The Finer Points of Face Painting

For July 4th I took my preschooler and her friend to Jack London Square for some corn dogs and face painting.

The face-painting booth was manned by about five middle school girls. Paintbrushes, baby wipes and medallions of oily makeup were scattered around the table. In the middle was a box for gratuities.

“What would you like?” one of the tweens asked my daughter Chiara.

“I want a princess,” she answered. It’s an easy face to make― it’s sparkly pink eye shadow, sparkly pink cheeks and sparkly lips. All done!

“I don’t think I can paint a princess on your cheek,” the tween said, clearly not understanding the nuances of face-painting four-year-olds. “How about if I just paint some sparkly pink fireworks?”

The young, ambitious face painter decided to try mixing red and silver to produce said effect. Fireworks should be easy to paint; it’s basically just a bunch of dots in the shape of an asterisk, right?

She was painting Chiara’s right cheek, and I was sitting to Chiara’s left, so I actually couldn’t see the work in progress, I could just see the young girl’s reaction to it. She bit her lip. She furrowed her brow. Her eyes widened and she bit her lip again, murmuring something about silver not mixing well. She seemed to be cowering.

Poor girl.

It was easy to imagine that her morning had been full of Type-A moms with very particular ideas about what proper face painting should look like. I try very hard not to be one of those moms.

But still, is it so hard to have a little sparkly pink eye shadow on hand?

Meanwhile, the tween was shaking her head and grimacing, avoiding my gaze as if she were afraid that I was going to hit her.

“OK. I don’t think it’s going to get any better,” she concluded.

Chiara turned to me and smiled brightly. My jaw dropped.

For future reference, red and silver do not make pink; they make a dark purplish color, precisely the color of a deep bruise. And the silver that didn’t blend gave the impression of infected pimple. My daughter did not look like a picture of freedom, fireworks and American independence; she looked like a poster child for child abuse―one with a pestilent boil.

“And what would you like?” the makeup artist asked Chiara’s friend, still avoiding eye contact with me.

“I want to look just like that!” the friend exclaimed.

Chiara beamed, and her smile widened even more when she got a glimpse of her splendidly bruised face-painting. (At least the silver paint was slightly sparkly.)

The young makeup artist complied, and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to give the impression that I am not the kind of mother who parents with a Whiffle ball bat.

The girls did their part, smiling and dancing and eating corn dogs, albeit with matching “movie-makeup” head wounds.