Pop 89: False eyelashes at VM Grocery & Liquor

By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com

When I just can’t get my mojo working in the morning, I schlep over to Val Marie Grocery and Liquor to bother Jody, the owner. I assume if Jody has more pressing things to do than shoot the breeze with me, she’ll simply tell me so. But she hasn’t yet. She’s more than willing to listen to me kvetch about the latest cultural phenomenon getting my goat. Because she listens with an open ear and a real laugh and an ability to show me the flip side of my staunch stand for or against whatever I’m ragging on about, I know I will leave reconsidering my orneriness. This is the sign of good customer service, but it’s also the sign of a healthy soul.

There’s no pickle barrel at VM Grocery and Liquor, but my guess is if I suggested Jody get one, she’d bring one in. She’s pretty much game for anything. But we don’t need one. Standing between the s’mores display and the Cheezies, we manage to get in a good half-hour of solid sociological observation. And if Hayley Olson is at the till, we can get on a roll, between customers, that takes us to dinner.

I try not to gossip. Every time I get caught up in talking about my fellow villagers, I feel so ashamed I need to go home and shower. But it’s tempting, especially with people who don’t know any other way to hold a conversation. But with Jody and Haley, our chit-chat is in the vein of observational humour (let’s face it, all humour is observational ), the kind that laughs at our common human quirks and pettinesses and obsessions. And the butt of our jokes is usually ourselves. With Jody’s laid back “whatever” attitude and Haley’s younger finger on her generation’s pulse (OMG, she could be my grand-daughter ), I feel free to ask dumb questions like:

“What’s with the eyelashes?!”

“You mean the fake ones?”

“Yeah, sorry, I know I sound like a crotchety old lady, and I can hear my mother’s voice when I say: these young women in their giant eyelashes look like clowns!”

“Oh, they make all kinds,” says Hayley, pulling out to show me some photos of her in her own subtle, slightly graduated wispy variety. And, of course, there are as many kinds of lashes as there are tastes, from “Flirty” to outright drag queen. And most of them are made from mink fur. Or horsehair - horsetail, to be exact. And yes, there are “vegan” versions.

“Here’s another shot,” says Hayley, showing me another glamorous photo.

“You have more than one pair?”

“Yeah, for different occasions.” Makes sense, I suppose. It just takes a while to wrap my head around it. They just seem as absurd as false fingernails and false breasts and, frankly, not something I thought I’d have to encounter out here on the Grasslands.

“You know,” I reconsider, “when I think about it, I died my hair purple when I was in my twenties. I decided, if I’m going to change my hair colour, I’m not going to pretend I didn’t. So I went all the way. Why not with eyelashes? No sense pretending they’re really mine. Kinda like makeup.”

“I don’t wear makeup,” says Jody.

“Well, see, you’re the most well-adjusted of us all,” I say.

“It just feels weird. But then, I don’t dress up. I wore leggings and a tank top for my wedding.”

“Impressive. I have to admit, I will use mascara, but not on my eyelashes; I use it to darken my eyebrows. I can’t pluck those dam white hairs, and the white ones are always the most stubborn, have you noticed?” Both of them give me a blank stare.

I know my own teen peer group was obsessed with some cosmetic novelty, but I can’t recall it. There was Farah Fawcett’s hair - that mane of endless wings flying off her head. And then there was lip gloss. I liked eyeshadow, but apart from that, well - I wasn’t exactly in the running for Miss Donette, the name given to Immaculata High’s beauty queen, elected every football season, named The Dons after St. Don of Bosco, patron saint of sports.

As a teen, I wasn’t part of any scene unless you call cached away in my bedroom buried in a book with a pot of tea. I restlessly deep dove into one book after another, looking for a nugget of life-saving wisdom. We do what we can to survive. And books, just their mere presence in my room, worked better than getting high or getting laid or getting made up.

From eyelashes and between ringing in customers, Jody and Hayley, and I cover topics like marriage, food, clothes, expressions, booze, work, and movies.

“Speaking of movies,” I say, “when I was a kid watching all those old Disney movies, the way we could tell the boy animals from the girl animals was -“

“Eyelashes!” The other two chime in.

“Exactly. The girl animals always had those long eyelashes, and they’d flutter them coyly.”

Those were the days when you only had one channel, no VCR, let alone DVD. It wasn’t a pay-for-view-on-demand world back then. Wonderful World of Disney came on Saturdays after hockey and before the news. I remember when The News became more interesting to me than Disney; I started thinking I might want to be a newscaster when I grew up. But back then, there weren’t any women anchors.

Eventually, women got a spot behind the anchor desk. We earned our place and gained some cred, and acquired a trusted, authoritative voice. And then, somewhere along the way, head office directed - is still directing - women and anchors to dress like they were on their way to a cocktail party. Luckily, I was in radio, where I wasn’t expected to curl my tresses nor poof them up. Nor did I have to plunge the neckline, slather on the frosty lip gloss, slip on those painful stilettos and, thank heaven, fiddle with flirty false eyelashes!

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