How I Get Ready (& Why!)

The granular/neurotic Top Shelf nobody asked for

Getting ready is my favourite pastime. I probably enjoy the process more than the things I am getting ready for.

When it’s good, a getting ready time can be potent self-care, highly creative, and meditative. Broad strokes, what makes it good is: being alone, unhurried, and in the right setting. It has much less to do with a good skin or hair day than those three things. I can turn my entire day - or hell, week - around by ~DOING THE THING~ (the thing I’m gonna talk about now).

The worst is not having enough time. Just thinking about it makes my heart beat faster. I can’t explain it but I know it runs in the family because I once helped my sister get ready for a friend’s wedding in a rush and witnessed her lose her entire damn mind and leave the house completely out of sorts. I watched her walk across a busy downtown street to the car picking her up, barefoot (heels in hand), rage crying, and felt a strong sense of recognition. So I do a lot to ensure I have enough time to get my head right via these grooming rituals.

I said I can’t explain it. But since I am here talking about it I may as well try. It’s important to me because of the positive potential a good getting ready can have on my body, mind, and soul. An opportunity to do a real quality one - a dressy time, not just a workaday time - feels very precious. I can’t imagine wasting an opportunity to get “done up” for the poor consolation of feeling like you haven’t “tried too hard.” But some people are horny for that feeling like I am for its opposite, and I shouldn’t yuck anyone’s yum. All I can say is that for me, dressing up is an act of magical ritual; an invocation of beautiful radiant energy unto myself. I feel it radiating all about me when things have gone right and sometimes, at the end of the night, I struggle to fall asleep because it’s still giddily bouncing around inside my chest. And I’m not mad at all because it’s a little like the feeling of having a crush but it’s on your own human life.

So there’s that.

And there is also that, though many would describe me as gregarious, I have a secret lil tendency to disassociate from social situations; feeling a little scared and a little like what’s happening has nothing to do with me, that I am only here to observe and that possibly that observation is not even welcome by its subjects. It causes me to feel a creeping hostility towards everyone around me. Is this how introverts have felt all along? Well, slap my ass and call me an ambivert! The point is that I don’t experience this feeling (or not as much) if I have taken the opportunity to compose my human form beforehand. The preparation is a way of signaling that I am a part of the thing, not separate. To plant me, exquisitely, in the present moment.

So I like enough time - 1.5 hours, but two is ideal.

I like to be alone while I do this, but a friend who is as invested in the ritual as I am is nice also. What I do not prefer: any person drifting into the space to cast judgemental glances at the number of potions and powders scattered across the counter, any person who is ready quickly and is looking in to gauge my progress, any child (regardless of how much I may love them) who is interested in fucking with the powders and potions, any person lingering to idly chat. This degree of solitude is difficult to achieve so I usually have to be flexible here, but not without some awareness that I am being kept from the sublime.

here’s a pic of my Auntie Marilyn being like “Why don’t you go watch TV I’ll be ready when I’m ready.”

The right setting is the easiest of the three to achieve. All I require is enough light and a mirror I can get very close to. Nothing fancy. For example, I love to get ready in my bathroom at home and my bathroom is very ugly. It’s completely charmless and virtually unaltered from the way it was when we moved in four years ago. The aesthetics of my spaces sit in my blind spot in a way that my appearance does not. If a space is essentially comfortable and functional, I forget to think about it. When I do, and make improvements, I prefer it. Naturally. But doing my most important rituals in a charmless, ugly room has never seemed strange to me. Until possibly now that I am thinking about it.

To begin with,

I pour a glass of wine. An espresso martini would be cool here also but I don’t make cocktails at home. Anytime during this process that a blow dryer or shower is not loud, I listen to a podcast (either True Crime or one about people getting long-term catfished).

My hair is dry but mostly clean. I put it back in a scrunchie, and clip back my front bits. I turn on the shower and while the water gets hot, I brush my teeth, even though I am drinking wine; Doesn’t matter. I have a hot shower and shave all the spots.

I mention my sensory stuff a lot in these newsletters, but I have a sensory issue with body hair. I hate the feeling. I gather from Sally Rooney books that we are into pubic hair again but not me never I hate hate hate the feeling and have since the moment it started to grow. So I shave: legs, armpits, and pubic hair. I’ll get laser someday.

I dry off, and while my skin is still damp, I rub my body with almond oil. I do the stuff with my Nuface, wipe off the gel, and then apply Lise Watier eye patches to my undereye and Embryoisse to all the other areas of my face. While the patches chill under my eyes, pull out my outfit (which I have likely planned in advance) and lay it out on the bed. Every element including socks/stockings and underwear.

I have sooo much hair so if I am doing a down hairstyle, I will do the bottom section while the eye masks are still on. I have a Shark Flexstyle and I will use the auto-wrap curler attachments to wave the hair either towards or away from my face depending on whether I am looking to bring a sense of easy modernity (away) or trad/retro tension (towards) to my overall look. When the bottom section is done, I will take off the eye masks and start the makeup.

I know it’s no longer fashionable to say things like this but, I have bad skin. I do a lot of skincare things to support it, as well as taking Spironolactone for hormonal acne but I still struggle with breakouts, scarring from breakouts, enlarged pores, and hyperpigmentation. I wanna go for some microneedling in the new year but for now, this is my skin and the first step in my makeup routine is creating as smooth a base as I can.

I use the Makeup Forever Pore Minimizing Primer and press it into anywhere especially pore-y (I know my zones). It’s an incredible primer and makes a huge difference. I apply Armani Luminous Silk Foundation in Shade 3 to my entire face with a beauty blender; it’s fairly high coverage. One of my goals for 2025 is to get my skin to a place where I can take a more Nina Park approach to skin but for now, we have Luminous Silk.

I use NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer in Vanilla under my eyes, and if I have enough time, I will get a tiny brush and a matte concealer and do Lisa Eldridge’s pin-point concealing technique over any blemishes or hyper-pigmentation on the rest of my face using the magnifying mirror mounted on my bathroom wall. This is pretty time-consuming but it truly feels like painting and then when you step back, the overall effect is wild.

For any area I have placed concealer, I will set it with either Charlotte Tilbury Airbrush Flawless Finish Powder in Fair or this new one I bought after using my friend Claudine’s, the MAC Studio Fix Translucent Loose Powder. It’s wild stuff. So blurring! Though it makes you quite matte & can give you a white cast in photos, so you definitely have to use a light hand with it. I don’t put any on my cheeks so I can still use cream products there.

Now my face looks like a flat ol’ oval so I will put back some dimension with some fairly rudderless contouring with either/or a combo of Anastasia Contour Stick in Fawn and NARS Bronzing Cream in Laguna 01. Depending on the tones I am wearing in my outfit, I will use either Westman Atelier Baby Cheeks in Minette (a pink/peach) or 19/99 Beauty Water Colour Tint in Tegla (a terracotta, if I’m using this I will also put it on my lips) and apply kind of a lot, fairly high on my cheeks, taking it pretty close to my eye.

I brush up my brows with a clean spooly, fill in any gaps with the Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Wiz Pencil in Taupe, and then brush them up with the Benefit Tinted Brow Gel in colour 3. My brows are neither full nor thin and regardless of changing brow trends, I expect this is how they will remain.

I feel best when I have a strong eye. I use either the warm or neutral Makeup By Mario palettes to do an eye look that’s a chimera of a few things: a soft cut-crease on top, a smokey lower lash line, and then maybe a very soft wing coming from the bottom lashes. Sometimes I’ll pop a metallic thing on the upper mobile lid - either the Charlotte Tilbury cream shadow in Champagne or this gritty Wet and Wild silver glitter eyeshadow that absolutely slaps. I line my upper and lower water line with MAC black kohl, curl my lashes with Shiseido Eyelash Curler, and apply sooo much Lancôme Hypnose Mascara.

I will almost always line my lips with Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk and then go over with cherry chapstick which I like because it’s not shiny and the smell is super nostalgic.

I spray my face with Charlotte Tilbury setting spray or MAC Fix+ if things are looking too powdery.

I finish waving the rest of my hair in whatever direction I decided earlier.

Then I start putting on my outfit. Usually, this is when I start to feel rushed because someone has texted “Is it okay if I call the Uber in 10?” And I know that leaves me very little time for last-minute flow-state adjustments. I take some relaxing deep breaths before I put on my 20 denier black stockings because I have long nails and it’s delicate business to get them on without shredding them.

I put on my outfit, and then if it’s looking too pretty, I’ll weird it up. My main way of doing that these days is getting my ears out. They are big and it used to be my prerogative to hide them, but lately, I’ve been leaning in. I will get some Got2B gel and a comb and slick down the front part of my hair and pin them behind my ears as if very severely tucked there. Or I will do a slick low pony. Either way, I will then crown my big ears with some big ass earrings. Bellisima! At this point, I start buzzing. The ritual is working its magic and I am transforming into a woman ready to chit-chat. I grab one of my weird little bags.

When I head downstairs my daughter always gasps and says “You look so BEAUTIFUL!” My husband is a good husband and very loving, but is notably quiet in these moments. This is likely because he is preoccupied with the child he is now solo parenting but I also sometimes wonder if it’s because he can sense my buzzing energy (from the ritual) and knows it has to do with my outside self and isn’t interested in feeding that.

It reminds me of how my mom always felt like she needed to humble me. Like I would get carried away by delight in myself. Years ago, after a really big comedy show where I killed, my mom listened to all these people praising me and then blurted out that my posture hadn’t been good. I don’t remember this. She told me about it years later, so full of remorse and shame for this having been her impulse. But something about me makes the people closest to me fear that I could float away; buoyed by vanity and flattery. And while I’m not totally sure they are wrong to feel this way, I also wonder what my life would have been if I had been a man and nobody was made uncomfortable by my bigness. I’ve learned from all the hundreds and thousands of teachers to shame myself for it. And at the same time I was learning it, I have been trying to unlearn it. It is extremely difficult to move in two directions at once.

And so I get ready. Passionately.

I take too much time. Think about it too much. Buy too many products. Apply too much of them. Am overdressed.

I want to feel 1000 feet tall. I want to feel very very famous. I want to scream.

So yeah, I get ready like a woman wanting to scream. And this has been how (and why).