I wanted to capture his eyelashes. My child has amazing eyelashes. The kind of long, thick eyelashes that mascara makers use to peddle their wares, but he’s got them all without a drop of mascara. It’s just not fair. He’s even from my gene pool which makes this super amazing not fair. Do eyelashes skip a generation? Because I sure as heck didn’t get any. I can only assume these came from his father’s side.
There is no mascara on the market today that would give me eyelashes like this, no matter what their marketing claims. My recent Audrey Hepburn portrait stands as clear evidence of this. It may look like I have lots of dark black eyelashes, but in reality it’s all just editing (Note: remember this when looking at glossy magazines, it’s all just editing. These people are not real). In order to achieve a look similar to the Karsh photo, I applied what I consider to be gobs of dark black eye makeup, an amount of eye makeup I’d be uncomfortable wearing in public because heavy makeup is not my style. But even with all that makeup, I still looked like I had no eyelashes in the photo. So in the end I resorted to something I rarely do with my photos and I Photoshopped myself some eyelashes.
While I might wish I had lashes as gorgeous as his, I am reminded that all any parent wants is for their child to get more out of life than they did. And if it all starts with eyelashes, than so be it. So I’ll continue to gaze longingly at my son’s eyelashes, not because I want them for myself, but because they’re one of those little details that I want to hold tight and remember.
