Mascara - Tube your lashes

First off, a confession: mascara and I have had a rocky partnership for the past twenty five years. I have hay fever that compells me to rub my eyes, I'm a crier, and I'm too lazy to find cotton balls and eye makeup remover every night. Once, in high school, I watched my friend's impossibly cool, older, very punk rock sister use a safety pin to seperate her mascara-clumped eyelashes. I went home and tried it, but I was no Joelle and quickly realized that bringing a pin that close to my eyeball was scary and made my eyes water. As I got older and my life got busier and busier, my dark eyelashes and I decided that we didn't need mascara (or eyeliner) anymore, because it was just too much work. You know how some people only go to church on holidays? I was a Special Occasion Mascara Wearer, and it had to be something good to inspire me to dig that deep in my makeup bag. Whenever I got ready to go to a wedding, I'd stand there holding the mascara in one hand trying to figure out whether or not I'd cry at the wedding. But, no more!

The fabulous Jenny Lauck and I were walking through Sephora in San Francisco after lunch. We came to the mascara area and I started to just blow right past to the glass jars of pretty, pretty lip gloss. Jenny stopped me, pointed to the Kiss Me mascara and said, "Ooooooh. You use this, right? It's so awesome." I sighed and told her that mascara and I were currently on the outs. My eyes might have started watering a little just talking about it. She pulled me close and set me straight, "This stuff rocks! It makes little tubes on your eyelashes and it won't smear or run. And? It only comes off when you want it to. I swear. You can totally go swimming in it. You have to buy this. Seriously."

So, I bought the mascara and read the directions. Then, I tubed my eyelashes and took them out for a test drive. By the end of the day, my lashes looked just as good as they did when I first put the mascara on, and that was amazing in itself because it was one very long day. It was so long, in fact that I went to bed without washing my eye makeup off. When I woke up? Still perfect. At first I was a little worried about how hard this stuff would be to get off. The directions say that the tubes will slide off your eyelashes, but so far they'd been firmly on there for 24 hours. I got into the shower and let the warm water hit my face. Sure enough, the tubes just slid right off when I used very gentle pressure with my fingers. At first I looked at the tubes and was certain that I'd just somehow pulled out all my eyelashes, but when I pinched the tubes with my fingernails and pulled them apart, I could see that there weren't any actual eyelashes inside.

I've worn this mascara just about every day since then, and it holds up to a good long cry, any amount of eye rubbing, and even yoga class in a 105 degree room with major humidity. I know I sound like a liar, and I probably wouldn't believe any of this if I hadn't seen it with my own non-smudgy eyes.

Kiss Me mascara retails for $25. You should treat yourself to some. If you get any clumps when you apply it, be sure to take care of them before the mascara sets. You have two minutes. No safety pins!