Welcome to Beauty and the Bluestocking!

I’m thrilled you’ve decided to stop by and spend some time with me. I am a college professor at a university in Texas, mother of a preschool comedian, wife of a North Carolina transplant, and lover of all things beauty-related. I grew up with makeup in my life. My parents were in opera and theater, and some of my earliest memories involve my father’s bright orange tackle box filled with pans upon pans of stage makeup in all colors. While my friends were outside riding bikes and learning to do cartwheels (a skill I’ve never mastered), I would spend hours digging through that tackle box, swiping on stick foundations and finger-painting with those awful-smelling oil pans of green, blue, and purple … I was mesmerized.  I still get that rush of excitement as an adult every time I see a cosmetics display.

So over a lifetime of loving makeup, I’ve developed a “makeup manifesto” of sorts, what drives me and my choices, and what keeps me loving makeup day in and day out. Makeup is about joy and creativity. It’s a form of self-expression, and I love choosing a new combination of products every day, learning new skills, discovering that I can pull off a color or look I never thought I could. Makeup makes me happy because it requires me to be brave, to be noticed, and to show the world that makeup doesn’t have to be about being a mommy or a professor or a lady or even a woman, or any other category of being we so often think we have to fit into. It is also so important to me to show my college students, both men and women, that a love of makeup or fashion or caring for one’s appearance is in no way an indication of superficiality or lesser intelligence. I want my young son to see makeup as part of a life in which you pursue your passions; I don’t want him to think that makeup is about correcting or fixing what we perceive to be our problems or failures. We should all have the opportunity to pursue what brings us joy, and I began this blog to share in a joy I know you share–why else would you be here, taking time out of your busy days to read these posts?

So I hope you’ll join me on my journey to pursue one of my many passions, and I hope you’ll leave a comment now and then about what products and techniques you love, and that make your day a little more exciting. And if makeup is something you do in a rush as you tumble out the door in the morning, I understand. I’ve been there. If that sounds like you, I hope this blog will infuse some new life into something that perhaps you once loved but has now just become another expectation. Because trust me, my life isn’t all false lashes and winged liner. (None of it is, for that matter. False lashes still frighten me. A skill I’ll learn somewhere down the road, I hope.) But I’ve found that makeup is a way I can challenge myself, safely–and with coffee–every morning. And that’s a great way to start my day.

Please feel free to comment on my blog, or contact me at beautyandthebluestocking@gmail.com.