How to be a girl

The French Blonde has mixed feelings on being a high-maintenance woman.

These feelings, in the usual, if annoyingly dichotomous way, fall into two opposed categories:
1. The FB is fairly obsessed with clothes, makeup, hair, shoes, dressing up, shopping, etc.
2. The FB is a lazy git who likes nothing more than lounging in bed eating chocolates/French cheese/homemade caramels from Joel Robuchon/cereal with bits of freeze-dried berries (no kidding--la France est merveilleuse) and reading a novel (the FB just re-read William Boyd's Restless for the umpteenth time because she still wants to be a British spy in WWII).

It is time-consuming, this putting oneself together stuff. Certain things will always fall by the wayside:
1. The FB rarely has manicures in France, whereas in the US, they are cheap and plentiful. However, as soon as the weather brightens, she does her own pedicure (the two colors on heavy rotation are a Vamp-like dark berry and a slate blue from Clarins).
2. The FB rarely wears mascara, because she finds removing it a trial of ridiculous proportions. In addition, she finds it ineffective without use of the eyelash curler (not so much torture as more time consumption), and she has yet to find an effective curling mascara. Plus, she has an aversion to flakes of any sort.
3. The FB loves the idea of stockings and garters, but finds them impossible to manage gracefully.

However:
1. The FB never leaves the house without doing her eyebrows and eye-liner, and always has at least applied a careful swipe of Burt's Bees gloss (usually in Raisin) and some serious SPF.
2. The FB often blows out her own hair.And has been known to flat-iron it as well.
3. The FB is meticulous about plucking her eyebrows. And about epilation in general.

Reading this, the FB realizes she is already deeply resentful of the amount of time it takes to feel presentable. Indeed, in a recent conversation with L., one of the FB's friends, they both confessed to a perhaps unnatural yet nonetheless profound abhorrence for both the time and energy required for washing, conditioning and blow-drying one's hair. The FB then admitted to having regular trims, because it meant at least someone else was washing her hair every six weeks.

She also confessed to regular use of Furterer's Naturia, a miracle product dry shampoo:


The FB has been informed that cornstarch works just as well as dry shampoo, but cornstarch does not come in a can with a spray nozzle. Until that changes, this will do just fine.

Over the years, the FB has toyed with mascara, foundation, primer, concealer, etc., but never with much regularity. Now she has found Jane Feltes' delightful videos about applying false lashes and using a curling iron. While the time commitment is certainly a deterrent to ever trying these things, watching Jane is great fun and might possibly inspire the FB to try one of these things: