ArcaMax

The refrain I repeated to my daughter was that, much like filling in eyebrows with makeup, the wings lined onto each eye she was "crashing out" over could be sisters, not twins. They don't need to be identical. "But again, let's tone it down in the future. That liner isn't really a day look."

It could be a controversial take to let her experiment with makeup in her first year of teendom, but people love to imagine a bright line between childhood and adulthood. They imagine there is a magical crossover that happens at midnight on a birthday. One minute you are a kid, the next minute the clock ticks, and the universe hands you maturity, wisdom, and a credit score.

Except that is not how any of this works. We have all met world-weary elementary schoolers, the ones with the energy of tired grad students, and we have all met the bros who at 43 would be out of place at a college dive bar even though they would never think they were.

Part of me is jealous of my daughter's access to online videos that give her tips specific to her face shape, skin undertone, and eye color. When I was her age, knowledge of makeup was passed down like folklore. Someone's older cousin taught you something that she may or may not have learned from Seventeen magazine. Then you spread the same mildly incorrect information to your friends. We were all out here contouring with Bonne Bell bronzer and hoping no one noticed the lines at our jaws.

Her world is more sophisticated. It also carries its own currents of danger. There is a creeping darkness that reminds me of my early womanhood, the return of the pro ana content that floats around the culture like smoke. The skeletal look has surfaced again in some movies and magazine shoots. Hip bones peeking out of low-rise jeans is somehow back in circulation, as if we learned nothing the first time. It is strange to watch an entire aesthetic you spent years unlearning try to take root again.

A few months ago, I was reminded of my own makeup crash-out, but in reverse. I scrolled past an age-appropriate tutorial. It told me not to do the windshield wiper brow application that hood eye 40-year-olds rely on. Blush on the apples of your cheeks was declared out of fashion. Now everything is meant to live on the outer eye socket so it can lift the parts of my face that are losing their battle with gravity. I sighed, scrolled, and thought, with mild annoyance, that I would learn better makeup skills at some point. Hell, there was still time.

Except, maybe not. I heard the familiar inner voice that sounds much like that slightly older cousin running in with acquired truth. It said, "Yeah, no. Because at some point, you will not need to learn that."

There's something humbling about realizing that the arc between my daughter's eyeliner experiments and my own efforts to stay current is not linear, but a cycle we're all in. She is at the beginning, all eagerness and bold choices. I am somewhere in the middle, half watching for cultural danger signs, and half trying to figure out where to dab concealer now that the rules have changed.

We are always catching up to the people we are becoming. My daughter will refine her eyeliner. I will keep learning where blush belongs. Both of us will eventually care far less about the results. In the meantime, the sisters and not twins lesson still holds. Not only for makeup, but for all the uneven ways we grow.

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Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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