That’s right, your girl is back in the workforce! I’m teaching part-time at a local community college this semester and working on my creative writing on non-teaching days. It’s going well so far; I missed being in the classroom.

I also missed adapting my makeup to the demands of teaching, though there’s less distance now between my classroom makeup and my free-time makeup than there was at the boarding school where I spent two years. I’m no longer surrounded 24/7 by my students and colleagues—I show up, put in my hours, and peace out—and I’m no longer dressing for a preppy, athletic environment where bold lipstick is unthinkable except on Halloween. There are plenty of alternative-looking folks at the community college, and that makes me more comfortable embracing my own eccentric impulses, such as they are.

Then, too, I feel less self-conscious about my appearance in general, both because I’m older and because taking time to write gave me a firmer sense of myself. If someone thinks my eyeshadow is weird or my lipstick is tacky or my novel is sad-girl lit fic, I don’t really give a shit. I no longer feel as much pressure to be decorative as I did when I was younger (indeed, exploring that pressure through my novel has helped ease it). Though my love of makeup will probably never disappear, I’ve been worrying less about my looks and more about what I can offer the world in other ways. As I enter my late thirties, I want to create beauty more than I want to embody it. I keep thinking of Lana Del Rey’s song “Old Money”:

The power of youth is on my mind

Sunsets, small town, I’m out of time

Will you still love me when I shine

From words but not from beauty?

This being Lana, I always assumed the “you” was a male love interest. More recently, though, I’ve started to wonder if the speaker is posing the question to herself. In my late teens and twenties, certain men in positions of (relative) power and authority made their attraction to me very clear, and I came away with the impression that my intellectual accomplishments were inseparably bound up with my attractiveness to men. It has taken me years to disentangle the two in my own head, to disconnect my “words” from my “beauty.” Who better to articulate that struggle than LDR, patron saint of daddy issues and sad-girl lit fic?

On a less philosophical note, this post features three MAC products that I bought on sale this summer and have been enjoying for work. The first item is the MACximal Matte Lipstick in Captive Audience, which was 40% off in the Lipstick Day sale at the end of July. This is my second MACximal Matte lipstick—I reviewed Everybody’s Heroine back in February—and I continue to love the formula, which is a little softer than MAC’s original matte formula but just as long-lasting. Captive Audience is a bright pinkish plum, a reincarnation of Captive from the old Satin formula, and its name feels all too appropriate for a pedagogical situation.

Swatches, L-R: Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Porto Please, NYX Butter Gloss in Cranberry Pie, Captive Audience, Urban Decay Vice Lipstick in Rapture, & Other Stories Cassis Hymn:

Then, during the Labor Day sale, I bought two powder eyeshadows: Tilt, a grayish blue in MAC’s regular formula, and Smoky Mauve, from the oft-praised (and, at $25, usually quite pricey) Extra Dimension line:

Swatches in sun and shade:

Without further preamble, here are four looks I’ve worn since the beginning of the semester! The constants in all of the looks are e.l.f. Wow Brow in Neutral Brown, Maybelline Lash Discovery waterproof mascara in Very Black, and NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer in Affogato. I still wear good old UD Primer Potion under my powder eyeshadows, and I like to prep my lips with a thin layer of Trader Joe’s cinnamon-roll lip mask, which I bought a few weeks ago. By the way, please ignore the patio-furniture background of my flatlays and the bus-stop and passenger-seat settings of my selfies; I still haven’t figured out the best lighting for photos in our new(ish) apartment.

1. The True Winter

I recently rediscovered a lipstick my mom gave me almost five years ago: Maybelline ColorSensational Lipstick in Crimson Race. A close cousin to Revlon Cherries in the Snow, Crimson Race is a deep raspberry pink in a satin formula, and it feels perfect for the summer-to-fall transition. For a full True Winter look on the first day of classes, I added Urban Decay 24/7 eyeliner in Mushroom, Merit Flush Balm in Le Bonbon, and NYX Slim Lip Pencil in Fuchsia. As the weather has cooled, I’ve swapped Le Bonbon for my old friend NARS Mata Hari, which has reminded me how fantastic the original NARS blush formula is. Mata Hari lasts nine hours on my face. No cream blush can do that.

As for lipstick, getting my colors done has emboldened me to wear “loud” lip colors that I might previously have dismissed as inappropriate for teaching, like purple and fuchsia and bright berry. However, weirdly, I’m still not comfortable wearing opaque true red lipstick in the classroom. Dark red, berry red, sheer red? No problem. But Ruby Woo and Lotus Light just don’t feel appropriate, I suppose because red lipstick is so inescapably coded as “sexy” and, though I’m under no illusion that my students will find their 37-year-old adjunct professor sexy, I don’t want them to think I’m trying to be sexy.

Here I am on the first day of school, wearing Le Bonbon:

And here’s the look on a different day, outside, with Mata Hari instead of Le Bonbon (not that you can really tell the difference):

2. The Auxiliary Beauty Classics

Since my earliest teaching days a decade ago, I’ve gravitated toward mauve and plum shades for the classroom. This fall, I’ve been enjoying two such looks: a rosy one with NARS Hardwired Eyeshadow in Earthshine, Mata Hari again, and MAC Captive Audience, and a more purple-toned one with MAC Smoky Mauve, Urban Decay Afterglow Blush in Rapture, and Urban Decay Vice Lipstick in Rapture. Three new or newish products and three extremely old ones!

Swatches, L-R, in shade (top) and sun: Earthshine, Mata Hari, Captive Audience, Smoky Mauve, Rapture (blush), Rapture (lipstick):

Though Smoky Mauve has been my go-to eyeshadow this fall, I’m not sure I’ve figured out the best way to wear it. Supposedly, the Extra Dimension eyeshadows can be applied with a wet or dry brush, but neither method deposits much eyeshadow on my lids (maybe because I’m not using a brush with natural bristles?), so I’ve just been tapping the shadow onto my lid with my finger. The effect is subtle and pretty, but not as, well, extra as the name implies. I do miss these lightweight, shimmery powder formulas, though—they fell out of fashion in the mid-2010s and never really came back in favor.

Here I am at the bus stop again, wearing Smoky Mauve, a touch of Mushroom liner for extra definition, Rapture blush, and Rapture lipstick:

I will say that on the first morning I wore this look (minus Mushroom), a campus custodian approached me to tout the benefits of ginseng capsules for alertness, so this color combination clearly does nothing to make me appear less tired. That’s the magic of dressing in your color season, I guess!

And here I am wearing Earthshine, Mata Hari, and Captive Audience. Yes, almost all of my dressy tops are blue. It’s just easier that way.

Unfortunately, once I’ve sorted a lipstick into the “professional lipstick” category in my brain, I can’t bring myself to wear it for any other occasion. That was the fate of Rapture, which I wore constantly in late grad school (including for my dissertation defense and my hooding ceremony!) and in the next few years of teaching, but almost never touched during my two-year period of NEEThood. I don’t want Captive Audience to suffer the same neglect, so I’d better make sure to stay employed.

3. The Sunmi(ish)

One of my favorite k-pop soloists, Sunmi, recently released a music video in which she wore a striking gray-blue eyeshadow (or, more likely, combination of eye products):

Trying to put together a simpler version of Sunmi’s look, I realized that while I had eyeshadows in pastel blue and deep teal, I didn’t have a medium silvery blue. So I ordered MAC Tilt, which turned out to be exactly the shade I was looking for. Sunmi is wearing a lipstick similar to Captive Audience in the screenshot above, but since I’m not a k-pop idol, I kept the rest of my color makeup low-key: ColourPop powder blush in Flirt Alert and Bobbi Brown Crushed Lip in Brownie topped with Revlon Glass Shine Balm in Glossed Up Rose.

Which produced this:

After watching Sunmi’s video, I started noticing blue eyeshadow everywhere: in more k-pop MVs, in editorial photos, even in Chanel’s Holiday 2025 collection. I think blue eyeshadow is having a moment, and I intend to dedicate a blog post to it before the moment passes. Or, knowing me, well after it passes. Either way!