I woke up at 7 a.m. this morning with “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” circling around my head. This seems appropriate because I’ve been meaning to write a post about lipstick since about Tuesday. However, work got in the way.

Even though it’s been nearly nine years since I started this freelancing odyssey and I never, ever want to go back to the cubelife, sometimes I miss all the “free” time I had sitting in front of a computer doing nothing while at work. Like, I never blogged so much in my life as I did when I had a 9-5.

The Whitney song rambling through my brain is appropriate only so much as this is going to be a partial post about my life in the 80s. When I talk about the tools of the trade the ultimate goal, really, was to look like Whitney Houston in that video. I mean, come on! The hair, the eye shadow, that black and red skirt like if those aren’t STILL beauty goals, I know nothing about beauty.

(editor’s note: I know nothing about beauty)

For my whole life I have loved makeup. My love of it probably stems from a sort of rebellion against my dad who outlawed makeup because of asshole controlling tendencies. Thus, I coveted makeup and bought it with every spare dime I had.

For a majority of my life I have worn zero makeup. I don’t know how to make sense of the two other than I love sleep more than I love makeup. Also, I don’t like to have stuff on my face. And another thing, I am lazy when it comes to my personal appearance. This laziness re: makeup isn’t something that came along with work-from-home hermitude either. I’ve not worn makeup on a regular basis since September of 1986, or close to it.

But oh, back in 1986, I was the queen of makeup and beauty. I had a Caboodle (one of the very first, I’m sure) filled with wonders. Maxi-to-Go Eyeshadow to match every color of every shirt I had for I was of the belief that your eyeshadow should match your shirt. I’m not sure why I decided that, but a very nice girl named Tracy told me in the early days of seventh grade that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to match your eyeshadow to your shirt. I took her advice to heart because she was in ninth grade and of course she would know these things.

I also had blush and powder by Covergirl that came in those faux-tortoise shell plastic cases, eyeliner that you’d melt with a lighter because someone somewhere told some girl that’s what you did and so we all did it for exact reasons I never knew. And of course, that Maybelline mascara in the pink tube with the green cap.

Also in that Caboodle? My Geometricks curling iron. I distinctly remember using it exactly once, spiral curling all my hair while sitting in front of back-to-back episodes of “Jem” and “She-Ra” before school.

It took for-fucking-ever to curl your hair with that spiral attachment. We’re talking at least an hour. Sure the payoff was great and lots of people noticed, but sleeping is better than having people notice your nice spiral curls.

Just typing about this I can smell the chemically-apple scent of Salon Selectives. Do you remember how revolutionary Salon Selectives seemed in the 80s? Hairspray that smelled good? It was amazing.

So yeah. I like makeup. I like reading about it. Back when I had disposable income and only read Sweet Valley High books, I really liked to buy makeup. Sure it was a waste of money because I usually wore makeup and did my hair for about one-week or so in September from the time school started until the day after school pictures were taken. That’s how long the novelty lasted. Then I was back to wearing ponytails and sleeping in.

This laziness followed me up through junior-highdom all the way into adulthood. There was a brief flirtation with those brown and raisin-colored lipsticks in the mid-90s. And occasionally I go through a nail polish phase, but for the most part I haven’t bought or worn makeup since the 80s.

Until Tuesday when I bought ridiculous goth purple lipstick. My heart decided it needed purple lipstick. It’s been flirting with purple lipstick for awhile because BFK’s 12-year-old is always wearing cool blue lipstick and Maddy looks like a rockstar when she does and I wanted to look like a rockstar. Apparently a goth one.

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The first County Seat store opened in Minneapolis in 1973. Beginning as an offspring of the grocery store chain Super Valu Stores, County Seat was intended as a budget-priced chain of stores offering casual clothes for the entire family, with about 3,500 square feet per store. The stores featured Levi jeans and other Levi apparel and had a distinct country western look with a rustic wood decor. That decor predominated for 12 years, as the chain slowly grew.

First, I have to say that I love the idea of a jeans store that began as an offshoot of a grocery store.

But County Seat carried more than Levis, oh yes, because it was at County Seat where you could get the Locker Loot.

The fact that I cannot find a photo of or fan page dedicated to the wondrous beauty of the Locker Loot is making me re-think my whole “the Internet is the best thing ever” philosophy. Seriously Internet, isn’t your one true purpose having documentation on everything that ever happened or existed? Well, you have failed. FAIL! Epic Fail with double exclamation points. You ought to be a ashamed of yourself, Internet.

But back to the Locker Loot, oh what a thing of glory for any girl aged 10-15 in the early to mid 80s. The Locker Loot was a miniature duffle bag (maybe about eight inches wide, by four inches tall) with “Locker Loot by County Seat” screen-printed on the front of it and inside. . . well, inside you’d find an assortment of sample-sized goodies sure to please the Bonne Belle in your life — Noxzema, Jean Nate, disposable razors in a variety of 80s colors, and most every other beauty aid advertised in the pages of Seventeen. Of course, it also included coupons to buy full-sized versions of all this crap. I’m sure the idea was to fill the bag with all the loot a girl would need while showering after gym class. Marketing at its finest.

Originally, it was sold in a sort of boring green color with khaki stripes that turned into the handles. My Aunt Cathy had one of the green ones she got at the Burnsville Mall and I loved it with my whole heart. I spent the summer before 7th grade pining for a Locker Loot of my very own, despondent that I couldn’t afford one (because any time I had two quarters to rubbed together I dashed off to Snyder’s to procure more Maxi Colors-to-Go eyeshadow).

All my pre-teen moping and whining and sad poetry paid off, because when school shopping rolled around one of the first stops was County Seat in the Northtown Mall. I wheeled right up the counter, where the Locker Loots were sold, and to my great pleasure discovered that they were now offered in pink and turquoise. Turquoise was my very favorite color of all the colors (as you would have been able to guess had you seen my entire back-to-school wardrobe for 7th grade) and I nearly died of joy right there in County Seat.

I wish I could remember what kind of delights filled this turquoise bag of goodness, but alas I cannot. I also wish I still had it so I could take a picture of it and be the holder of the only (so it seems) photographic evidence that such a glorious beast existed. For now, you will have to take my word for it.

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The worst part of growing up in suburban Minneapolis in the 80s was the ridiculous standard of beauty. Sure we laugh at it now, but big hair was a lot of work. It required, in some cases, hours of diligence and sometimes life threatening feats involving aerosol Aqua Net and a hot curling iron. Many girls in our neighborhood wielded their hairspray encrusted curling irons as a sort of badge of honor.

Every fall when school rolled around I would re-dedicate myself to upholding these ridiculous standards of beauty. The day before school started I marched up to Snyder Drug to arm myself with a bottle of extra-control hairspray (I preferred the Clairol non-areosol in the cool-shaped bottle because it smelled a little better. This was in the days before hair products spelled like fruit and flowers and gumdrops. Kids these days have no idea how good they have it), the latest in Maxi-to-Go eyeshadows, seven different flavors of lip smackers, and an industrial-sized vat of Noxema to remove it all after school.

This was no easy task. First of all, the supplies had to be purchased on the sly. My dad did not allow makeup. He was a tyrant. He didn’t allow short hair either, claiming some kind of nonsense about “God not giving me sons. . .” Second of all, I had no beauty role models. My mom never wore it. Ever. She still doesn’t. And her hair was very 70s hippie — long, thick, and straight. She was no help at all. I was guessing as best I could based on what I saw in Seventeen, YM, and on MTV. I knew this was important stuff. Junior high was hell enough without being the doofus with flat hair. If you had flat hair at Roosevelt Junior High it was assumed your family was part of some strange religion that banned all things that were good — MTV, Doritos, Pepsi, and Aquanet. We shuddered in horror at the thought.

I’d get up every morning at ridiculous o’clock, park myself in front of the She-Ra, crack open my Caboodle with the mirror in the lid, and do my best to apply the stuff in a manner that was pleasing. Sometime before Thanksgiving one very nice ninth grader named Tracey who sat next to me on the bus told me my eye shadow should match my eyes and not the color of shirt I was wearing that day. I thought the peacock blue eyeshadow looked foxy. I was wrong.

It was hell. I never enjoyed the process, and was the only fat girl who longed for the swimming section of gym class because that was the only time of year flat hair was excused. By high school I realized that no matter how high my hair was I wasn’t ever going to be popular. I’d still try, every year, for about three weeks. From the start of school until pictures were taken, but after that all bets were off. The fact that we had to be in homeroom by 7:30 a.m. strengthened my no makeup/hair-doing resolve.

Watching She-Ra tonight made me remember all that hair curling nonsense. She-Ra was the best part of the whole ordeal.

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as we are all ohhing and ahhing over his goergous mullet and picking on him mercilessly joe says, “hey, that’s my license to rock.” much beer exits many noses. then shannon whips out her old passport that shows her resplendent in mall bangs and an impressive wing span. she looks a lot like tanya harding in the picture. thus it is quickly dubbed her passport to rock.

anyway, i was looking at this photo CD kari made me for my birthday and on it, is my license to rock. that’s me circa 1988.

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