Sep 21, 2017 4 min read

Every girl wants a bit of red-carpet drama once in a while, and last weekend I had my chance. A documentary I produced and wrote for WQED-TV was nominated for a Mid-Atlantic Regional Emmy, and the team and I traveled to Hershey for the awards event.

There are women who are always ready for a black-tie event, their closets stocked with the right dresses, shoes, Spanx and jewelry to pull off a dazzling ensemble at an hour’s notice. My closet isn’t like that.

I spent frantic weeks online, eventually ordering eight dressy black jumpsuits. I returned all of it and settled for a meh outfit I’d already worn a half-dozen times.

The glam would have to come from somewhere else, something more than red lipstick and a salon blowout. My need for glamour would send me wading into strange, sticky territory.

On my way to the venue, I stopped at a drug store to buy some eyelashes.

There were short ones and feathery ones; lashes made to look like fur and lashes studded with gems. I stood before the array for a long time, holding the little clear plastic boxes, confused. Why would some be labeled “Glamour Style?” That’s redundant.

What an optimistic purchase that was, but false lashes seemed doable. My daughter and her friends put on the lashes as part of their usual school day grooming, emerging from their rooms each morning as visions of doe-eyed perfection, not a lash out of place. How hard could this be?

I poured a dab of clear glue into the little plastic box and, using special jumbo-size tweezers I sprang for because they seemed necessary, dipped the first row of lashes and dove in.

Applying fake lashes requires the ability to wink each eye separately, which they do not tell you and which I cannot do. I started with the left, dropping the lid and moving in with the sticky lashes. The glue is unforgiving; you’ve got three seconds, max, to get that sucker in place before everything’s confirmed and calcified.

So I poked the lashes onto the vicinity of my left eyelid. Held it here for a second, took a breath and opened my eye.

I’d fashioned the lashes into a bridge from the center of my eyelid to the side of my nose. I tugged it off, pulling my eyelid away from my eye with a weird pop, and then started over.

While the lashes come in many lengths, they don’t come in extra widths. I must have chubby eyes because the lash strip was too narrow to span the whole lid. I could either have the lashes attached from the outer corner to almost the inner corner or vice versa, but not all of it. They should make the lashes in plus size.

By now I’d spent a half-hour on one eye. With the lash hanging there, I couldn’t open my eye all the way because it was heavy. The left eye was a fail; the right eye would be impossible.

I pulled off the lashes, put on a bit of mascara and headed to the show. Half the women were wearing long gowns; many had on false lashes. All the Emmy winners were glamorous. I was neither.

I failed because I’m too uncoordinated, and also my eyelids are too wrinkly. There comes an age when youthful glamour is too much work.

I fell asleep that night a bit disappointed I didn’t win the Emmy, but only a bit. I woke the next morning unable to see out of my left eye. All that fumbling had stuck my own eyelashes together. That glue means business.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.