Behavior/Brand Shifts

I have lived on this planet a long time. I have created habits. Many of them are habits acquired when I was a teenager. For example, I have been writing with the same pen since I was 12 years old. It is nothing fancy, a certain kind of Paper Mate, which sadly is no longer sold in stores – so I buy them in bulk off the Paper Mate website. If it ain’t broke, and etc. Exeunt pursued by bear. My father loved the same pen, and would give me boxes of them every time I came home. But those are all gone now, so I have had to resort to other measures. Everything I have ever written has been written with the same Paper Mate blue pen. I will not change. I am actually superstitious about it. I just like the feel of the pen, its flow. I am VERY picky about pens. If there is any “scratch” to it, to its progression along the page, I cannot work with it.

So my habits are set in stone in many ways.

This includes brand-loyalty, something that I suppose I never gave much real thought to, until I became aware of it.

Drano Max-Gel. I won’t buy anything else. I live in a building that was built in 1904. The drains are not what they should be. Drano Max-Gel. I should have a float in a parade for this particular product. If you were a salesman trying to sell me something else, you had better make a damn good case.

Grape Nuts. I have been eating Grape Nuts on an almost a daily basis since I was a freakin’ tween. I see no need to change or branch out. Grape Nuts is my BRAND dammit, and I am so happy that they exist.

In recent years, I have joined Melaleuca – which has significantly changed my cleaning-regime and the products I use. I am now CRANKY when I run out of their laundry detergent. Their laundry detergent is the only one I feel comfortable buying, for my own environmental reasons, not to mention the SCENT. All it is is “fresh scent”, that’s the label, and I can’t explain why the scent is so pleasing to me, but I am hooked. I will stay a member of Melaleuca just to buy their detergent, until the end of time, if necessary, because of what my clean laundry smells like. I dated a guy who was a raging mess of a man, who could barely manage his own money, could barely wash the ONE FORK that he owned – but he always smelled soooo good. This was a man who lived in white T shirts (pack of Marlboro reds rolled up in the sleeve) and blue jeans. I would literally put my nose up against his chest and inhale the smell of his laundry, which he tolerated with bemused crankiness. “What the hell is going on,” he would say. “What is your detergent??” I demanded. He judged me. Openly. “I have no idea. I don’t care.” “Please. You have to tell me. I love how you smell.” He would then wrestle me to the ground. Which was, let’s be honest, the point in the first place. Clean laundry that brings about that response is my goal – and in Melaleuca’s “fresh scent” laundry I have found it.

Paper Mate. I believe I have covered that.

I know I’ve done a post about “products” before. These are just a couple that I am totally loyal to. Like, the company HAS me. Without me even really knowing it. I don’t comparison shop, I don’t do any of that. I buy what I have been buying since I have been living on my own.

Recently, as in the last two months “recently”, I have experienced two shifts, which I think are quite startling, due to the fact that I have been doing the same thing since basically the Second Continental Congress. But hey, if it works, it works, and if I sound obnoxious about my new discoveries it is because new converts are ALWAYS obnoxious.

Here are my two shifts. One has to do with a way of doing things (not a product), and the other has to do with a complete 100% shift in brand-loyalty.

1. Since I first started wearing makeup, I have always used an eyeliner pencil. I buy a black eyeliner (I like the drama of black), and swoop it on my upper eyelid, sometimes smudging it along the lower eyelid. I suppose it worked for me. It must have, because I did it for decades, basically. My eyes are not particularly nice. They are small. They need a lot of help. My mouth is nice. I say that because it’s a fact. It is the sort of mouth that can “take” a lot of color. It can take almost-black lipstick. It can take anything. Thin lips can’t. Or you have to be very artful with it. My mouth is the kind where you slap on some lipgloss and you suddenly look glamorous. You don’t have to DO anything else. I don’t worry about my mouth, is what I’m trying to say. It’s like my skin. One of my good features. But my eyes are not like that. My eyelashes are stubby and short, my left eye is, how you Americans say, slightly WONK, and to make my eyes “pop” is a challenge. I experiment with different colors, etc., and an eyelash-curler is an essential prop. I wish my eyes were bigger, but whatevs, we are as God made us. When I was in college, I had a gorgeous roommate my sophomore year, a good friend, who hailed from Puerto Rico. (You can see a bit of her essential character here.) She was naturally beautiful, unlike myself, like movie-star beautiful, and her style was much different than mine. Sometimes when we went to parties together, I would let her make me up, but it was always a stressful situation, because she did things so differently. First off, she used LIQUID eyeliner. Which just was so new to me, I didn’t think my Irish face could “take” it. She would overrule my objections and swoop on some thick liquid eyeliner – and I have to admit the results were often really awesome. But I would never have done it myself. I liked my smudgy eyeliner pencil (although now I realize, late in the day, that I only liked it because it was familiar). I got very nice responses every time my roommate had made me up, but I still shied away from liquid eyeliner on my own. When I was last in Chicago, last December, I believe, we (as in: me, Mitchell and Rachel) went to go see our friend Eric, who is a makeup artist at the Nars counter at Barney’s. (Correction: He used to work at Smasbox, and due to his influence I only buy Smashbox products for my makeup -another brand-loyalty thing). We were on our way to see Up in the Air, right around the corner, and wanted to say Hi. In the 25 minutes we had free, he spruced me and Rachel up nice-nice. I told him the issue I had with my eyes. “They’re so small, and the left eye is WONK, not sure if you’ve noticed … help me out.” He plopped me down in the chair (he is so so talented, by the way), and worked on my eyes. I could not believe the result. I trust him completely, so I let him do whatever he wanted. And here was the trick, the thing I do now regularly. He had a little makeup brush – not a fat one, like for blush or powder – but a small specific brush – He wet it in his mouth (* please see correction from Eric in ye olde comments, very important), and then dipped it into black-powder eyeshadow, mixing it around, so that it became a black liquid. This then became my “liquid eyeliner”. So he was able to PAINT the line on the upper eyelid, rather than just smudge it on inexactly, as I have been doing since high school. It wasn’t a bottle of black ink, like my Puerto Rican gorgeous roommate had, but he essentially was using the powder of the eyeshadow, mixed with the dampness of the brush, to create the same effect. Using the brush, he was able to basically paint down almost into the inner-cusp of the upper eyelid. So it wasn’t a line resting ABOVE the lashes, it melded into the lash-line itself, and that – THAT – is the effect that makes eyes POP. Otherwise, your eyes get buried in the makeup that SURROUNDS them. He carefully painted along my upper lid, getting so close to my actual eyeball that I thought he was painting IT – but what ends up happening is is that this effect also creates the illusion that your eyelashes are thick and lustrous. It elongates the eyelashes, without ever touching the eyelashes at all. Then of course you put on lengthening mascara, and then you curl said eyelashes, and BOOM – it looks like you have big movie-star eyes. I will always be grateful to Eric for showing me this trick, but I gotta give a shout-out to that long-ago roommate as well, for trying to make me see the possibility in what I thought was a terrifying product known as LUQUID EYELINER.

I’m a true convert. Never going back. Ever. Liquid, liquid, all the way.

2. This one is pretty huge. I can’t even believe I am saying this. I have been using Tampax brand tampons since the dawn of my menstruation. Well, that’s not quite true. I started with pads. I actually was afraid of tampons for quite some time, due to a fear that they would somehow take my virginity from me without my consent. I know. It is as though I was growing up in 1952. I remember my mother saying to me, when I was in college, “Uhm, tampons are fine … you’ll be fine …” hahaha I still resisted. HOWEVER. My friend Brooke, in college, showed me how to insert them (she wasn’t in the room with me – just basically told me how to do it) – and yes, I was a late-bloomer, but once I tried tampons – the thought of using pads, as my primary product, was unthinkable. I have been a loyal Tampax user for decades. And happy as well. No complaints. Zero. I maybe have some worries about all those cardboard applicators, piling up somewhere, but in terms of personal comfort: I would never dream of switching. They DOMINATE the industry, anyway. Except for o.b. Now. I remember my friend Kate, years ago, when we were doing a show together, mentioning o.b. and saying, “Basically, if you are comfortable with feeling yourself up regularly, you won’t have a problem with o.b.” I had never tried them, didn’t want to try them, I knew my brand … but knowing what o.b. was I thought her comment was very funny. Years pass. YEARS. I’m a Tampax-using person. I have nothing AGAINST o.b. It’s just I’m loyal to one brand. Like I said, if you think your pen is better than the Paper Mate one that I love, that is awesome for you – but if you want to convince ME, then you had better make a damn fine case for it. And don’t just tell me it’s better. Show me. I have to experience the superiority of the product in no uncertain terms, because, as I mentioned, I have been on this planet a long time. I’m not a newbie, discovering my likes and dislikes. I’ve been around, peeps. I like Drano Max-Gel, and am loyal to Drano Max-Gel, because it has proven to me it works best. You know. I’m no dummy. BUT. I’m out on Block Island. This is last month. I had brought a box of tampons, there were maybe 5 or 6 left in the box. Period comes. I need more. It’s so unbelievably expensive out there, that I asked my sister Jean, when she came out that weekend with Pat and Lucy, to bring some tampons with her. STAT. Out she comes, happily, with a box of o.b. (We have an old joke about o.b. ,dating from our riotous trip to Ireland to visit Siobhan about 10 years ago. We both had our periods on that trip, and that was my first extended experience with o.b. The entire trip we were murmuring “o.b.” to one another, at various abbeys and monasteries, which basically meant, “You have an o.b. on you? I need one.” However, for whatever reason, that experience wasn’t enough to convert me. When I went to the store, would I ever buy THAT brand instead of Tampax? Never). Anyway, here Jean comes, on the ferry, bearing Lucy in her stroller, and a package of o.b. in her purse. was determined not to buy the tampons at the grocery which were 10 bucks fo 30 tampons (outrageous), so I went through an entire cycle only using o.b.

I will not go into the details. I have to leave some to myself. But let’s say, Kate’s comment was quite prescient and makes me laugh, now that I have experienced the glory of o.b. for real. You have to get close if you use o.b., there’s no applicator to help you keep your distance – but that’s no barrier for me, thank goodness.

I’ll just say this: Unless I am stranded in Chad and the only thing available is Tampax, I will use o.b. from this day forward. No comparison. Zeal of new convert. Exeunt pursued by bear.

TOTAL shift in brand loyalty, surprising even to myself. I’m not adventurous when it comes to brands. I buy what I like. I stick with it.

But as of January 2010, Tampax, you’ve lost a customer. For good! Never going back!