bogeyandruby

When I was younger I was easily influenced by other people’s sense of what would suit me better than my own sense of style.

Sometime in 1994, my fashionable older friend convinced me that all I needed to do in order to generate more interest from the opposite sex was to part my hair on the side and use an eyebrow pencil.

I took her advice very seriously for a year or so.

Unfortunately, the only guy I seemed to attract with this new Eugene Levy look was a friendly waiter named Kevin at a Florida restaurant where I was vacationing with my friend and her young-at-heart mother for a week. Almost at their insistance, he handed me the restaurent business card with his phone number on it once we’d squared the bill and given him a nice tip.

My friend and her mom convinced me to call him. So I did.

He offered to give me a tour of his home town of Miami. I accepted, albeit reluctantly. I mean my friend’s mother referred to him in her thick Scottish brogue as « a wee gassy thing ». Then again, what did I have to lose except maybe my life if he turned out to be an axe murderer.

My friend picked out my outfit and styled my hair in a side part, no easy feat with the Florida humidity.

I did my make-up. « More eyebrow! », she said and I obeyed.

Looking back at this picture, it’s a wonder he didn’t run screaming when I opened the door. Then again, he was wearing cowboy boots with shorts and a teeshirt with a bolo. I’d say we were evenly matched.

The date was okay, except for when a large palmetto bug, a Floridian cockroach, landed in my side part. While I screamed, the wee gassy thing brushed it off.

The look lasted about a year until the side part migrated back to the middle and the eyebrow pencil was misplaced. I felt like myself again.

There have been other attempts at side parts and eyebrow but mostly for Halloween costumes.

If you were to try to give me fashion or make-up advice today, I would say, thanks but no thanks. It’s wasted on me. It never felt right, like wearing the wrong-size shoes. The advice was given out of love and I appreciated it at the time, but really, it has to be about self-love. It’s been a long road to get here and a lot of different looks. Trust me, I have the pictures to show for it.