The end of an era

Folks, something of huge import happened this week at the Boots household: I ran out of my trademark green eyeliner.

For ever.

Remember how, when the internet first became a big thing and those questionnaire e-mails were huge, one of the questions (at least for girls) was something like, "What would you never leave the house without?" or something like that? Well, in my case it was green eyeliner. This green eyeliner, to be precise:

With some products, like mascara, I'm blithely fickle: I pick out whatever I've heard good reviews about, and have only recently become faithful to one particular brand. However, when it came to my eyeliner, I was (and will continue to be, I hope) stubbornly faithful to one brand and one brand alone: Urban Decay. I don't know how it started - I think my high school best friend (*wave*) had some cool eyeliners at home and we began playing around with different colors. I fell in love with this metallic green shade (called "Thames"), seen above, and I bought my own tube. This was the summer of 1999. That summer, I graduated high school and went on to start college. By the time high school ended, in June, the only make-up I ever really wore on my eyes was some powdered eye shadow. By the time I entered college in September, I had become a master at applying my green eyeliner with a retro cat's eye swoop. I wore Thames eyeliner in that very fashion every single day (well, the ones I left the house for something other than the gym) until yesterday. My only exceptions were for my brother's wedding, for my baptism, and for my Greek Orthodox wedding ceremony.

When I first started wearing it, I was a repressed seventeen-year-old who did everything that mommy and daddy told her to do and I could barely apply the slippery liquid liner on my eyelids. The first few times I wore it, I would put it on shakily in private last-minute before leaving the house and flee to more open pastures. I don't know when I stopped hiding it from my parents - it was definitely at some point that same summer, by which time I'd gotten quite adept at quickly tracing the exaggerated line over my eyelid. By the time I entered college, a couple of months later, I was ready for my green eyeliner to be my trademark. And it was. Through thick and thin, through long hair, college, grad. school, short hair, boyfriends, more boyfriends, fiancé, husband, jobs (and job interviews), travel, and more. I've had students use it in a game of "veo, veo;" I've had a student ask me if my eyeliner is actually a tattoo; I've known a little Bengali boy to describe me to his mother as "the Didi with green on her eyes:" it's become such second nature to me that I don't realize, when meeting someone new, how odd a thick line of green eyeliner might look, applied in such a retro manner.

In this picture, from early 2007 (growing out my hair!), you can see how I lined my eyes every day for over eleven years. Fun fact: as I type this, I'm wearing the exact same t-shirt as I am in this picture. Also: I miss Philly. 

I don't know how many tubes I've gone through of Thames: each one lasted me almost a year. However, in late 2007 or early 2008, I noticed that Urban Decay decided to discontinue Thames. This was a tragedy for me. I took advantage of their sale on soon-to-be-discontinued products [what they call R.I.P items] and bought four more tubes. The last one ran out yesterday. Truth be told, there's still a little left in that tube, but it's getting hard to apply and pointless.

Sigh.

So a couple of months ago, I decided to be an adult. I went to Sephora and bought a new tube of Urban Decay eyeliner - because ain't no way I'm stopping wearing liquid liner: I literally cannot apply pencil eyeliner on my face. This time in pure black (called "Perversion"!):

They've changed the shape of the tubes now, so that they're a little bit like an inkwell, and I'm still not used to the new shape of the brush/cap. The good news is, since black liner is a little more traditional, I can play around more with painting my eyes and even be more bold with my lip color, since lipstick will no longer be battling it out with something GREEN on my face for attention. So today, in honor of the new occasion, I decided to line the entirety of my eyes, including the bottom lash line, and hey - I kind of liked it!

It gives an even more retro flair to my make-up, if possible, and I think it'll be a cool look to go with for the future.

However, a little part of me cannot believe that I won't be wearing green eyeliner ever again. Godspeed, Thames. It's been a pleasure and an honor.

Perversion? Let's have some fun together.