How Honest A Friend?

I seem to have gone a bit 'lookist' recently - or perhaps this is a permanent state of mind.  You certainly wouldn't believe it to look at me, for all the time I appear to spend thinking about the subject.

If you're not interested in appearances I don't care at all if you skip the next few blogs.  I am going to write about headaches (the cure for) next anyway, so that'll make a change.

Last Monday, I leaped out of bed, threw on a few clothes, and rushed downstairs to prepare Beloved Daughter's pony for her, just in time for her to join Kind Neighbour for a short ride.

As we went out of the gate together, me in a vest, no bra, a fleece, some jodphurs and no knickers; my hair matted and what was left of  yesterday's mascara and eyeliner smeared down the sides of my face to my chin, Beloved Daughter casually commented, "You look better without make-up."

This was a conclusion I had been slowly moving towards on my own. But why? Make-up is designed to improve your looks, not make you look worse.  

I think this is a touchy, sensitive, intensely personal subject area.

Should you, for instance, tell your best friend that her teeth are yellowing and need bleaching, her heavy green eye shadow makes her look like a 70s retro, her eye-liner and mascara are all blotchy, her foundation is much too thick and exaggerating her open pores and wrinkles, her haircut is terrible  and the colour she's chosen for it makes her look older than if she just left the grey streaks in it, and that the clothes she's wearing make her look fatter than she is?

I think such comments are helpful, and the mark of brave, real friendship, if they are true, and if they are something that she can do something about. Especially as we all get older and our eyesight worsens, so we can't see ourselves all that clearly in the mirror.

I had been trying to emulate all those young people with apparently flawless matt skin, who embrace the use of these new kinds of foundation that didn't exist in my day.  I've also borrowed some black, black eyeliner from my great friend Annabelle who works in the city in central London.

But Beloved Daughter is correct.  It all just looks wrong, wrong, wrong in the back of beyond in Dartmoor, so I am going back to tinted moisturiser, a bit of mascara, and chapstick as a cheap and natural alternative to lipstick.  Thank you, Beloved Daughter! You are my true friend!