Clown cheeks? Crooked wings? Fix makeup fails without starting over
Image: Freepik
You're foundation is flawless and you're contoured to perfection, but when you go in to apply your eyeliner or blush, things can quickly take a turn for the worse.
We've all had those moments when we've gone a step too far with our blush or eyeliner looks more like a scribble than a sleek line.
To make matters worse, this disaster often strikes when you're in a hurry and there's no time to start all over again.
But before you reach for the makeup wipes, there are a few tricks you can use to quickly fix those annoying mishaps.
Blush overload
If you've gone overboard with the blush and are looking more like a clown than a glowing goddess, here's what to do.
The fix: Use a clean powder brush or a makeup sponge with a bit of leftover foundation on it to buff over the area.
This will tone down the intensity without removing the blush completely. You can also lightly dust a bit of translucent powder over it to soften the pigment.
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Mascara disaster
Mascara mishaps are the absolute worst when you're rushing.
The fix: Resist the urge to wipe immediately. Let the smudge dry completely. Once dry, it's much easier to flick away with a clean earbud.
If it's clumpy, grab a clean, dry mascara brush and gently comb through your lashes to separate them and remove excess product.
Simply use a clean dry mascara brush to get rid of clumps.
Image: Meruyert Gonullu / Pexels
Eyeliner gone wrong
Your one eye is perfectly lined, but the other looks like it was applied by a five-year-old.
The fix: Dip an earbud into micellar water and carefully clean up any wobbly lines or smudges.
After you've cleaned up, use a small, flat brush to apply a touch of concealer right along the edge of your eyeliner.
Uneven brows
Yes, our eyebrows are not a perfect pair, but with one wrong move, they can quickly look like strangers.
The fix: Grab a clean mascara brush and blend out the product to diffuse harsh lines.
If you've gone overboard, use a cotton bud with a little micellar water or concealer on a flat brush to clean up the edges. Then fill in only where needed.
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After I took race justice and critical race theory to newspapers, I quickly ended up with two files fat with death threats and smear campaigns, now retired into archives at the SAHRC. I have been followed, stalked, recorded, threatened, and destabilised by the far right. I have been no-platformed by the liberal gatekeeping class, rendered ungovernable and untouchable by the very institutions that claim to champion freedom. But I never centred that. I did not have the energy to, and I did not have the resources to fight this. Our work was never monetised. I am only naming it now because we lost our son to suicide, a tragedy shaped in part by the deluge of false media narratives, by public calls to have me tried and arrested by a culture of punishment that played out in the full glare of a public hungry for blood. I want to heal my complex PTSD. I want justice for my brown boy child who, as a teenager, watched the world close in on his parents. 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That world was torn apart by the Nakba, when Zionist militias stormed Palestinian homes, drove families into exile, and began the long, choking suffocation that today hems Bethlehem in. The apartheid wall cuts through its landscape. Illegal settlements spread across its hills. Military checkpoints sever its roads. Soldiers watch its streets. At its heart stands the Church of the Nativity, built in the fourth century by Helena, mother of Constantine, over the cave where Maryam is believed to have given birth to ʿĪsā. It is the oldest Christian church still in use, its walls darkened by candle smoke, its stones shaped by the knees and hands of centuries of worshippers. It bears the scars of the 2002 siege, when Israeli soldiers surrounded it, leaving bullet holes still visible. For the few Palestinian Christians left, the church is not a monument. It is survival. It is breath. It is a memory of belonging in a land that has never been allowed peace. And yet you sit there, Pieter, in your hotel chair, composing your post. You centre yourself. You wrap Bethlehem around your performance of atheism, as if your personal rejection of faith is relevant here, as if the mothers whispering Maryam's name over their dead, or the children holding onto the memory of ʿĪsā as a face like theirs, need your existential rebellion. I too fell into the trap, Pieter. I too mocked organised religion in my early years, imagining this was a mark of free thinking, not fully grasping that for those oppressed by whiteness, God is not always the white-bearded adversarial patriarch of European lore. God is the name called upon in the dark. God is the effigy that carries brown or black skin. God is sometimes the emancipatory presence when the state and the oligarchs have taken everything else. You do realise that sitting centre stage and telling people what to think or believe is just another form of toxic white patriarchy. It is hard not to see you. 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It is the ache of inherited trauma, the daily dissonance of being told to survive with dignity in a world built to break you. It is the pain of watching White people like you monetise their pain, presenting as hashtag revolutionaries while the poorest Black lives remain ungrievable. Do not mouth back at Black people what they already know or should think or believe just because you imagine your mind is so advanced. If you are going to enter this terrain, acknowledge the voices from whom you borrow your theory. Reference them. Honour them. We veterans know that not one original idea has come out of your strident, confident, know-it-all posture. To step into this fragile and painful space and position yourself as philosopher, as guide, as mouthpiece, begins to feel like decoy politics. Your white presence on the safe edges of Gaza, your curated benevolence, carries the stale scent of white settler colonialism, of benevolence politics we have long outgrown. We have long passed the stage where white boys in crisp shirts and borrowed slogans get to stand on occupied terrain and tell people how to feel about their ancient cultural and spiritual beliefs, as if their personal crisis of faith carries more weight than centuries of survival, as if their intellectual swagger counts for more than ancestral memory. If you truly care, take your seat at the back. Read. Listen. Name your sources. Understand the responsibility that comes with speaking in public. Understand that solidarity is not built on your centre stage. It is built where you are unseen, where others lead, where you stop feeding on spectacle and start dismantling the need for it. Explore the implications of privilege and race in Bethlehem as Gillian Schutte addresses Pieter Kriel's controversial TikTok post, challenging the narratives surrounding occupation and identity. Image: IOL * Gillian Schutte is a South African writer, filmmaker, and social justice activist. Her work interrogates systems of power, capitalism, patriarchy, and whiteness, and is rooted in the defence of the commons, decolonial justice, and the dignity of all life. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
