April is the pearlest month day six: Trashy eye is the new smoky eye

Here’s one for fans of logic.

Given:

(i) Successful pearl-wearing is about contrast.

(ii) The most immediate opportunities for contrast are up in the face. Pearls cling to the neck in an entitled kind of way and sort of gleam upward, so you can wear all the menswear you want but if your face is just as prissy as the pearls there’s really no hope.

(iii) Basic rule of style: Eyes OR lips. Not both. You don’t accentuate both.

(iv) Midlife mouth is kind of downturning. Right? Kind of. Mine is. My kid told me recently, just as a service, that I had a mild case of bitchy resting face. It was sweet. It was like he was letting me off the hook, letting me know he knew I wasn’t an actual bitch and also that I wasn’t alone. So, I’m fine with this, I mean it just is what it is, but given the choice between eyes and lips, I’m going with eyes.

Ergo, my most potent and efficient opportunity for successful pearl-wearing is to contrast the pearls with the eyes.

Here are my pearls next to a regular conventional smoky eye, as worn by the cover of my latest issue of W magazine.

Here are the pearls vis-a-vis the trashiest eye I could make with my Too Faced Cat Eyes nine-shadow kit.

Please understand this is not a precise and witty version of an over-smoky eye. This is not one of those. This is for real, i.e., this is the method-acting version of a trashy eye. I used my fingers, no brushes. I wiped stuff off and started over right on top of it, no makeup remover. I did not flick off any clumps. The bloodshot was probably there to begin with, a little, but no doubt it helped to stick a dirty finger inside the lower lid and rub some black powder around. And behold! You can’t tell me this doesn’t look great with the pearls. You can’t tell me this is not the most exciting tension you’ve ever seen between an eyeball and a neckpiece.

It could only be better if the pupils were dilated, raising questions of sobriety. Right?!?! AMAZINGLY, today is my biannual appointment at Mankato Clinic Opthamology to check for diabetic retinopathy. That means dilation drops and at least three hours of huge pupils. You guys. Usually I have a little tiny bit of worry that Dr. Graham might find an offending blood vessel (he hasn’t yet, and all is well). Today I’m just worried I’ll be too blinded by the dilation to drive myself somewhere with an appropriate audience for the world premiere of this groundbreaking piece of performance art.