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2002-11-12 - 7:08 a.m.

Face Art (FART). Painting on your own mask. Concealing or revealing. Hiding or inviting. Or maybe it is--as early Native Americans demonstrated by decorating themselves for battle--war paint!

Whatever it is, it's not something I'm practiced in. I don't have much make-up: no powder puffs, or pots of rouge or varied shades of lip paint and gloss, or eyeliner sticks or eyelid dyes or glazes (although my eyes have been glazed at times). I have one tube of mascara and one Mary Kay compact kit containing eye shadows and blush. It doesn't take a separate suitcase to pack my collection of cosmetics for travel. And even though I do have these face paints, I'm not skilled in using them and play at applying morning makeup rather than making it an artistic ritual. I hastily skim my little applicators across the pressed brown eye colors and rusty rouge and smear them reasonably close to the appropriate areas and am willing to pretend I've successfully completed my morning make over.

I only have these cosmetics because diva's niece was giving a Mary Kay party (oh gawd) and invited me. I agreed to go, but not because I had illusions of coming home glam or was tired of my motley assortment of Maybelline and Revlon. No, I went because diva promised bottomless glasses of wine. She delivered on the wine, I endured a makeup workout and ended up buying the face paint kit.

The painstaking ritual of decorating faces came about long before the first mirror. Ancestral man used red ochre to draw in his cave, and it wasn't long before he started doodling on himself. It was a fad that caught on. And it's only been about 150 years since cosmetics have been the sole province of women. Face art and vanity used to be an equal opportunity, with only the Greeks declining in favor of the natural look. Except, of course, for the courtesans. Maybe I'm kin to the Greeks...not the courtesans, although I do feel like a Jezebel (or a circus clown) if I get slaphappy with my paintbrush.

Today's cosmetics claim to be moisturizing, hypoallergenic, anti-inflammatory and anti-aging, and are made from micronized minerals, reflective minerals, strawberries, and mountain rose herbs. Early cosmetics included toxic ingredients: lead-based powders and mercury-tainted rouges and lip colorings. And if all that didn't subtract enough years from the highly glossed and painted, 18th century ladies ate special complexion wafers to achieve a "luminous glow." The secret ingredient? Arsenic.

We've come a long way, baby!

Today's line of face embellishments includes:

Orange Lip Glaze for smoldering lips, or for a more distinct (and no doubt more tasteful) lip apply Vanilla Lip Glaze. All Over Shimmer Powders to bring out the cheeks--I have to wonder, considering the "All Over," which set of cheeks is coming out.

Lip plumpers, causing lips to swell and look fuller and larger, the reverse of sucking all the fat off our butts to make them look smaller.

Multifunction concealers for hiding eye circles, blemishes and age spots; finishing powders to diminish the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles; solid setting powders to keep the layers of paint in the mysterious, inviting mask in place and keep the mask from sliding down the face, off the chin and into the lap.

And pushups! Imagine my excitement when I learned of this new cosmetic. Finally, my bodacious ta tas (always before appearing to be powdered with pancake makeup) would get a lift sans a boob job! On further investigation I found pushups referred to ointments and creams and dustings intended to make facial cheeks look sun kissed.

I'm not only dense about all this face art, I'm also convinced it'd take me most of the day to apply my inviting mask, I'd be worn out at the conclusion of the ritual, and I still wouldn't have a work of art.

"I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want--an adorable pancreas?" - Jean Kerr, The Snake Has All the Lines, 'Mirror, Mirror'

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