Literacy Narrative Rough Draft 1

Denisha FullerLiteracy Narrative Essay Rough Draft

Ever since I was a little girl I have loved to dress up and play with hair and just be really

girly. However, it wasn’t until I got into middle school that I really got interested in makeup. I

remember it like it was yesterday that my mom, my sister, and I were in Target doing some

shopping when we went to the beauty section. At the time it was the summer between my sixth

and seventh grade year of school and of course by then all of my friends were already putting on

eyeliner and mascara and I was just left behind. So out of curiosity of all the different types of

makeup and eyeshadow there were, I went and looked at some. While looking, I came across

some usually kind of expensive eyeshadow that was on sale for one or two dollars. There was a

three piece eyeshadow palette that contained the colors mint green, silver, and black and they

were all glitter based. And me, being a preteen girl who loved the color green at that time, and

shiny things wanted it so bad, and after bugging my mom for the rest of our duration at the store,

she finally agreed to buy it for me. Now being that this was my first time really experimenting

with any type of makeup, besides my mom’s lipstick, I was really excited. At the time, I thought

I looked really cool, and so good with my sparkly mint green eyeshadow on, even if it just totally

went against any outfit I was wearing. After all these years, looking back I realize oh how wrong

I was.

Since I really didn’t know much about makeup, I spent the next year and a half just

wearing the eyeshadow I got from Target, and a few others that my aunt had gave me, and a little

eyeliner. I didn’t know anything about foundation or powder or what it was for let alone how to

use it. It wasn’t until the second semester of my eighth grade year, that my mom bought me

some foundation. Over the course of a few weeks, I had been dropping little subtle hints that I

wanted some and my mom, being the most amazing woman there is, picked up on my hints and


one day she surprised me by buying me some powder foundation. At first I was really excited,

but then I got kind of confused on how I should put it on without making a mess, because with it

being powder it wasn’t too hard to get it everywhere if you weren’t careful. But eventually I got

it down pact and was wearing my new powder foundation every day, until I came home one day

and found it broken into pieces in the bathroom tub. I was so upset, and of course no one in my

family knew what had happened. So I went back to just wearing my plain old eyeshadow and

eyeliner, with now some mascara here and there.

My freshman year of high school was when everything started to change though. I began

making friends with new people, and although I was still hanging out with my friends from

middle school, I soon became really close with these new friends. At one point during this year,

one of my new friends decided to ask my other friend if she would do her makeup. This other

friend said ‘yes’ and the next day she did it at the outside sitting area during lunch. The makeup

wasn’t anything fancy, just a little foundation, a little eyeshadow, and a little eyeliner and

mascara. But what really struck me was that my friend had so many different products that I

hadn’t even heard of before. So after school that day, I went home and I Googled ‘how to put on

makeup’ and I came across a lot of different Youtube videos. So then, I went to Youtube and

searched the same thing and so many videos linked to that search popped up. The first video that

I clicked on was by Blair Fowler—who goes by Juicystar07 on Youtube. I absolutely cannot

remember what the video was about or what type of makeup she was doing, but I do remember

that I just loved the way it looked when it was done. After watching a few more videos, I

subscribed to her channel and soon became addicted to watching makeup tutorials—figuratively,

not literally. Soon after watching a lot of her videos and other people’s videos who I didn’t


bother to follow, I became aware of a lot of different products that I could learn to use and would

be easy for me since I was still technically, a beginner.

Weeks later, I was finally able to get another thing of foundation. This one however,

wasn’t powder, it was liquid and I think it was by Maybelline cosmetics. I also upgraded from a

pencil eyeliner to a liquid eyeliner. Figuring out how to apply the foundation so that it was all

blended didn’t take too long. It was the liquid eyeliner I was having trouble with. At times I

would put too much on the brush and when I put it on my eye there would be big globs in one

place and not evenly distributed. At other times, I would put the perfect amount of eyeliner on

my eye, but I wouldn’t wait long enough for it to dry and so then there would be eyeliner in the

creases of my eyes. After a little more trial and error, and continuously poking myself in the eye

I finally got it to where I liked it.

Near the end of the second semester of my freshman year, I started to quit watching

Blair’s videos so much and began looking at makeup tutorials by women who were more my

skin tone, because they used similar products as me. The other makeup artists I subscribed to

were Beautybyjj, Jackie Aina, and Nitraa B to name a few. After subscribing to these youtubers,

and even before from what I learned from Blair Fowler, I learned how to apply my foundation

better, how to apply blush, how to use more than one eyeshadows on my eyes at one time, how

to use gel eyeliner, how to use primer, and also about how to apply lipstick correctly. Although I

learned all of this over the course of my next three years of high school, it wasn’t until senior

year that I caught on to the new popular trend of groomed thicker eyebrows and contouring.

Before my senior year, I barely even paid attention to my eyebrows but once I learned how to do

them, I realized what a big difference having them done, did to my face. At first, it was hard


trying to get the technique down and it seemed like everyone on Youtube had different ways of

doing it, so there wasn’t really a set way of doing your eyebrows. The first time I got it done

however, I was so proud of myself and that was a day I took way too many selfies. But after

awhile, after some mean but kind of funny jokes from my siblings about my eyebrows, I realized

that they were a little too big for my face and that I should tone it down a little. So that’s what I

did, and after a few more tries, I got my eyebrows the way I wanted them to be. Even though I

know how to do my eyebrows now, I’m still not perfect at it. They might look good two days in

a row, but they never look the exact same two days in a row. Now contouring is a different

story. Basically my version of what contouring is, is the way you highlight your face according

to how the light is going to hit it and how to make your cheekbones stand out and give you a

more angular looking face. Now for me, I don’t have nearly all of the products, or the time you

need to do a full contoured face. The only type of contouring I do is to highlight my cheekbones

and to add blush, and I feel like doing more than that is too much for everyday use.

I don’t really have one specific moment in my life that led to my path to literacy in

makeup. When people started complimenting me on my makeup, or telling me how much they

loved my eyebrows, or the way I did my eyeshadow, I realized that my practicing was actually

starting to pay off. All in all, I just like to make myself look pretty. I’m not trying to claim

myself as some sort well renowned makeup artist, but I like to make myself and others look

good. However, whenever I try to do makeup on someone else, it still comes out looking good,

but definitely not the way I want it to look. I think the reason for this is because I have become

so accustomed to doing my own makeup that I find it hard to do someone else’s. I also find it a

little hard to like my makeup when someone else does it. For example, for my senior prom I

went to Belk’s to get my makeup done, because I was for sure that I would probably mess up on


it. However, I didn’t particularily like the way the lady did my makeup. It wasn’t absolutely

horrible, but I felt I could have done way better.

Documents

Literacy Narrative Rough Draft 1