Like most women, my first experiments with makeup occurred somewhere around middle school—that awkward, awkward time, which was perhaps made more awkward by the fact that almost no one had any g*ddamn idea how much teal blue eyeshadow to use. I will admit that I wasn’t brave enough for eyeshadow. My experiments relied almost exclusively on eyeliner: a single stick of what was probably the cheapest thing I could find at CVS. The questionable choices I made are the content of this article, so buckle up and prepare to journey with me on this eyeliner-inspired walk of shame, from middle school until now.
1. “The Bottom Lid”
The name of this look says it all. I would literally just put eyeliner all across the tear-line of my bottom lid. By the end of the day, it would all smudge under my lower eyelashes. 2/10, the effort was there but the execution was lacking.
2. “The Pacman”
This look is so named because I started filling in just the edges of my eyes—the outside edges of my top and bottom eyelids. They made sort of a sideways V, like Pacman’s mouth. To be honest, this was not as bad as it could have been. 5/10.
3. “The Raccoon”
Oh boy. With “the Pacman”, I began exploring the concept of putting eyeliner on my top lid. With this newest look, I took that idea as far as I possibly could, and colored in my whole top lid with eyeliner. Just the whole thing. I guess I didn’t understand what eyeshadow was for at that point, because it rather seemed like I tried to do that whole smoky eye look just using a pencil. 0/10, I looked like a raccoon and only ever did this once.
4. “The Half and Half”
This one was actually pretty okay. After being traumatized by my experience with “The Raccoon,” I toned it down a lot. I drew a line across the outside half of my bottom lid and called it a day. 6/10 for the nice recovery.
5. “The Horizon Line”
This one was…close to being good. I got fed up with filling in my bottom lid since my pencil kept poking me in the eye, so I tried to do the top. I would line the whole length of my top lid, from the inner crease of my eye to the outer edge. This may have looked pretty good—if I hadn’t been using a very thick eyeliner pencil. 5/10, I…I tried.
6. “The Ms. Pacman”
This looked a bit like the Pacman, hence the name, though I actually got this look pretty right. Around the 8th grade, I started drawing a line across my top lid and half of the bottom. I’d sharpen my eyeliner pencil better, so the lines weren’t so thick, and I figured out where I was going to stop the lines so that I didn’t look like someone’s first attempt at drawing an anime character. 8/10, this was a good learning moment for me.
7. “Kitten Eyes”
I’m not going to call these cat eyes. When people do the cat eye look, the image comes to mind of crisp, sharp eyeliner wings, so perfectly even they could cut you just by looking at them. These…these were not that. These were chunky, rounded triangles at the outside corner of my eye. They were short, and they were never even. Why my 9th-grade-self thought I could do cat eyes without the proper eyeliner pencil, I have no idea. 6/10, mostly for trying.
8. “All that Glitters”
For Christmas, I’d gotten a gold eyeliner pencil and several different colors of somewhat sparkly, colored mascara. Now, I’d gotten better with regular eyeliner at this point, but my progress with that was definitely overshadowed by the fact that I didn’t seem to understand that glitter should probably be used with some degree of moderation. 4/10, because at least I was enthusiastic about it.
9. “Angel Wings”
I was proud of these bad boys. I’d managed to hone my winged eyeliner skills, and I was churning out cat eye looks with lines sleek enough to cut a man. I’d gotten myself a great liquid eyeliner pen that did not budge, and I was out in high school with perfectly aligned wings. I put work into these—I was up at 5:30 making sure I had the angles right and the lines filled in well. 9/10.
10. “The 8 A.M.”
This look manifested right here at Stony Brook as the product of early mornings and minimal sleep. I still rocked the winged eyeliner some days, but that timeless 8 A.M look—that backpack dragging, haphazard ponytail, no makeup look—definitely became a signature. And I was actually pretty alright with that. I guess, in all my time through middle school and high school, I looked at makeup as an important measure of the way people perceived me; some kind of social hierarchy dictated by whether or not your foundation matched your neck, or you’d finally mastered teal blue eyeshadow.Now, I’m more comfortable with myself, and I’m comfortable with the face that stares back at me in the mirror, whether or not it’s rocking some dope winged eyeliner. 10/10, for the personal journey.
Gifs courtesy of Imgur, Buzzfeed, Giphy, and Beautyheaven