“Really?! You’d Let Me Do Your Makeup?!”

One father's journey into the world of mascara and make believe.

Your humble correspondent.

by Justin Rosario

When I was maybe 13 or so, I spent a few months after school babysitting my cousin Athena. Athena was around 9 at the time and my Aunt Blanca needed someone to keep an eye on her until she got home from work. Since I was available and lived close enough (and there was money involved), I was happy to help.

Athena and I had not exactly grown up together so we weren’t close close but we weren’t strangers, either. With no siblings of her own, she was thrilled to have someone close to her age in the apartment for a few hours a day. This led to Athena deciding that I should allow her to practice various hair styling techniques on me. This was back when I had significantly more hair than I do now, of course.

My hair wasn’t exceptionally long but it was long enough and very thick. Thick enough that Athena was able to go nuts, trying out every hair product in the place. On various days, she turned my hair into what was essentially a wad of Play-doh, capable of taking whatever shape amused her at the moment. Honestly, the pictures would have been hilarious if we’d had a camera but, alas…

Then again, I seriously doubt I, as a vastly insecure 13-year-old boy (as all 13-year olds regardless of gender are), would have allowed Athena to take a picture. Allowing a young girl to play dress-up with my hair was one thing. Allowing anyone to see it would have been quite another. 

What a difference 37 years and becoming a father makes.

“Really?! You’d let me do your makeup?!”

For the life of me, I cannot remember how the topic came up but I was sitting in the living room with Anastasia and Lila. We were talking about something or another and Lila blurted out, “You should let me do your makeup!” 

Lila occasionally has things bouncing around in her head that she wants to say or ask but is either embarrassed to say out loud or concerned about what the reaction will be. I don’t how she handles that with her friends but with us, her family, she blurts them out in a not-quite serious way. Presumably, if we say no or react poorly, she can brush it off as a joke. 

I can’t speak for everyone else but I recognize the tone, it’s importance to Lila, and respond accordingly. I said, “OK” and she lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. “Really?! You’d let me do your makeup?!” Of course I would. She was practically vibrating and I had never worn makeup before outside of facepaint on Halloween, so, sure. 

This is where I look around at the hellscape of manhood/fatherhood in America and shake my head in pity. There are fathers who refuse to play with dolls or have a tea party with their daughters because that’s “gay.” They’ll trip over themselves to throw a ball with their son and be “manly” but spend time doing girly things with their daughters? Unthinkable. 

I sat down with Lila a few days later and she got to work. I was vaguely aware of how many steps there are to makeup but I had never actually seen it done. Lila was not interested in doing a little bit of makeup. She went all in. And while she loves her some RuPaul’s Drag Race, Lila was not going for the drag look. She was going for subtle. Or at least as subtle as one can get with makeup on a middle-aged man. 

She applied concealer to smooth out my blemishes, then setting powder to keep the concealer from smudging. That was surprisingly effective. I didn’t have a tiny bit of it wipe off on my hands for hours. The concealer was very light and it was not super obvious, which was the entire point. Especially since Lila did an excellent job of blending it in with my natural skin tone.

She also applied contour and blush and highlight. Lila went very light on the contour and highlight since, again, we weren’t going for dramatic but the blush showed up nicely. She did some work on my eyebrows but that was almost pointless. Lila marveled repeatedly that my eyebrows are like wire. In comparison to the eyebrows of teen girls, I’m sure they absolutely are but she gave it her best shot with some brow gel and brow pencil.

After all of that, it was time for the eyes. Most people are really touchy about letting someone poke about their eyes. I am, in fact, one of those people and 30 minutes of Lila applying eyeshadow, eyeliner, using an eyelash curler, adding false eyelashes and masscara left me…somewhat out of sorts.

Halfway through, Lila noticed I was uncomfortable and asked if I wanted to stop. I told her that she was one of maybe three people on the planet I would let that close to my eyes. I said I loved her and I trusted her. Twice. This was partly to calm myself down but also for Lila. I was rewarded for my efforts with another smile and hint of blush to Lila’s cheeks that did not come from a makeup kit. She finished up my eyes, put some lipstick and gloss on me and I was done.

These are not the greatest pictures but I didn't have time for a professional glamor shot.

Before and after Lila got to work

After. It’s OK for you to be jealous. I know I look fabulous.

Anastasia demanded I send her a picture of the finished product to send her friends. Naturally, I obliged.

“Slay!”

Lest you think this was for Anastasia and her friends to laugh about, I assure you, it was not. While Anastasia would rather die than admit it, she is occasionally thrilled about how not boring her father is. Oh, I’m sure there was some amusement but this was the group of 12 and 13-year-old girls I was dungeon mastering for so I wasn’t concerned that they would be offended or demeaning. 

If you don’t know what “dungeon mastering” means, what have you even been doing with your life? Go watch Season 1 of Stranger Things! I run a Dungeons & Dragons campaign on Sundays during which the previously mentioned group of girls (and Lila) take on the roles of characters they created and I, as the “Dungeon Master,” lead them through an adventure.

A roleplaying game (RPG) is an elaborate form of interactive storytelling with rules using paper, pencils, and dice. I have been wanting to get the girls into D&D for years but it’s not as much fun with just two players and neither Lila nor Anastasia had a group of friends that would be up for it. Finally, Anastasia got the RPG bug but good and her friends from her new school were game to, well, game and off we went!

The girls are having a lot of fun learning how to play for the first time and I’ve been having a lot of fun learning the new rules (it’s been over 20 years since I’ve played). While some campaigns are dark and grim and serious, these are teen girls who spend most of the afternoon giggling. We’re not doing dark and grim. They have enough angst in their life as it is. 

Instead, we’re doing light and funny. My job is to keep them interested and amused. They’re doing most of the heavy lifting because they’re all vaguely insane. They’ve been crawling through dungeons, searching for traps, failing to climb up steep walls and making spectacular belly flops into ice cold lakes. One of the girls failed a roll so badly that her character is now terrified of imaginary hordes of barbarian gnomes. We’ve been having a great time of it. That’s why I didn’t mind letting Anastasia show them a picture of Lila’s handiwork. I was pretty sure I knew how they would respond and I was right:

My girls tend to surround themselves with people they’re comfortable with and who make them feel comfortable in turn. And that means people who aren’t going to look askance at a man in makeup. Of course, it helps that they know me and there’s some context. It would probably be best if their parents didn’t see that picture, though. While I might be comfortable enough with my masculinity to wear makeup and be seen in it, that is almost certainly not true for a lot of people in my age cohort. 

My generation still views gender roles as fairly rigid although not nearly as rigid as Boomers. Fortunately, each successive generation is increasingly more flexible which has been a boon for parenting. There are far more men as stay-at-home parents than ever before and while a lot of men are struggling with that reality, a lot more are raising their kids in ways that are leaps and bounds more healthy than anything my generation ever experienced.

Jordan and Anastasia have benefitted from this since birth. Lila fell into our lives when she was 8 and it’s been working out pretty well for her since she started to think of me as a father figure. After all, she got to put me in makeup not once, but twice, in the same week, something that would utterly horrify her far more…inflexible father.

At the late night double feature picture show…

I have been looking forward to taking my girls to The Rocky Horror Picture Show for years. I wish I could take Jordan but, as is often the case, fuck you, autism for stealing that from me. Anastasia is not ready but Lila certainly was so we got tickets for last Friday night.

Because Lila had so thoroughly enjoyed putting me in makeup and I had never gone to RHPS in any kind of cosplay before, I asked her if she’d like to have another go at it. Again, Lila lit up like a Christmas tree on electric cocaine. Hell yes she would like to do my makeup to look like one of the characters from a movie she’d been excited to see for a very long time! 

I didn’t have a wig or a costume but we went with Magenta’s makeup sans the extreme paleness:

If you’ve never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show, again, what even are you doing with your life?! Great Scott! Live a little! This is the cult classic, still being shown in hundreds of theaters across the country at midnight for the last 40+ years. Claudia (Lila’s mom) had only seen it once in the theater. I had seen it dozens of times. Lila, of course, had never seen it. But we were all in for a treat because our local theater had a shadow cast which none of us had had the pleasure of experiencing before.

A shadow cast is a group of people who dress up like the characters and perform the movie as it’s playing, moving around the theater, encouraging audience participation. And with RHPS, audience participation is the best part. As we were all new to this particular venue, we were considered “virgins.” Thus, we had to endure some light hazing before the movie started. Lila, being under 18, only had to stand in front of the audience and sing the alphabet in her best death metal voice. Since she actually listens to some death metal, she belted out a real headbanger to the delight of the audience. 

The other 24 or so of us had to perform more…adult tasks that included a group orgy pose and performing your best fake orgasm into a microphone. Claudia won that final round and probably scarred Lila for life but it was totally worth it. She got to put on a wedding dress and join the cast for the opening scene of the movie! Lila was absolutely delighted.

The live performance was somewhat risque. No nudity but a lot of very adult jokes. We are talking about RHPS, after all. There’s a reason it’s been a staple of the LGBTQ community for almost half a century now. For a movie made in the 1970s, it’s extremely non-judgemental about alternative lifestyles. 

Newspaper was worn on our heads, toilet paper was thrown, cards were dealt, there was a lot of singing, and much fun was had by all. When we were leaving, Lila had a slightly stunned look on her face. “That was certainly something,” were her first words. We’re planning to go back for Halloween so it’s safe to say she enjoyed it.

Wasted opportunities

There is zero chance Lila’s father would sit through The Rocky Horror Picture Show much less a version with a shadow cast. There is zero chance my father would have allowed his daughter (if he had had one) to put makeup on him, much less all the makeup. When I was growing up, so many parents were appalled at the idea of Dungeons & Dragons because of ridiculous moral panics. Thankfully mine were not and my mother taught us how to play when I was five years old (we actually played Tunnels & Trolls first and then D&D). But how many fathers sit down to play make believe with their teen kids these days?

Lila turns 16 in November. Anastasia will be 14 in February. These are literally the last weeks and months I will ever have to play with them as father and child. They’re going to be adults soon and while we may someday play a card game or board game at a family gathering, we will never spend this kind of time together again. Imagine wasting that kind of bonding experience with your daughter over badly outdated notions of what it means to be a man.

If Lila wants to put makeup on me every week until she gets bored of it, have at it. If Anastasia wants me to DM until she goes away to college, that’s what my Sundays are from now on. If both of them decide that one day, they want to have a goddamn tea party with Weird Barbie and Allan dolls, the only question I’ll ask is “One sugar or two?” It’s not that hard. Once this time is gone, it’s never coming back. Savor it while you can.

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