make-up design for the revolution

Because I had said I would and because I am a good girl (most of the time), I went to the 'American Community' 4th of July picnic on Saturday. (Nevermind that it was a July 4th picnic on July 7th... We don't want to seem un-American by pointing that out, do we?)

Anyway, I had signed up paint the faces of little kids. This is a fine idea, except for the fact that 99% of the kids I approached looked terrorized or bored by the idea. (Can face paint compete with a jumping castle? Can anything?) So I painted a lot of young(er) adult (read: my age-mates) and adolescent faces instead. (Yes, there is just a teensy-weensy bit of inner-playground-bully that comes out in these moments: 'You will be decorated!' Still getting over all the thumpings I took in grammar school? You bet, but in a Julie Taymor kind of way.)

But I was being a good girl. (Being a good girl means not writing, for example, 'Stop the War' or 'Bush lies, people die' across picnickers' faces in red, white and blue.) So, using a very cool set of face-painting crayons, I drew red stars with white and blue sparks coming off them, little clusters of stars (one in each colour), etc. Someone requested the presidential seal, and I was absolutely up for it, but we would have been standing there half an hour at least.

As inevitably happens, someone noticed that the painter herself sported no paint. So I handed over the crayons and allowed a friend to draw a white star on my cheek. I thought this was a very funny visual pun, overlapping symbols of American patriotism and sinking ships.

I don't think anyone else got it. They probably thought I was from Texas. So much for subtle insurrectionary humour.