If you’re like me (constantly hungry, bespectacled, obsessed with dogs), your formative makeup years were not the blazingly bright 1980s or the “various shades of morose brown” early 1990s but the shiny, proto-futuristic, low-waisted years of the early 2000s. It was a time where the term “social media” would have been reserved for a single-panel comic depicting a bunch of personified TV stations making quips and The Simpsons were obliterating any lingering hopes of ever being good again. It was in 2000, in the Bloomingdale’s in Manhattan, when my mum bought me my first nice makeup: A Hard Candy eye shadow stick in a shimmery light blue, glitter eyeliner pencil in a slightly darker shimmery blue, and a bottle of nail polish in Frigid (if you’re wondering, it had a blue star ring. NOTE: For those of you who might be slightly younger, this was back in the day when Hard Candy was considered a mid-range brand on par with Urban Decay and other “hip” up-and-coming makeup lines. I don’t know exactly what happened in the middle, but now they are sold at Wal-Mart, so clearly something happened). If you want a soundtrack for this article, just put on Sonique’s “Feels So Good” on repeat. (Speaking of that video, remember when athleisure meant baggy clothes made of fleece? We should really just bring back fleece vests, guys.) So get out your Victoria’s Secret body sprays, it’s time to venture back to a world in which Britney and Christina were still sweating and grinding to prove who was the best, Urban Decay packaging looked like either manhole covers or subway tokens, and hair mascara was the height of crusty, sparkly teenage glam.
(HERE COMES THE ASTERISK: From punk to emo to Lolita chavs to ganguro to rockabilly to cybergoths, there were a lot of subcultures happening in the 2000s. In this column I will be primarily focusing on mass-market popular Western trends. Due to globalization there was a lot of makeup trend homogeneity across countries in the 2000s, which of course is still true today.)
The early 2000s (and — while I will keep referring to the 2000s — the late 1990s, from 1998 onwards, blend into these trends as well) were a cacophony of glitter, light-coloured metallic eye shadows, and Bonne Bell. The approach of the new millennium ushered in a sort of weird futurism in makeup and clothing (i.e., lots of Y2k silver; non-Western influences — especially South and East Asian — worked into everything; the mid-2000s 1980s pseudo-revival; and FUTURE COWBOY). Unless you are under the age of 16, you will have strong memories of the early 2000s. Maybe you were an emo kid wearing red lipstick as eye shadow and weeping Great Lash-streaked tears to Dashboard Confessional (“Well as for me I wish that I was anywhere with anyone making out“). Maybe you were a prep and you wore three pastel Abercrombie & Fitch polo shirts and a low-waisted denim miniskirt. (Shit, remember when light-wash denim was everywhere and everything was about one inch away from ending up on a viral video titled “FAIL ARMY: INDECENT EXPOSURE”? If there is a fashion god, we shall never return to that horrible time, because I cannot be bothered to wax that much of my body.)
Alicia Keys at the 2002 Grammy Awards
I feel like for every decade I just stand here and shriek one word (LIPSTICK! BLUSH! ARSENIC!), and the 2000s (especially pre-2004) can be summed up by yelling GLITTER! and chucking a handful of it at someone. If you’re the kind of person who has a Pinterest board full of disco balls and piles of sparkles, then you might want to step in a time machine and go back to an era when you didn’t need contouring because you had copious amount of glitter or crystals everywhere (THROWBACK TIME: Speaking of crystals, remember when Traci Bingham wore THIS to the 2001 Grammy Awards? I’m no prude, but I’m still not convinced that $48 of crystals from Michael’s counts as a top). From 1998 to around 2003-2004, body and hair glitter was one of the main trends — from lipstick to eyeshadow to moisturizer, glitter was in basically everything. This can be partially chalked up to the Y2K-inspired futurism that influenced fashion in the late ’90s and early 2000s, a time when the world felt open, sparkly, and many thought a glittering global future lay before us.
If faces at the time were defined by GLITTER!, lips were defined by GLOSS! (and later STAINS!). MAC Lipglass was the most popular lip goop of the time, a product that looked amazing on Beyoncé (back in the Destiny’s Child days) and was a magnet for bits of hair for everyone else on the planet who wore it, as we all know that Bey has some sort of force field installed around her face so that her makeup never smears.
Beyoncé at the 2004 Grammy Awards
Shimmery and metallic glosses were also popular, as once you have glitter on your face and on your eyes, you might as well put it on your mouth. Urban Decay had Lip Gunk, L’Oreal had Glam Shine, Stila had Lip Glaze, and many other brands had pigmented glosses filled with sparkles and shimmer. While gloss continued onwards through the 2000s, lipsticks stayed more natural and sheer until the mid-2000s, when vintage-inspired reds came back and ushered in several years of red and berry pouts (and if you think that liquid lipsticks have only become hot in the last few years, the late ’90s and early 2000s would like to have a word with you).
Max Factor ad, 1999
For eye shadow, more was more in the early 2000s, and the “more” meant more shimmer, more silver, and more of it smeared straight up towards the eyebrow. Eye looks tended to trend towards one colour on both the lid and the brow bone, usually in lighter, metallic shades. Cream products were also quite popular at the time, with a number of brands putting out cream-based eye products (also in shimmer shades. Seriously, it’s like a decade of people being terrified that something, somewhere will be matte). Aside from the metallic shades, smoky eyes became popular around 2003, around the time Christina Aguilera dyed her hair black and wore what appears to be the backside of a flamingo as a dress (popular choice: Benefit’s BADgal liner drawn around the eyes). While liner tended to end up all around the eyes, shadow remained mostly on the upper lid during this time period. Meanwhile, the late-2000s love of lash extensions and fake lashes inspired a world of blog posts titled “I GLUED MY EYELIDS SHUT OMFG.”
If you were going for eyeliner, you had three options: None (because you need plenty of room for your shimmery shadow, DUH), a “pop of colour” across either the top lash line or bottom lash line (but not both, because DUH), or the Avril Lavigne (where you took a stubby worn-down Benefit Bad Gal pencil and rimmed your entire eye until you appeared to be channelling a Bollywood starlet who has spent the last eight hours crying). White eyeliner also made a weird appearance in the late ’90s/early 2000s, which is just giving me a lot of unsettling feelings right now. By the mid-2000s, 1940s/’50s-inspired looks were in full swing, meaning the dramatic wing (which is INCORRECT) was back, returning eyeliner to a world of liquid liner and black on black on black, but hey, we had some fun in the early 2000s, right?
Finally, as for actual skin, the early 2000s can be summed up by screaming FAKE TAN! while rubbing a bunch of Jergens Natural Glow directly in your eyes. While eye and lip makeup was full of chunks of glitter, foundation at the time was considerably more natural. With Bare Essentials appearing on the market in 2002, mineral makeups became quite popular as well, pushing liquid-based foundations to the side for a brief period of time. But really, for paler people, it was all about the fake tan until the late 2000s. Tanning creams and spray tans were the most popular way of achieving the look without all the UV damage, meaning there was a span of about 5 to 8 years where many celebrities were just slightly too orange.
Josie and the Pussycats, 2001.
Outside of the actual trends, this was an incredibly interesting time for the makeup community. It was the advent of serious blogging, with people widely sharing their reviews, looks, and thoughts on makeup. We were still some years away from Instagram models/”influencers” and MUAs who don’t actually do makeup on anyone other than themselves, but people were starting to take to the internet to discuss makeup (such as on Makeup Alley, which started in 1999). As for stores, Sephora’s influence was growing stronger and stronger, helped along by the purchase of the chain by Louis Vitton Moet Hennesey — the Voltron of expensive brands — in 1997. By 1999, they had expanded into the US, Italy, Portugual, Spain, and Poland (adding Romania and Greece in 2000 and Canada in 2004), adding their US online store in 1999, and their Beauty Insider Program in 2003. Again, this article is focusing more on Western trends, but the Sephora model of cosmetic sales (high-end and mid-range makeup, lenient return policies, beauty bars, etc.) has definitely influenced the way that many stores approach makeup sales, which was previously the domain of department stores (high end) and drugstores (low end). Stores such as Ulta, Shoppers Drug Mart, Boots, and other similar stores have spent the last decade or so stepping up their makeup game to offer a wider range of products, more luxury options, and programs and stand-alone stores dedicated to makeup and beauty products.
Packaging also changed a lot around this time. Many brands (Wet’n’Wild, Jordache, e.l.f., etc.) on the low end of the cosmetic counter went with the clear plastic lids at the time, which were obviously designed to slide off in your purse, leaving everything covered in a thick layer of shiny goo. Packaging — even for drugstore brands — was starting to improve, as now brands referred to as “mid-range” (Urban Decay, Too Faced, Stila, CARGO, and — at the time — Hard Candy) were taking over market shares from previously unchallenged drugstore brands (CoverGirl, L’Oreal, Maybelline, etc.). Brands were also taking more risks with packaging, with Stila putting out their ubiquitous Lip Glazes in 2000 (originally created for Cameron Diaz when she was shooting Charlie’s Angels), a number of brands putting out those brushes with the squeezy bits on the end that pumped powder into them (lies, they pumped powder frickin’ everywhere), Bonne Bell creating their lava lamp-esque Lip Rush glosses, and — in 2009 — Urban Decay’s Pocket Rocket lip glosses that came with pheromone-infused lids with lenticular images of dudes in their underwear on them. There were also a lot of makeup products designed to be edible, such as Urban Decay’s Flavoured Body Powders (because the only thing better than body glitter is body glitter you can lick off your arm while bored in class) and all the stuff from Jessica Simpson’s short-lived Dessert Beauty (because the only thing better than edible body glitter is edible body glitter that makes you want to hum “With You”). While many cosmetic products are still scented today, the 2000s was the height for cosmetics that smelled like vanilla, chocolate, cotton candy, and plasticized strawberries.
Candies ad, 2000.
The main shift from the 2000s to the 2010s is that the 2010s have so far been defined more by the idea of luxury in a way that connotes expensive, poreless refinement, versus the 2000s focus on luxury that comes from spending a day at the spa with cucumber slices over your eyes and then going clubbing at some place called Blaze or Haus or Circa.
This is my last column for The Toast, so RIP The Brush Off! Thanks to everyone who has read my insane yelling (LIPSTICK!) over the last few months; it’s been a hoot (hopefully this series will find new life somewhere else — I am planning to do audio versions in the next few weeks). If you want to read more of my stuff, you can check out my Twitter, Instagram, or website. And now, as my way of saying goodbye, please enjoy all these great early 2000s makeup commercials. Pigment to pigment, dust to dust.
Sources
Please tell me I wasn’t the only one who thought that blue mascara was a good idea. PLEASE.
i am so ashamed
If you love blue mascara and it makes you happy, NO SHAME, bb. No shame.
I still have blue mascara and I AM NOT ASHAMED.
Though I mostly missed 90’s/early 2000’s makeup due to being a child not allowed near make up so I’m making my own mistakes.
You were not the only person who though blue mascara was a good idea.
I also went through a period of time where I insisted on wearing purple contacts with matching purple mascara. To middle school.
I too am ashamed.
You are my hero
I got a lime green mascara/liquid liner duo from Hot Topic when I was a teen. Alas, my lashes are black, so the green didn’t really show up, except where it clumped so badly that it looked like I had cartoon snot stuck on my eyes.
Ah yes, the era my blonde invisible lashes were actually helpful! I know I had at least royal blue and purple mascara, I want to say I had an emerald green too?
I either had blue mascara or bright blue liquid eyeliner, and I cannot remember which.
I had BOTH
I’ll see your blue mascara and raise you matching blue HAIR mascara.
Because nothing matches blue eyelashes like crusty hair (NOTE: I wore so much hair mascara that I can actually fully recall the smell. My hair was literally just a bunch of immobile chunks for a period of time).
I was reading this article going “Thank GOD I didn’t get sucked into any of these ridiculous trends aside from a couple of half-hearted forays into body glitter!” but now I remember that I had OLIVE GREEN mascara and I wore it out in public.
YES
I regularly wore purple mascara WITH purple eyeliner, when not doing the whole Avril raccoon eye look, so…yeah.
I just want you to know that you weren’t alone in doing that. Clearly we were just trendsetters.
Haha, that must be it!
I literally just saw a youtube makeup tutorial using blue mascara and it looked really good! Maybe we should bring it back!
YSL recently put out a line of coloured mascaras that are actually kind of great (I tried the green one and am almost tempted to drop $40 on frickin’ green mascara), so I’m all for colourful mascara. MORE COLOUR, MORE WEIRD FLAKES OF MAKEUP UNDER MY EYES.
Do it! I bought green sparkly liquid eyeliner for Halloween last year and have totally worn it when I’m feeling bored. Watching your friends react without bringing it up is hilarious.
i saw the green and was soooooo tempted. But I know it will just linger in the drawer, like all makeup purchases outside my normal look.
Um, I recently ordered this, sight unseen. It is arriving today. I have no idea why I think I can pull this off.
oh, i definitely had the blue mascara. i think i wore it with lime green eyeshadow.
This post honestly reminded me that the first mascara I ever bought was blue.
Totally wore blue mascara….with blue eyeliner and glittery blue eye shadow…
I…still wear it occasionally?? It’s *almost* black but I just think it looks cool…however the older I get the less I care about what makeup I am supposed to or not supposed to be wearing
COLORED MASCARAS ARE BACK IN (or trying to be back in).
NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR BLUE!
And yet, I still cannot find a white mascara to save my life (i want two seasons ago’s smokey eyes + last season’s overlarge brows + white lashes I THINK IT WILL LOOK GREAT)
NYX has some pastel ones, so they might have white? (I bought a sort of pale pink a few months back and have yet to find a good reason to try it out. Also it was like five bucks, so if you hate it, you don’t feel like you wasted all your precious hard-earned dollars on something dumb.)
Alas! Google does not immediately think that this is a thing that exists, and I cannot do pastels, it is a Morticia Adams thing, I just own it at this point.
The only thing I get when I search for white is for Halloween makeup: https://dearbloodymary.com/products/eyes/mascara/… Do you know if this is a garbage brand? (hi fellow Slack Toastie, i know you have good advice and i wants it ♥)
I’ve seen mascara primer (makes them thicker before you put on the regular stuff) and it is white. I’m not sure how opaque it is though since it is supposed to be covered with something else. Speaking of Hard Candy… http://www.walmart.com/ip/Hard-Candy-1000-Lashes-…
Yeah, I have tried the primer route. It mostly just fades to lash-colour after about 20 minutes :S
If you find it, I would be glad to know, because I also think that would look AMAZING!
no, I refuse to believe the oversize brows are last season! this is the only time I’ve ever gotten compliments on my eyebrows without actually doing anything to them! it has been so good. think of all of us bushy-browed folk.
I am honestly just talking out my ass, i barely even know what a season is (other than spring is when the maple sap runs, summer is when i die from heat, and the rest of the year = sweater weather). Rock whatever eyebrows you want, you will be stunning ♥
Like all questionable trends colored mascara has come around again. Go ahead and blue yourself, should the mood strike!
I still secretly love and wear blue eyeliner and mascara
(but done subtly)
Oooof, I am so old that, in the early naughties (00s for everyone else, I guess), a colleague wore blue mascara and I kept thinking “Jesus that looks terrible” and I kept losing track of my conversation with her and finally came out with “I am sorry i am having trouble concentrating, your eyes are just so… distracting” and she was like “Good that is the point I love them” and I was not a kind enough person then to be able to be glad for her and instead I just muttered about the shitty 80s being over and walked away.
In my defense, tho, it was a terrible blue and did not match anything that she was wearing.
I was there. It happened. We pulled through it together.
Haaa I just rediscovered a turqouise urban decay eyeliner and started wearing it again. Bringing it back!
I was recently in a makeup store, looking at Urban Decay eyeliner. They have so many colors! Including a hot pink one. I don’t know who could wear that and pull it off (not me, no way), but it was spellbinding.
I had blue mascara. I regret nothing.
Blue mascara and white eyeliner! It was… a look.
*raises hand*
One of my high school teachers wore blue mascara in the late 80s. I saw her again five years ago at the grocery store (and ducked away quickly, though I don’t know why I bothered because she hated all her students enough that she barely remembered them the following year and would never have recognized me) and she was still wearing the exact same shade of blue. My inside sources (the high school teachers I kept in touch with) tell me she never stopped in between.
That is a woman with a serious commitment to blue eyelashes.
GLITTER. The song of my people
And that song goes, “GLITTER IS THE BEST.”
I was one of those people in the rockabilly culture of the 2000’s, and wasn’t paying much attention to pop culture, especially the makeup which seems too bad because honestly, as an 80s teen, the stuff in this article is 100% 80s throwback makeup with a more…reasonable…color palette. Trade out Christina’s mauve eyeshadows in that first pic for a yellow/teal combo? It doesn’t get more 80s than that.
Completely. The early 2000s is basically the subtlety of the 80s mixed with the bizarro photo-futurism of 1999/2000. If silver makeup is the future, why not make EVERYTHING silver?
I’m going to miss these! Bookmarking your website now.
This is pretty accurate to my limited memory of 2000s makeup. Neither my mom nor I wear any makeup, but the 2000s were my “coming of age” and I remember both of us wandering around the drugstore, around Kohl’s, around Ulta, and just being like “ok… we can do this.” (We could not.) I amassed a small collection of cosmetics used exclusively for theater and school dances, consisting of: GreatLash Blackest Black mascara, black eyeliner, super sticky gold glitter lip gloss that came in a tube (cannot remember the brand but they were ubiquitous and cheap), and a pot of Bare Essentials gold glitter eyeshadow. It was A Look.
When I was old enough to go shopping without mom, I also dabbled in the world of Hot Topic cosmetics, but nothing really worked on me.
I don’t understand why every single lipgloss from that time had to have the consistency of tacky putty. I swear, all of the hair near my face just lived in this weird state of semi-gooeyness.
“Houblonchouffe: The College Years.”
Same. There are a horrifying number of pictures of me with a fake tan, acrylic nails, white eyeliner, and indeed topped off with a straw cowboy hat. WHY?? I was one of those girls who couldn’t tan but forced the issue anyway, so I was definitely orange.
It took me way too long to realize that “houblonchouffe” here was your screen name and not the beer.
one follows the other, as day follows night
Is…is that Megan Fox sitting on the cyber-ejaculation rocket?
That advertisement was permanently seared into my eyeballs when I first saw it. Thus the birth of my whitehot hatred of Mark McGrath.
I never saw that ad when it first came out, but looking at it now, I’m struck by how incredibly dated it looks. Between the CRT monitor and the highlighted hair, it looks nearly as far from today’s aesthetic as, say a typical ad from the 60s. It’s amazing that that can happen in 15 years. Or maybe I’m just amazed that it’s BEEN 15 years since then. 🙂
That ad was the centerpiece in my high school religion teacher’s unit on SEX IN ADVERTISING AND WHY IT IS EVIL. We all had to bring in examples (just dishearteningly easy to find), but none of them were as hilariously blatant as the rocket-penis.
I keep trying to remember who’s in that ad. Also, the Candies ads from that time are all like, sexual in a way that a 16-year-old is like, “Oh man, being an adult is going to be 2 DOPE.” Needless to say, I owned multiple pairs of Candies shoes and also their perfume and was like, “I’m slightly too young for this but it makes me feel real cool and older even though I am a nerdy 12-year-old in northern Ontario. YES, VERY HIP.”
Holy crap, I didn’t look at that picture as I was reading the article, but I don’t know how that got approved. It’s not like it’s subtle–you know exactly what they’re getting at.
I THOUGHT EXACTLY THE SAME THING. She would have been 14 if that ad came out in 2000, so…I hope not.
Incidentally, I actually remember seeing that ad in like, Teen People or CosmoGIRL or something, as a wee lass (in retrospect I was probably a bit too young for those rags), and yeah, it definitely made me go o.O
I don’t know, but it sure looks like Chris Pine is at the keyboard.
Nah, it’s the Sugar Ray guy, what’s-his-name. Super early-2000s!
mark mcgrath. my horribly ill advised crush a pre-teen. in an attempt to not follow the nsync/ backstreet boys SHEEPLE i thought i was better than, i became very invested in him. he is literally 20 years older than me and i remember my pervy little mind trying to figure out when it would less creepy for us to hook up.
i was obsessed with a skeezy 2000s front man with awful highlights and a shit-eating grin: an autobiography.
I feel like I was on the outside of so many fashion trends in the late ’90s and early 2000s, which were my middle school/high school/college years, but I came here to say this: fuck low rise jeans. I have a gorgeous ass and low rise jeans made it look terrible. The coin slot should NEVER have been a thing.
I’m open to a lot of trends coming back, but low-rise jeans are one of the things that makes me go NO LET’S NEVER BRING THEM BACK.
Dude, yes. The combination of low rise and flared legs had me believing all throughout my teens that I had a flat ass. My first pencil skirt was a revelation.
TERRIBLE. remember the weird dent in our hips we would all get from where our low rise jeans would dig into us?
i swear, i feel like it actually changed the shape of my body. when i switched to high-rise jeans a few years ago i feel like they made my waist smaller! maybe i am just extra malleable.
Oh man YES.
I remember when skinny jeans started coming in it took me a really long time to try them because I had been so burned by low-rise jeans. No more jeans trends for me. That way danger lies.
Unpopular opinion: i love low rise jeans. This, however, is because I have no crotch (apparently), and “normal” jeans i shit you not come up to my tits. THE BURDEN.
I am long-waisted, and jeans now poke me in the ribcage. I am happy when I can find secondhand low rise jeans that aren’t worn out beyond use.
I had some friends who loved low rise jeans and who looked great in them. It’s just that for a while it was the ONLY kind of jeans that were made, and it made so many of us look terrible. Could they just do what Old Navy does and have multiple cuts for multiple body types?
Yep, see also skinny jeans about 5 years ago. I honestly don’t know why fashion goes in such weird “you can only get x kind of thing” trends, but I suspect it has something to do with capitalism. Could be supply chains (all the machines/labourers are compelled to do one thing or a variation on that theme), could be industry creating false demand (you can’t wear last season’s jeans, everyone will know and they will look AWFUL), could but either way it is stupid.
gahhhhhhh yes. i distinctly remember going to a party in college where we were supposed to dress “sexy” (there was a faux-progressive message which i absolutely do not have enough fucks to reiterate) so i wore my lowest-rise jeans (which, to be fair, made my ass look great when they managed to cover it, which was about 30% of the time) and a satin CORSET (all the other girls were just wearing underwear, i was overdressed by comparison), and at one point i was sitting/crouching on the floor talking to a friend with my back to the party and this guy came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder and was like “hey, just so you know, i can see part of your butt.” and i was drunk enough/proto-feminist enough that i looked him in the eye and was like “YES, I KNOW. WHAT’S YOUR POINT?” like, the idea that everyone else at that party was literally wearing, basically, a bra and panties, but my slightly too-low-rise jeans, in an era where it was impossible to buy jeans that would actually cover your ass, were inappropriate? fuck that noise.
High-five college you!
It’s fine if it’s a thing for people who want it, but there were years there where it was impossible to find any non-low-rise jeans. Years when I could never lean forward without showing the top of my ass, which I did not wish to do!
Exaaaaaactly. That’s what I hated…for about 5 years I could not find any jeans that weren’t low rise unless they were made for women over 40.
I remember trying out Avril’s eyeliner look for the first time and my dad responding with “you look like you got punched in the face. Twice.” I also definitely owned a thing of bath & bodyworks watermelon scented roll-on body glitter. Totally an appropriate thing to wear to school. Good times. I don’t miss the hair-in-the-lip-gloss situation though.
I was just coming to the comments to say something about roll-on body glitter. How was that a thing?? It was so uncomfortable to wear.
“It’s a little plastic ball that you use to rub bits of plastic on yourself. What could be uncomfortable about that?”
A friend of mine recently reminded me of Avril and her “no mom it’s as black as MY SOUL duh” eyeliner. I mean, she had a look and she stuck with it, but that look meant that there are probably hundreds of pillowcases that god ruined in the early 2000s by teenagers loading up on BADgal and then falling asleep without washing it off (“NO MOM MY SKIN IS FINE I’LL JUST USE THIS STUPID OXY PAD UGH”).
Roll on body glitter! Was just coming to say that. It smelled so sweet too.. I remember adding it to my arms and collar bone and..shins, I think? Who doesn’t need glittery shins.
Imma glitter my shins the next time I run a trail race so I am SHINY to make up for how slow I am.
People will slow to admire your beautiful, fast, shiny legs, and you will win at life, races, and everything.
Watermelon-scented everything! My sister used so much of it that the smell started to make me feel ill. I asked to borrow her lip gloss one time when my lips were really dry and I regretted it.
Oh how I loved glitter! I remember having the goopiest glitter crap that I LOVED and put all over my face. And colored eyeliners! Actually, those were awesome and I miss them.
It was all about the baby blue pastel eyeshadow for me.
FUN FACT: I still own the first nice eyeshadow I ever got (Hard Candy’s Sky) and it’s the perfect early 2000s baby blue shade. I don’t want to ever throw it away, it just sits in a drawer as a reminder.
ah, junior high. I had this cucumber-scented shimmery green eyeshadow cream that got a LOT of use.
oh, and bath & bodyworks glittery everything. yep.
Scented eyeshadow makes my brain hurt. WHY IS IT SCENTED.
it was “cool cucumber” so it was supposed to have a refreshing effect! like having actual cucumbers on your eyes?? I don’t know!
There was a whole line of cooling/refreshing eye creams/pencils! Which I had totally forgotten until just now (I used “cool beans” because my mom was very explicitly against any non-taupe eye makeup).
No lie, I would 100% wear that stuff again. I’m old, I need any potential depuffing/cooling/lifting action my eyelids can get.
You had me at “constantly hungry, bespectacled, obsessed with dogs”. ALSO the late 90s/early 00s are the reason I will never, ever have natural brows again.
Those were some dark, over-plucked times.
Same, but it’s amazing, because I’ve completely stopped tending to them now.
I think Gwen Stefani has a lot to answer for regarding eyebrows. Obviously I wanted to look as cool as Gwen, so my eyebrows were plucked to 30s-style thin lines and to this day will not grow back in places.
1) When I think of early 00s makeup I always picture Summer in the fashion show in the first episode of The OC
2) In junior high my friends and I tried to have an intervention with a girl in our group who always wore blue eyeshadow and didn’t believe it was tacky.
1) Is her eyeshadow entirely UNDER her eye? What is happening there?
2) Blue eyeshadow is a tough one. It’s like, sometimes it looks so cool and interesting, and other times it looks like you got attacked by a drunk makeup artist from 1984.
I believe she actually has blue eyeshadow completely surrounding her eyes, and on the bottom it’s blending in to the shimmer of the pound of cream blush she has on.
That blush better have been one of those ones in the green Clinique compact.
OH GLOB SUMMER
brb off to rewatch all of the OC again now, last time i OC-binged i was super dopey from getting my wisdom teeth out and i feel that i may have missed crucially entertaining styling decisions
HAD THE SAME EIGTH GRADE BLUE EYESHADOW INTERVENTION. Was not successful. Friend insisted she had applied exactly as CosmoGIRL had recommended, and we couldn’t argue with that.
You know, growing up I was annoyed by my mom not buying me the coolest clothes (cause we were poor) and buying them too big (so I’d grow into them), but in hindsight I think she saved me a lot of embarrassment. Sure, I looked boring as hell in my jeans and t-shirts, but I could have looked like any of the pictures above. Thank God I never had any talent for make-up either.
The too-big clothes thing did ensure that I am never really sure if something fits or not, though.
I definitely wore white eyeshadow all over my eyelid with glitter on top of that.
All sparkle everything.
There was this girl in my high school who wore white liquid liner and it’s seared into my brain forever (exacerbated by her not wearing any mascara and having blonde lashes).
I used to wear white eyeshadow (sans glitter) because it was supposed to make the color of your iris pop more. But a) I’m pale, b) I didn’t wear eyeliner at that time because I didn’t think it looked good on me, so it was just WHITE all over my lid with nothing to break it up, and c) I used to wear the white eyeshadow with rosy blush and dark pink/reddish gloss.
There are some pictures where the lighting is okay and it looks alright and in other pictures it looks suuuuper Kabuki-esque, which is not what I intended. Luckily I saved this for special occasions only.
IT ME at ska nite just this weekend! (I have no shame, I will do whatever I want to my eyes, you will pry my sparkles from my cold dead hands)
Me too! In fact, my Urban Decay eyeshadow in Polyester Bride simplifies the process by combining white eyeshadow with all the glitter!
/high5
i was just this morning singing Dashboard Confessional in the shower and i am so here for this entire post
YOUR HAAAAIR IS EVERYWHAAAAARE
HANDS DOWN THIS IS THE BEST DAY I CAN EVER REMEMBERRR
AND SUMMER, SUMMER, WHERE ALL THE GIRLS BARE OLIVE SHOULDERS
Totally off topic, but I feel like you’ll appreciate…
My favorite Indian restaurant has one of those TVs that streams Bollywood dance numbers, which is usually the soundtrack to my dosa eating. But one time I was there they played the entirety of the So Impossible EP, then back to Bollywood.
I was not a makeup wearer at all during the early 2000s, but I was in high school and OH this is bringing back memories. I will probably never be able to smell vanilla body spray without being instantly transported back to the girls locker room.
the girl’s locker room was just DOUSED in lovespell from victoria’s secret. i feel like someone probably poured a bottle right into the air vent.
My locker room had distinct scent quadrants. One area always smelled like Cucumber Melon (ugh), one would smell like something vanilla-y, another would smell like that cheap Victoria’s Secret body spray (the exact smell is irrelevant–they all just mixed together to create a toxic cloud), and maybe the fourth one was the one section with breathable air.
YEP. And my crush wore it all the time. I almost bought some for myself when it was on sale recently, and then I remembered that the only reason I liked it was because I associated it with cute girls….
Oh man, I wore the SHIT out of that.
God, this is ducking spectacular and completely accurate. So much sparkle eyeshadow. So much black eyeliner alllllll around my eyes. I would touch it up at lunch. I had glitter lipstick. Why did it exist? Why did I pair it with (hold on) lime green metallic glitter eyeshadow AND black eyeliner?????
I am imagining this look and it is [fire emoji]
Um, to be the envy of all the other kids at school, obviously.
I think it existed solely for the joy of the endless hunt. Could barely leave the house without accidentally buying yet another glitter lipstick like, “surely this will be the one!” And fully 95% of them were like rubbing a jagged rock across your skin. But if it cost $5 or less I’d still buy those anyway just because, wow, never saw that color glitter before? Or because certain shades of blue lipstick were just so rare that I thought I could somehow will this tube of sandy chalk into wearability?
Or because certain shades of blue lipstick were just so rare that I thought I could somehow will this tube of sandy chalk into wearability?
I wanted blue lipstick in about, oh, maybe 2004, and saw a tube of terrible cheap blue glitter lipstick somewhere, bought it, and then basically tried to scrub it onto my mouth so literally any of it would actually come off without making my lips bleed in the process. It did not work. (Though I don’t think I managed to draw blood either, so small miracles, I guess?)
Glitter lipstick from that time was just a fancy way to inadvertently exfoliate your lips.
Someone DID chuck glitter at us in the early aughts, and I spent a couple of hours the next day trying to get glitter off my (seriously annoyed) bf’s brand new felt hat. Glitter sticks to felt forever!
I HAVEN’T EVEN READ THIS but I can taste the Wet’n’Wild 00 Clear Gloss on my lips right now
i got a definite whiff of the blue raspberry body glitter roll-on while reading this.
I can remember my dad being very not-amused at my attempts to wear sparkly light blue Limited Too eyeshadow to school. To apply it I used to just dump some out of the tube and rub it around for a bit – so barbaric!!
“THIS IS JUST WHAT I LOOK LIKE, DAAAAAD”
oh god, the aggressively fake tan + thick stark line of white eyeliner is the stuff of my high school nightmares.
Makeup was so fun in this era but it was *only* fun. I can’t believe how much money I spent at the Urban Decay and MAC counters on products whose only purpose was to be applied and admired and then immediately removed. Like shimmery deep blood red Lip Gunk that looked like vinyl when you put it on but would smear and creep across half your face within fifteen seconds no matter how valiantly you avoided letting anything touch it. And we were still using film cameras, so we couldn’t even fully optimize those fifteen golden seconds with selfies. (Not that we didn’t take *any*. Considering the number of photos we took of ourselves given the time, effort, and expense of actually getting those photos, it’s pretty hilarious that some people try to act like Kids These Days are somehow more narcissistic.)
Oh man, Urban Decay used to have the XXX glosses or whatever (I had Hey Betsy, I think) and it was so shiny and so sticky I could’ve used it to put plates back together.
I LOVE EARLY 2000s FASHION
I came here to post one of my favorite blogs: The Institute for Y2K Aesthetics. It doesn’t just discuss fashion, but it has a decent amount of makeup and clothing from that era. Enjoy!
Ooh checking this out when I’m not at work and can tumblr. Sounds great.
i love this so much
I am HERE FOR THIS.
this hits so close to home. i was 11 and just getting curious about makeup during Y2K and my first “fancy” makeup was also a hard candy nail polish! in this cool glittery green/blue beetle color.
Ooh! I had that one! I think it was even called “Beetle” or “Carapace.”
My first non-drugstore makeup was a glassy, brown, ultra-sparkly Urban Decay lip gloss. To this day it is the STICKIEST lip product I have ever owned. I’d wear it with lavender eyeshadow and copious exposed abdomen. My makeup application was mainstream as hell throughout my teens, even though I was a total mall goth in all other things. I was very worried about people noticing my makeup, for whatever reason.
For most of the previous decade, I was either living in Berlin or in graduate school in the US. That decade in pop culture just failed to make an impression. Every time I see photos of it, I get a nasty shock, like a bad date you almost managed to completely forget until they show up unnanounced one day.
All I’m saying is my heart is racing now.
Yeah, I read “Unless you are under the age of 16, you will have strong memories of the early 2000s” and immediately thought, “or in grad school.” Mostly what I remember of the early 00s is being miserable.
Hah, I was in grad school from 2005 to 2014, so I have this huge make-up/fashion/pop culture gap covering most of that decade. Super strong memories until 2005 and then post 2014, but in the middle it’s mainly being miserable, with a side of vague but constant annoyance that non-skinny jeans have become so rare.
Limited Too eye glitter gel stuff. With stars in it. In my eyebrows. 1999.
Pink hair mascara.
God, those were the days.
It took at least three incidents of getting caught in the rain before I realized I should wear a shirt roughly the same color as my hair mascara instead of a white one.
Everything about glitter brows is great. BRING IT BACK.
is this where i admit i have no freakin idea what subculture i was a part of then? i was definitely aware of these things happening around me, but i was too busy reveling in a heinous amalgamation of late 90s skater and subdued/makeup-free goth. idek.
I went to raves during that period. White girl in bantu knots, glitter everywhere, and road cone orange phat pants, Nickelodeon Rugrats tank top. Candy bracelets. Fairy wings. I WAS MAD STYLING.
old skool party kid fist bump *bump*
bleach blonde pixie cut with butterfly clips. citrus swirl lamme halter midriff shirt. deep blue phatt pants. angel wings. tigger back pack. candy from wrist to elbow. ALL THE GLITTER: body lotion, eyeshadow, mascara, lip gloss, nail polish, and a pixie dust bomb just in case .
“Seriously, it’s like a decade of people being terrified that something, somewhere will be matte”. indeed!
I found a butterfly clip the other day!! It had somehow survived all this time!
I found a couple in the bottom of a bin when I was reorganizing my closet. They were clear bubblegum-pink glitter plastic. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away.
I wanted to be like you so much, you have no idea. I was not cool enough to pull it off.
I miss phat pants so much.
Hudson makes wide legs these days that are basically crazy-expensive JNCOs.
As a 13-year old I was soooooooo jealous of that look! Somehow, my mom caught on that these things related to DRUGS and refused to buy anything that remotely looked similar. Not that there were any raves within a 100 mile radius of where I lived but still.
Yes! I need an opportunity to wear fun stuff and dance *now*. I’m sure it would be good for me.
Someone needs to throw old people parties. With air-conditioning. LOTS of air-conditioning.
I bought all of my roll-on body glitter from The Limited Too and used it on my cheekbones, because it made me feel like Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century. Sidus Lapidus, little me.
This is only tangentially related, but I am currently pregnant, and obviously at first it is an embryo and then it becomes a fetus, and when that happened, I walked into the room where my husband was having breakfast and shouted, “SIDUS LAPIDUS, IT’S A FETUS!” and then laughed for, like, ten minutes while he stared blankly because he is British and does not understand anything.
Is this where I can safely admit that I was delighted to find a pale pink shimmer creme eye shadow in the sale bin at Sephora recently? And that I’ve been wearing it paired with purple sparkly eyeliner?
Thankfully I haven’t been tempted back to all the hair glitter and sticky-hair magnet lip gloss. #classof2005
Sounds cute, IMO.
Man. This was totally my jam, I was so obsessed with Hard Candy and Urban Outfitters makeup and thought that was the height of sophistication. It’s pretty bad in retrospect but I can’t help feeling some affection for those trends anyway. They were just so FUN and totally devoid of self-consciousness. Everyone was just like I LIKE SPARKLY, WHEEEEE.
YES. This is my decade, as I graduated high school in 02 and college in 06. I remember using loose glitter that I bought at Hot Topic as highlighter and wearing it to school circa 2001. I also believe this is why I’m still taken with all things glitter and lip gloss today.
I grew up in San Antonio and at least amongst my peer group, there was an obsession with collecting the “gift with purchase” makeup bags from Clinique and this was around 1998-2001? Like it was a thing to show it off and that would be your new makeup bag until the next one came out.
I started 7th grade in 2000 and I’ve never been sure if I’m mad or sad that my mom still made all decisions regarding my clothes/makeup (ie: that I couldn’t wear it) during that time period.
I AM sad that she didn’t let me fuck around with crazy hair colors and styles in high school. Can’t get away with as much now as a “professional”
I AM sad that she didn’t let me fuck around with crazy hair colors and styles in high school. Can’t get away with as much now as a “professional”
ME TOO. I am saddened that I missed my prime window of weird hairstyle freedom.
I have decided if I ever have kids the only rules regarding their hair will be “you have to pay for it yourself and you have to clean it out of the bathroom.”
That’s pretty much my philosophy on the hairdos of my future hypothetical-and-possibly-never-actually-existent children. I shall live vicariously through their bizarre decisions, I guess. (Just watch, now if I ever actually end up with kids, they’re gonna be like Alex P. Keaton or something.)
My friend likes to taunt me that to rebel any future children of mine will have to become honor students who like equestrian sports and hate cheese.
My era! I can’t wait til it becomes retro in 20-30 years and the glitter renaissance begins.
Does anyone else remember Jane cosmetics? It was very teen-marketed and I mostly found it at Target. I was all about my silver Jane eyeshadow which I wore with no other makeup. Eyeshadow only is certainly a look. I also remember getting eyeshadow from Bath and Bodyworks during this period.
I was keen on the Bath and Body roll-on glitter myself. I think it was Art Stuff?
Jane Kind of Carob was my perfect late 90s/early aughts matte brown lipstick and I mourn its loss to this day.
I had sooooo much Jane liquid liner.
Definitely remember Jane cosmetics. I barely wore any makeup at all, but most of what I did own was Jane because it was cheap and probably because I liked the ads in my magazines, though I wouldn’t’ve admitted that then.
I saw some Jane makeup at Ulta the other week! I think they’re trying to bring it back.
Whaaaaat!? I would totally buy it purely out of nostalgia.
Jane had great single eyeshadow colors and their I always used their blush.
YES – Jane was amazing. I had the best brownish/light pink Jane lipstick, and the tube was metal and so solid and it never melted and it was GREAT.
Also – I had a face soap/wash cleansing stick from Jane that was the best. It was pink and you could throw it in your bag and because it was a solid it wouldn’t leak!!!! For years I’ve been searching for something like it. (Recently found it in a Korean brand – the su:m37 rose cleansing stick, if anyone is interested.)
Why can’t we just take back glitter now????? I love glitter.
I miss glitter T_T
Why miss it? I was sporting green this weekend: http://portlandblacklipstickco.com/products/glitz…
TBH, tho, someone at the bar was like “you are glittering! It’s like the late 90s in here!”, but also it was an arcade bar, and the bands were folk/gypsy/punk, so i was not the only throwback that night.
My favorite nailpolish will forever be this light blue Hard Candy (also complete with ring) polish called “Sushi” I WAS SO TRENDY, YO.
I miss it so much. Come back to your former glory, HC!
I wanted that nail polish SO BAD so I could be cool, but it was too expensive. If only I still had the financial sensibilities of college me, I’d have a lot more money right now.
Yes, the early 2000s! I was born at the end of 1989, so these were very much my formative years, makeup and clothes wise; I have never been hugely into wearing makeup, but what little I did wear as a young teen was definitely in line with these trends. My eyeliner was very much in the Avril Lavigne mould, but I also had a soft spot for either brightly-coloured or brown-ish eyeshadow, with multiple colours blended inexpertly together and reaching alarmingly close to my eyebrows. There was lots of heavily-scented Body Shop lipgloss. (And hair mascara, absolutely.)
I avoided the fake tan, though. As a redhead, I had a strong suspicion that I would just look orange all over.
“Natural and sheer” lips could sometimes look very alarming. I remember seeing girls in my year group with pancake-like concealer and lips that were so pale they just blended in. It is not my favourite look.
Thank you for this series – it has been so fascinating, even as someone who has never worn a lot of makeup, and you clearly know so much.
Aw, thanks! I’m really going to miss this. I’m still freelancing and have done some random pieces around, but I’m trying to find a new home for makeup history (but hopefully there may be something much more… long form soon [SHITLOADS OF NUDGING]. Hopefully!).
*winks*
I remember reading a “tip” in CosmoGirl or something that said you should put concealer on your lips to get a good nude lip color. So I spent the entirety of 1999 wearing concealer on my lips and thinking it looked great.
I had a friend who constantly gave me shit for doing this, despite the fact that I wasn’t doing it deliberately it just happened when I put my, way too heavy, foundation on, and I also had no idea it was a *thing* until many months later I saw a girl in the school bathroom putting foundation on her lips.
Oh my GOD these were my formative makeup years. I used to have two pots of glitter goop (one orange, one pink, OBVIOUSLY) that I would put on my eyelids/cheeks/lips/neck for some reason? and they were perfect for all glittery 1999 occasions. Of course by the time 2003 rolled around I was full-on raccoon eyes. Did anyone else sometimes wear red eyeliner as well as black?
OH GOD, yes, because clearly we (i.e. any of us doing the red liner+black shadow look) all thought that the only thing that complimented poorly applied thick black shadow or liner is something that made it look like you hadn’t slept in 2-3 years.
I feel like I need a list of all make-up created specifically for celebrities, à la Cameron and the stila glosses.
My first eyeshadow was a Cover Girl selection of ice blue, grey, and something that was supposed to be black. I smeared on my eyeliner like the scene kid that I was in 2007 and it took me about three years to realize that looking like an inappropriately urban rodent was not A Look.
Also, thank heavens for Tumblr, because otherwise I would probably still look like a My Chemical Romance groupie with a penchant for colorful knits.
You had me at “inappropriately urban rodent.”
hehe
Well, raccoons *really* don’t belong in malls.
The early 00’s were such a great time to be a tween, in terms of crazy makeup. Like, I could douse myself in glitter, smell like papaya (or whatever Bath & Body ArtWorks), use all the eyeliner, and also eat whatever I was wearing on my lips. I really feel like teens in the last few years have had some really boring, reserved looks to work with (at least the mainstream ones). I mean, they look so well put together, it’s kind of strange.
The early 2000s was this wild west of glitter and colour and liner and gloss and it really was a tweenage paradise when it comes to fun looks. Something about the ULTRA MATTE look that’s been super popular as of late is just much more… mature feeling, and like, matte looks are great, but we need to bring back some glitter and life to this stuff.
there’s a tumblr post floating around that is jokingly angry about how tweens these days seem to already know how to do makeup, saying “where is your excessive baby-blue eyeshadow and fake tan? you have to do your time!” or something like that.
I agree.
I, too, was a tween in the mid 00s. My mother strictly limited my wardrobe/makeup choices, but sometimes I got away with things. My first foray into cosmetics was roll-on body glitter I owned as an elementary schooler in the early 2000s, and the theft of my mother’s sticky brownish lipgloss. I loved my sparkly, glittery tank tops from Limited Too, and thought my pastel blue tank with a giant blue and purple glitter butterfly made me hot shit. My favorite shirt was a tan/beige tee with brightly colored glitter butterflies tracing their way across it. I treasured every time I went to the mall and bought blue hair mascara from Claire’s, to be immediately applied in the mall bathroom with friends. It never looked like it did on the packaging… I was so excited when my mom let me layer my shirts. The first time I was ever allowed to layer, I wore a grass green tee under a white sleeveless polo over a hot pink skirt with silver sandals. I had brightly colored barrettes in my hair, and as per the trend of the time I had twisted a strand of frizzy brown hair and put a point of tinfoil over the end, so that I could string a few bright plastic beads onto it before twisting the tinfoil to hold them in place. I was so proud.
This is why it took me ten plus years to realize that grown women don’t wear colored eyeshadow…. I still miss it though.
I mean, I’m fully onboard for colourful eyeshadow (although I feel like I’m only a grown-up in the basest sense of the word [LOOKS IN MIRROR AT BRIGHT BLUE HAIR]), but it can really feel harder to pull off as you get older, especially in the work place.
Seriously, it’s like a decade of people being terrified that something, somewhere will be matte.
This… explains a lot. I was 16 in 2000, and while I basically didn’t wear makeup, I had some pots of body glitter and nail polish (I wanted Hard Candy polish so bad) and a few other odds and ends. But apparently I imprinted on the shimmer and glitter a lot more than I thought because now, as an adult who wears makeup more often, all I want is the shimmer and stuff. My nail polish collection is borderline ridiculous but I still won’t get polishes without some kind of glitter or shimmer if I can help it.
Apparently I’m just channeling 16 year old me without realizing it!
I had exactly the same epiphany when I read this article. I even keep trying to find edible body stuff, and I didn’t realize why until just now.
Glitter + shimmer 4eva!
No regrets, friend. No regrets.
Also, I think I’ve finally figured out how to achieve the style high-school me was going for, but couldn’t achieve with no makeup skills and a thrift-store wardrobe (I still have a thrift-store wardrobe, but I’m way better at it now).
I mean, I love me a good matte shadow (so nice for subtle shading) and a decent matte lipstick, but there is something to be said about shimmer and sparkle. I may have gone to MAC yesterday to Back2MAC some stuff and went home with a lipstick that I could conservatively describe as “glittery” and honestly describe as “SCREW YOU, I HAVE BLUE SHIMMER ON MY LIPS JERKS WHOOOOOOOO.”
This is … evocative.
The late ’90s/early ’00s coincided with my brief (but sparkly) competitive gymnastics career. Before meets, we would shellac our slicked-back ponytails with a layer of body glitter–I’m having flashbacks to the green apple scent. Just add eye makeup (pale silver shadow from the Body Shop), nail polish (Hard Candy in Jailbait), and shimmery lip gloss (Juicy Tubes, anybody?).
Yes! I did ballet in the early 2000s. The snow scene in Nutcracker between 2004-2006 was THE BEST EXCUSE TO SLATHER EVERYONE IN GLITTER, and slather we did.
Does anyone else remember those little shadow cubes The Body Shop made? Those are like, peak 2000s.
Ok, I was a 1980s teen, but the glitter love here resonates! I was obsessed w Stagelight makeup, which was fantastically disco. All my allowance was spent on collecting their little pots of iridescent loose powder shadow, and their pots of gooey, sparkly lip gloss. Blue and green iridescent nail polish was actually a thing in the early 80s (which made 15 yr old me very happy, until the bakery where I worked after school told me to stop wearing shiny dark green polish, because it made my fingers look like Japanese beetles) then it disappeared until badass/girly Urban Decay and Hard Candy appeared.
There’s a lot of weird crossover with the 80s in the early 2000s (see: Everything Xtina wore during that era prior to Back to Basics). Everything is BRIGHT and SHIMMERY and TOO MUCH, MAN. The only difference is that instead of all the clothes being large enough to make everyone look like they’re trying to pull off Linebacker Chic, everything was too low-rise and tight and laced and was designed by someone who just wanted to see all the crannies of our bodies. It’s an ode to pits and cracks.
I’m not going to post the exact details of my high school makeup experience in Texas. But let’s just say it involved sparkly green eye shadow and learning how to apply blush from my Mexican friends (suck in your cheeks and go to town) and French tips AND magnet shellack lip gloss. Add ill-fitting clothes and some truly unfortunate hair cuts. (Remember Keira’s Domino hair? I was a chubby American teen, not a svelte British goddess, but I still rocked it.) It was… not a good look.
I probably would’ve been super jealous of your cut, because I was one of those kids who was like, “I’m going to get an EDGY cut” and instead chickened out and got a terrible old lady haircut. Mistakes were made!
SAME. Chubby, nerdy Texas teen. I took a photo of Keira from Domino into my hairstylist when I made the (unfortunate) decision to chop off all of my hair. It looked horrible for a solid year after but man, I thought I was cool
Early Victoria’s Secret Dream angels stuff! They had a) the BEST golden shimmer cream that was like a proto-The Body Shop Honey Bronze dry oil (which I love but never wear because, well, it’s sill when you wear pants every day) and b) the BEST serum/balm/lotion for my skin. Seriously, I still have no idea how their lotion kept my skin from getting dry when all the stuff I use now doesn’t (it has nothing to do with being 15 years older I’m sure.)
Rest assured that Glitter Cowgirl is ALIVE AND REALLY WELL at most small-town county fairs in Montucky, y’all.
PLEASE SEND PICTURES
This may be my favorite in the series! So on point, so accurately sums up my foundational makeup experiences (I definitely did the black liner all around the eye for waaaaay too long.)
But really I’m just here because wtf is happening in the Josie and the Pussycats picture? It is so weird. The bear? The massage chain? The one girl sitting to the side? What is going on?
That whole movie is one giant “Wait, what the hell is this?”
OH MAN! My junior year school photo: my skin has a sort of orangey glow, from the combined fake tanner I’d applies the night before (I CAN STILL SMELL IT) with (shimmer!) bronzer layered on top. My lips are coated in silvery lip-goop and my bangs are twisted back with four teeny butterfly clips. You can see my American Eagle wide-stripe polo shirt that I’ve unbuttoned one more button after I left the house. Not pictured: my low rise stretchy jeans and full whale tail in back. I was so massively Not Bothered about my thong hanging out all the time!
This has been a portrait of early 2000s Pandatime, aka What Do I Do With This New Body and My Sexy Feelings?!
I’m going to write a YA novel called What Do I Do With This New Body and My Sexy Feelings?! because there’s no way to just leave that sitting there. I will give you a credit, like Executive Producer or Junior Vice President or something. To the book-writing place!
YES! This is great. I am mostly just relieved that the questionable fashion choices and sexual confusion of my teenage years will serve a greater purpose. Go forth Alex, and write the YA novel the world is crying out for!!
** Rides off into the sunset to the Thong Song **
That th-th-thong-thong-thongggggggggggggg
I was cleaning out my old bedroom earlier this summer, and SO MUCH BODY GLITTER. And shimmer. And bronzer (I never tried to fake-tan; I just wore, like, a line of gold/bronze shimmer on each cheek, it was super-weird).
And I finally understand my deep affinity for Aromaleigh now. It’s all the coolness I wanted in high school, but could never quite achieve.
I tried some of the shimmer, actually. It just made me look incredibly sweaty.
Oh, and I just taught the neighbor’s 9-year old the infallible Gwen Stefani approach to spelling banana. SYNCHRONICITY.
I remember using this glitter hairspray from Claire’s for my grade 8 grad and I ended up accidentally spraying a line of it up my bedroom wall, and even after we painted it, the glitter still somehow worked its way through. That shit will not die.
I remember that spray! It was made out of the paint they use on the road, or something. One spritz was forever.
I love your point about Aromaleigh! I love them too and feel a great affinity for them, and this sums it up so well.
Related: does anybody have any insights into good primers for sparkly eyeshadows? I’ve got a pot of Nyx for the glitterbombs, but I still wind up with sparkles on the inside of my glasses/under my eyes.
This post has made me remember my first and only Blue Light disco. It was 2005, and I was thirteen, a tiny blonde wisp of a thing. I wore low-rise flared jeans (of course) with cherry-patterned white Keds that for some reason were very popular that year, and I wore as a top, I kid you not, a stretchy green mini-skirt (the kind where the hem is all different lengths, like a really messy handkerchief skirt), to which I had sewn some white ribbon to make a halterneck, because I was worried it would fall down and reveal my lack of bra.
As for makeup! Roll-on body glitter on my shoulders, upper arms and collarbone. Lilac eyeshadow with Maybelline Great Lash mascara in Blackest Black. Eyebrows plucked until they were about 3mm wide (thankfully, they grew back). Shimmery pink blush in circles on the apples of my cheeks. I had braces and wanted to draw attention to them (I thought my braces were super cool, like I was a teenager on a soap opera or in an American movie) so I wore layer upon layer of glittery purple lipgloss, which I reapplied at least every five minutes. My hair got stuck to my mouth about as frequently, but that was fine, right?
I thought I was hot shit until my best friend and I got to the disco and she promptly vanished with her boyfriend, at which point I remembered that actually, I was a massive dork who had never even been kissed. I think I spent the rest of the night drinking Coke and feeling sorry for myself.
And thus the end of my high school disco experience. I feel rather sad for tiny teenage me. It’s okay, tiny me! You’re still a dork in ten years, but you’re a dork whose butt looks amazing in skinny jeans, who knows better than to wear a skirt as a top, and who gets kissed on a regular basis!
I do miss my lilac eyeshadow, though. And I wouldn’t mind wearing that glittery purple lipgloss again, for old times’ sake. Though not when kissing.
This is INSPIRING. I want to, I don’t know, paint a portrait of this scene. I am sorry the night didn’t go well but this is the most amazing aesthetic.
Oh, wait. I thought we were all still terrified of matte. That ended? Oh hell, I until I read this, I would have guessed that gloss was still the tops!
Completely losing pace with makeup trends is one of the unforeseen effects of leaping enthusiastically (and a tad performatively) into Chapstick lesbianism in 2006. Now that I’m comfortably settled into being super gay, I just might go to Sephora to buy some matte red lipstick…
I know this article is about makeup, but I would like to point out that to accentuate your glittery lip gloss and eyeshadow and body spray you might also want to throw a approximately 5000 glittery butterfly clips into your hair. My parents just sold my childhood home so I had to go through my old bedroom and I found A MILLION butterfly clips stuffed in the back of a dresser drawer. What a time to be alive.
OH MY GOD I FORGOT ABOUT THOSE. Honestly, can we bring those back? The tiny, tiny, sparkly, utterly useless ones. At least 20 required for any ‘do.
I owned exactly one lipstick in the 00s. It was silver metallic.
AUGH. This is the first time I’ve seen the early 00’s broken down and analyzed for their fashion. Somehow, having grown up in it (I was 13 in 2000), I thought there WAS no dominant fashion trend for that decade. My literal thought process was something like 70s= disco, 80s= big hair, 90s= grunge, 00s= regular clothes. D:
Also can we talk about the mens for a second? 13-year-old me had a huge crush on the guy in the bottom picture, who IIRC was in a quintessential early 00’s band. All the cool guys at my school were wearing that frosted tips with spikes look, or the even cooler spiky in the front, flat in the back. It was the height of sophistication.
Okay, so given current makeup trends, what do you think we will look back on in horror 10 years from now?
I have a feeling that ultra-sculpted/drawn-on brows + excessive contouring will be at the top of the list.
Definitely contouring, 110% That shit is out of control just now.
Definitely over-lining your lips, contouring.
I don't understand how people keep them up around their waists. I have one pair, and it is elastic all the way through, and my thigh-to-waist ratio is maybe bigger than most people's? As in, I have thick, muscular thighs, and a…well, not a small waist, but proportional to my thighs, it is small, I guess. So I end up with my thighs and butt holding up my jeans while they droop around my waist and have to constantly be hiked up.
Did anyone else do the thing in the early ’00s where you lined JUST the lower lid with thick black eyeliner + Great Lash mascara on top + sticky goopy lip gloss or was that just me?
UGH. I HATED the 2000s, almost everything about them, but ESP the fashion and makeup! Thank you for reminding me. Combine that with Bush, and it was an awful time to be alive, and an awful time to grow up in. Idk. Maybe the awfullness of it all is what really shaped my generation’s socio-political awareness and desire for MATTE makeup with natural eyes, thick brows, and weird-colored, poppin lips. I still don’t wear makeup, but I actually like the makeup people wear these days.