I was thinking about make-up today and I have no idea why. Quite frankly, I hate makeup, but understand the necessity of playing the corporate game. So, I wear makeup. Granted, I don’t wear much makeup, but I did learn how to apply lipstick without ending up with spots on my teeth.

It’s always been a joke among my family and friends that things were a little backwards in my mother/daughter relationship. When my friends were complaining about how their mothers didn’t understand them and their mother’s didn’t let them do anything, I generally kept my mouth closed. My mother was often chasing me around the house with blush in one hand and an eye pencil in the other – she didn’t want me to put on excessive amounts of makeup, but she did want me to add a little color. The craftier she got in the chase, the craftier I got at avoiding and hiding. (Yes, when I was in high school, I actually told my mother to turn down her music and go to bed. I lived an odd, but fulfilling life. I also proved my mother’s theory that I was born forty.)

Anyhow, that’s not really the point of this blog. I know that most of my readers seem to have smaller children, but (sigh) they grow up and girls will want to wear makeup. When I was in junior high school, I went through a brief period where I did try to wear makeup. I was pretty bad at it and I chose to wear the 80’s blue…all the way up to my eyebrows. I have pictures to remember the times. Ugh!

Putting bad memories aside, my point is that Asian eyes are different than Caucasian eyes. We have different shapes, different structures. I’m sure there are technical terms for the differences, but our eyelids are different. Most Asian women do not have the folds (not sure what they are called) that make the perfect place for eye shadow. It’s never a bad thing to take some time to figure out how to apply makeup correctly on an Asian face – especially the eyes. We have beautiful eyes and many of the Korean adoptees that I know tend to understate their eyes instead of making them stand out – me included.

My sister knows exactly how to apply makeup to make her features stand out (just the right way). So, my mother was blessed with one child that she didn’t have to chase around. Anyhow, my sister introduced me to ZhenInc. If you do a search, you can find quite a bit of information on how to help your child learn how to apply makeup correctly. It wouldn’t have made much of difference to me because I just have a strong and irrational dislike for it, but it is important to many and a nice way to show your girls that you are interested in what they need. (And, yes, that really is my sister’s eye in the picture. I haven’t asked her permission to show her whole picture yet, but I promise I will.)