Make-Up, Afghan Style…

ACAP likes to help civilians by giving them vocational training. But training women in particular can be difficult because they have fewer options to leave the home. Make-up artist training has proved to be an effective way to help…. Because Afghans certainly love their make-up whenever they attend parties and social events!!
Erica and I decided to allow one of ACAP’s clients to give us a “make-over”…. It was a widow whose husband had been killed by a suicide bomber. She had just opened a beauty parlour so that she could make money to support her children.
I have attended a couple of weddings here, so I knew that the make-up would be colourful and not so natural… and this make-up certainly lived up to expectations!Erica went first… and the beautician started by ‘threading’ her face. “Threading” is common in Egypt (where I live at the moment) and also here – it involves taking two pieces of thread and running them up and down so that they remove all the hair…. But I didn’t realize that the hair on the face was something that had to go!
Then Erica had her eyebrows darkened and made into one sexy unibrow… then thick white foundation; shiny, shiny eyeshadow; fake eyelashes and bright lipstick with heavy lipliner.
I went through a similar process, though I also had my hair done (don’t ask me why!!). My hair was scraped back, gelled into submission and then I had glitter put everywhere… the shinier the better in Afghanistan!
This make-over was not a natural look. To be honest, we looked like drag-queens. We were heading to the Italian PRT straight from the salon and the first thing we did was go to the toilets and attempt to remove as much as we could of the gunge on our face!!