulsion to wear makeup but had no idea where to start. A friend recommended Avon products but I couldn’t find anyone selling them in my area and decided to be an Avon Representative too. Having so many cosmetics around me was an overwhelming experience. I got a lot of freebies and sold a lot of the stuff – to myselfJ. I had so much fun I was like a pig in shit.

I had always believed what pastors at church say about beauty – that the external type was useless while beauty of the heart was what should be celebrated and what we should all work towards. I remember one day in primary school when a teacher calledMrMapani, may his soul rest in peace, came to assembly with two cups. One was smeared with mud on the outside while the other was clean. He then asked which of the cups we would pick for ourselves. We all pointed at the clean one. He then tipped the cups over to show the inside. The one that was clean on the outside had mud inside while the one that had mud outside was squeaky clean. “So you see it’s not the beauty that we see with our eyes that’s important. We should strive for beauty of the heart,” he preached.

Now that I’m older and wiser, I realise that’s not exactly true. Yes, it’s good to be a morally outstanding citizen, but there’s also nothing wrong with enhancing you physical appearance. Looking good gets you places, at least most of the time. If you are a woman and would like to make it in life, you have to push harder to look beautiful inside and out. More often than not, if you push too hard you might end up without the internal beauty but nobody is really looking at that half the time. Society does judge a book by its cover. There’s a certain way people view you when you look good, you are more favourable and look clued up. I realise, however, that getting dolled up is not for everyone. It’s certainly not for me. I do try to look presentable, but I’ve never been an image-driven kind of person, the one that stops traffic. I kind of just blend in with the walls most of the time. And that’s fine, I guess. We were not all born to stand out. But I have finally caught on; I know makeup makes people look good, it makes me look and feel good. My friend Namatayi said it right when she said, “It has been proven from a tender age that the more beautiful kids tend to get the most attention and affection, even becoming the teacher’s favourite compared to the rather plain child.”

I want to be as good a human being as I can be, so I will keep striving for internal beauty and I will also keep working on the external type.I will doll myself up sometimes if I have to because I’ve seen how it makes me feel good and boosts my confidence. My uncle was wrong, lipstick and nail polish aren’t for beer hall people, but I will not be a slave to appearances. I will not be ashamed of walking around the mall without makeup. I was created in God’s image and I think He didn’t really do a bad job!