2002-09-16|11:55 p.m.
Today, I went into work at 1 PM to work my usual eight hour shift. I work permanently in the Cosmetics Department here now, with exception to Saturdays when I count Friday�s money for the bookkeeper (A.K.A. Nazi Bitch from Hell-- I�ll explain later).
In Cosmo-land, as my Cosmetics Manager lovingly calls it, I have to wear a pink smock. Either this awful fuchsia color or this tolerable, yet disgusting, powdery pink shade. I choose the latter.
I am slowly getting used to the department. Mind you, I don�t wear very much make-up. Lipstick and mascara is as involved as it gets. So, when they said they wanted me in this department, I was a bit shocked. At my old store, only the very pretty girls worked this department. It is the way that cosmetics are sold, right? You want an image of beauty to sell images of beauty. And well, I am not really that.
But, I am learning a lot. So, when questions are posed to me I can try to help people the best I can. I even have to take a few classes.
But, in all, Cosmetics makes me a little sad. It really leaves heaviness in my heart when the Asian girl with the long, straight, thick, black hair, I covet, comes in for a perm or a bleaching kit. Or, equally disheartening is the Indian woman with the most beautiful, creamy brown skin looking for skin bleaching creams and the white woman with the flawless, ivory skin looking for a tan-in-a-bottle. My department is the department for being something you aren�t. False-metics they should call it. And I am not anti-make-up. Like I said, I wear a little. But, I just feel so trapped there. I want to, instead of walking them to hair removal, show them how that very faint, pale hair above their lip is actually cute.
But, this is not my job. I might even get reprimanded if I was caught advising the older woman who asked me for some stupid anti-wrinkle cream that it was a waste of money and that her creases in her mouth were endearing. Plus, no one wants to hear what they already believe is wrong. They have lost faith in their own faces and bodies. They are set on a quest for change and I can only point out the products that they think will get them there.
Even still, it makes me a little sad.
So, tonight, like all the nights in the past months I sold cosmetics. And, I simply admired the faces, hair, and bodies of the women before their transformations.
And the funny thing is I fall victim to it as well. I am no different to the girls that come in here with a different self in mind.
So, maybe I am just feeling my own loss.