TITLE    : Painting the Barn
STORYID  : painting-the-barn
SUMMARY  : Writers, beware: old gray mares need help painting the barn.
AUTHOR   : Cal Y. Pygia@lit
DATE     : 2010-03-03
CATEGORY : adult-humor
FLAGS    : 
TAGS     : |how to|cosmetics|makeup|eye shadow|mascara|lipstick|lip gloss|breasts|buttocks|


When the old gray mare ain't what she used to be, painting the barn is more of a challenge than it was when milady was just a silly filly, but, at any age, putting on one's face isn't a simple matter, which is why this article is necessary.



It may be hard to believe, but there's more to a woman than her tits and ass. There's her twat, too.



Just kidding. There's a lot more, of course. There are her face and--well, that's about it, unless you count her hair.



Okay, okay, I'm joking, all right?



There are also her clothes and her accessories.



In erotica, variety is the spice not only of life but also of lust, and there should be as much variety as possible in a woman's tits, ass, hair, clothing, and accessories as possible. (Otherwise, there's no way to tell the difference between a hardened slut and an innocent ewe ready for her first, uh, sheering.) When writing about women, an author has to offer something in lieu of personality, after all.



Ladies, how can we describe thee? Let me count the ways.



Starting at the top, a writer should consult a manufacturer of hair color. By doing so, he will learn (if the writer's a she, she will know this already) that there are more colors than blonde, brown or black, and red. Each of the big three has a whole "family" of tints, tones, shades, and hues from which to choose.



According to one such manufacturer (I'd mention the name, but Literotica's not partial to the naming of names unless the names are paying to be named), hair color includes these shades: golden platinum, light ash blonde, pale golden blonde, honey blonde, brownish blonde, platinum ash with beige highlights, butterscotch, dark blonde, light beige blonde, strawberry blonde, wheat, golden lights, honey, frosted blonde, medium ash blonde, light honey brown, and ginger--and those are just the tints in the "blonde family" of hair colors. There are just as many in both the "brunette" and the "red" families. By using the exact hair color, or shade thereof, in describing your story's female characters, you can differentiate one, say, a honey blonde, from another, say, a golden light.



After the hair, there's the face, and here, as elsewhere, the typical woman--the girl next door, if you will--is going to need all the help she can get. Before she can get said help, cosmeticians have learned, a foundation has to be laid, as it were, upon which to build. Therefore, "foundation makeup" is applied that generally matches the skin tone to smooth out such irregularities as oily skin, dry skin, birthmarks, acne scars, blotchiness, freckles, birth defects, and curses of God. Most such makeup is composed of a combination of oils, emollients, alcohol, powders, minerals, silicone, and water. Foundation makeup is the mask, or canvas, so to speak, upon which the makeup artist performs his or her miracle, transforming mere ivory (or ebony) into a statuesque beauty of Galatea's loveliness.



Next, let's consider (I almost wrote "look at") the eyes. There's an array of cosmetics to make the mirrors of milady's soul more attractive: eye shadow, eyeliner, and mascara seem to be the main ones.



For men who write erotica, a few definitions may be in order. According to American Heritage Dictionary, eye shadow is "A cosmetic available in various colors or tints and applied especially to the eyelids to enhance the eyes." The same source defines eyeliner as "makeup used to outline the eyes" and mascara as "a cosmetic applied to darken the eyelashes." Since, by definition, makeup is mostly about the outer girl, that's about all the assistance a girl can expect from cosmetics manufacturers, as regards her peepers. However, colored contact lenses can be used to turn brown eyes blue or green or blue or green eyes brown.



Like hair color, eye makeup comes in a bewildering assortment of hues. One company offers 120 shades of eye shadow! Fear not, though, all of them come on a single two-layered, 9"- x 6"-inch "palette" which includes both "matte and shimmer colors" for as little as thirty bucks, or about 25 cents apiece, which is, presumably, quite a steal.



For the anal retentive among you, in using such a product, milady will be applying the following ingredients to her eyelids: talcum powder, kaolin, mica powder, magnesium stearate, titanium white powder, colorant, pearl lustre mica powder, and silicone oil. With such a "palette" before her, milady can color her eyelids any hue she wants, from white to tan. (By the way, if she doesn't like "cake" eyeliner, she can opt for its "gel" form.)



The eyeliner equivalent to the black dress is smoky eyes. Again, for male authors, smoky eyes result from a layered effect that is produced (one is tempted to say "achieved," as if effecting this look were an accomplishment of sorts) by using eyeliner in association with several shades of eye shadow and mascara in which dark, rich colors are matched with lighter base tones. However, women can also opt to match their eyeliner to the eye color that God or nature gave them or to the color of the clothing that fashion designers offer. Brown eyes are easy to please, looking good in virtually any color of eye shadow. However, some makeup artists suggest blue eye shadow or a gold shimmer for dark-eyed "beauties."



One would think that blue eyes would call for blue eye shadow, but that would be logical, and there's nothing logical about either women or cosmetics, so if that was your guess, you'd be either a man or a male-to-female transsexual who hasn't quite made the transition yet. No, blue eyes call for earth tones to make them "pop" (although I, for one, can't imagine why on earth a woman or shemale, for that matter, would want to look like Popeye). Brown with a pale purple base, taupe, or a slate gray color are among cosmeticians' recommendations for blue eyes.



Green and hazel eyes call for purple shades.



What's actually in eyeliner? Here's one company's formula: hydrogenated jojoba oil, caprylic/capric triglyceride, pumice, limnanthes alba (meadowfoam) seed oil, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, euphorbia cerifera (candelilla) wax, glyceryl caprylate, copernicia cerifera (carnuba) wax, macadamia ternifolia seed oil, tocopherol, chamomilla recutita (matricaria) extract, ascorbyl palmitate, titanium dioxide, iron oxides, mica, and zinc oxide. (Aren't you sorry you asked!)



The problem with mascara is that it can clump or run. Fear not, though! Scientists have been working, day and night, on these problems, and they've made headway. Meanwhile, there's the matter of which color best suits blondes, brunettes, and redheads. The answer: black (for brunettes) or brown (for everyone else). There are other choices, but they're not recommended.



For thicker-looking lashes, curl the lashes and apply a second coat. Be advised that it's likely a woman will be applying some mixture of these ingredients along with the basic black or brown color: lanolin, linseed oil, mineral oil, castor oil, eucalyptus oil, sesame oil, oil of turpentine, alcohol, water, ceresin, gum tragacanth, methyl cellulose, rayon fibers, carbon or iron oxides, beeswax, paraffin, carnauba wax, and water.



Okay, that about does it for the eyes. Next, let's consider the lips. There are a lot of colors from which to choose for lipstick ("a small stick of waxy lip coloring enclosed in a cylindrical case," our friends at American Heritage Dictionary tell us) or lip gloss ("a substance for making the lips appear glossy," according to wicked Wikipedia). In fact, there's a rainbow of colors, a garden of them, a your-choice-of-metaphor of them. Basically, though, traditional hues range from cream and frost to red, but everything to purple and black are also available, and not just for clowns and vampires on Halloween anymore. There are also various types, including sheer, shimmer, cream, matte, long-lasting. Ingredients? Wax (beeswax, candelilla wax, or camauba); oil (mineral, caster, lanolin, or vegetable); alcohol; pigments; preservatives; and antioxidants.



There remains, of women's facial features only the cheeks to consider. A woman who is hot (and especially one who is hot to trot) must be depicted as being always blushing. To make this miraculous feat happen--or seem to happen--she needs to apply rouge (or blush, as this cosmetic is now more generally called). Naturally, color is a big deal here, too, and cosmetics companies allow their customers an array of hues in which to simulate blushing, but most are some version of pink and are supposed to match the skin tone (of Caucasian women, at least).



What's in the stuff? (I almost write "shit" instead of "stuff," before remembering that Literotica is a family-oriented website.) Pretty much the same culprits as one finds in other makeup: mica, zinc stearate, zinc oxide, jojoba oil, caprylic/capric triglyceride, titanium dioxide, iron oxides, ultramarines, grapeseed extract. (The so-called animal cruelty-free version contains something along the lines of mineral oil and talc paraben--apparently, vegans aren't concerned about harming the non-animal environment composed of helpless plants and innocent minerals!)



That's it for the face; now, the body.



I was going to go on (and on) about fashion, because women are heavily into clothes and accessories, but then it occurred to me that men, typically, aren't, and erotica has a largely male (or lesbian) audience which (this humble writer excepted) is best described as chauvinistic, sexist, and misogynistic (according to hairy-legged feminists, at least), and, for them, milady looks best without any clothes on at all. Naked, for them, is really the best disguise.



Therefore, a final word or two should be all that's needed to close the door on this article concerning the painting of the ol' barn.



First, for the woman (or shemale) who doesn't have much in the way of tits, what little cleavage there is can be enhanced by makeup. Simply apply a darker-than-natural-skin-tone shade of makeup to the cleavage and a lighter-than-natural-skin-tone shade of makeup to either side of the cleavage and to the tops of the breasts, where, normally, the sun shines brighter. A similar trick can be performed on milady's buttocks, and blush can impart a rosy glow to her ass cheeks as well.



Makeup isn't really just about color. It's combined effect--big, bright eyes, highlighted lips, and blushing cheeks--is supposed to mimic the signs of orgasm, suggesting that milady is continuously in the throes of la petite mort, or "the little death," as the poetic (and macabre) French prefer to call sexual bliss. If such a signal as that doesn't attract a guy, he's gay, for sure, so even a fat lady or a plain Jane, provided her barn is properly painted, should have some luck in landing a hapless lover, if not necessarily a hubby.



Moreover, writers of erotica--even male writers--have no excuse, now that they're read this article, not to describe milady in all her near-infinite splendor. If cosmetics companies have searched the world over to bring, at tremendous expense and effort, and based on the latest scientific knowledge and technological capability, the waxes, oils, pigments, and other ingredients needed to paint milady's barn, authors of erotic fiction can be expected to do no less than to use their work as a basis for describing the loveliness of milady's charms.

