Tag Archives: face

March 19, 2014 · 12:08 pm

Don’t look at my face

I’m not sure my face does the right thing, when other people are talking to me. Usual, everyday conversations I’m just about OK at – years of practice means I can hold my face into something approximating interest and engagement. But any kind of unexpected news, and it’s all over. 

It’s happened recently. I was visiting a friend, and I was late. I had dutifully emailed to explain why I was going to be late, and sent the obligatory ‘Can I bring anything?’ text when I was on my way. (I’m curious about those texts, which seem to be a save-all for the unbelievable impoliteness of turning up to someone else’s house empty-handed. I personally always take people up on their offers, and get them to bring along washing powder, or a particular brand of hand soap I’ve recently run out of. Well, they shouldn’t have been so foolish as to say ‘anything’). My friend opened the door, and I opened my mouth to apologise once again, when she blurted out her own news. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she told me, gesturing to her stomach.

I wondered vaguely why she felt the need to point out where babies are stored, and if I was meant to touch it. I decided not to, for the same reasons that I didn’t touch another friend’s new breast implants – I’m nervous of things hiding inside other things. It’s why I don’t like Swiss rolls.

I felt, when my friend told me the news, great joy and happiness. My face felt that the best way to express this was by blinking rapidly and letting my mouth fall open, in an eerily apt imitation of Jack Nicholson towards the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Luckily, I have long since worked out what to do in these types of situations. 

‘Amazing!’ I shouted at my friend. ‘What wonderful news! Congratulations!’ My friend looked at me, startled. ‘I haven’t told everybody yet,’ she murmured. ‘Oh,’ I replied, feeling my eyes extend in alarm. I pulled her forward into a reluctant hug, awkwardly jutting out my bottom half to make sure it didn’t touch her stomach.

Still, at least it meant she couldn’t see my face. 

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March 18, 2013 · 12:16 pm

There’s something wrong with your face

There’s something wrong with your face,’ My little sister said to me at the beginning of the week. Usually, I would have ignored her, but last week my Grandmother asked why I was ‘giving her that funny look’, when all i was doing was looking at her with my eyes open, like a normal, polite sort of human being, so it hit a little harder than normal. You can tell a lot about a person from how their face looks in repose, so it has become clear to me that this is something I need to work on.

Having spent some time in front of the mirror, I have come to the following conclusions:

1. It is almost impossible to look in the mirror and truly see yourself, hindered as you are by your well-honed and automatic ‘mirror face’.

2. Looking at one’s face in repose is a frightening and unpleasant experience. Personally, most of my face seems to be taken up with an enormous forehead, though I spend much of my time frowning, which does help to reduce this (And yes, Mother, encourages wrinkles. My Mother is a one-woman mission to make me feel old. Yesterday she asked if people had started thinking of me as an old maid yet. I pointed out that I was in my twenties. ‘Your late twenties,’ She replied sadly. ‘And all alone.’)

3. Using a cotton bud dipped in sunscreen is not the most effective way to remove eye make-up.

4. My sister tells me constantly to ‘work on my googly eyes’, but I actually think my eyes are perfectly normal, if a little dilated (No, I have no idea why this is. I assume because my pupils are taking advantage of the brief moments when I am awake by taking in as much light as possible. This may be a family trait, because my little sister breathes as though she’s trying to suck as much oxygen out of the air as possible- in a sort of noisy slurping fashion. It’s deeply off-putting. My eye thing is much more elegant).
‘
Anyway, it’s not my eyes that are weird, it’s my eyebrows. But seeing as I’m mildly afraid of my eyebrow woman, I don’t see this changing anytime soon. I did experiment with an eyebrow covering fringe, but I couldn’t see anything, so that was no good.

5. If you can truly tell what a person is like by looking at their face, it may be time for me to start wearing a very low-slung baseball cap. Which would handily give both the illusion of youth (I’ve seen that Justin Bieber) and save me a great deal of money on cotton buds and eyebrow shaping.

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