my breif but painful venture into girldom

My idea of dressing up has always been to mix my denim with a tight black tank and slap on some red lipstick. Eventually I hope to add a nice stylish tatoo and get my nose repierced. I am not one of those people that has the skill and dexterity to wrestle with curlers daily and come out victorious. As far as I'm concerned, lipliner is something that you use to write phone numbers when you forget your ink pen. Last birthday my sister got me a nail kit. I was still using the cuticle pushy thingy to jab my brother in the arm repeatedly and referring to the hang nail removal device as and "eye gougy thing" when his girlfriend finally told me what they all meant. I forgot ten minutes later, but at least now I can say that I was once initiated into the complex world of self torture devices that is a manicure set.
Last week I decided that since I was now 24 and therefore finally a real live grownup, I should learn about these things in the hopes of looking more polished when I hit job interviews. As it is the best I can manage is a sort of refined scruffiness with an edge of punk rock white trash sexy, like maybe I might be good for a night out at the bar but not so much the help desk. Not good. So I curled my hair and put on eyeshadow (remembering what my bro's girlfriend told me about the smudginess and bicolor schema) and looked really good. For ten minutes. Then it deteriorated like sugar in rain. The makeup got smudgier than it was supposed to, the eyeshadow sweated off and got into the weird fold in my eyelid, resulting in a line of bold color against normal skintone. The hair fell flatter than it was before under the weight of all the hairspray it took to get it there in the first place. Also, plucking the eyebrows is not for wussies.
It became plain to me that all of the strength training and self defense practice I have engaged in over the years were not enough to toughen me up against a pair of tweezers and a set of hot rollers. I have a whole new respect for those women that can pull this off every day-looking good is a dangerous sport.