Miracle Gro for your Lashes!
There are a few givens when you are born Asian. You’ll have black stick-straight hair, a button nose, a flat rear, and a smattering of lashes around small almond-shaped eyes. My mom attempted to give my sister a chance to grow long, lush lashes when she carefully cut them at their root when she was a wee one. While this sounds a little extreme, you have to admit it is considerably more humane than tightly binding feet in cheesecloth to stunt their growth. The lesson learned from all this was that cutting hair to make it grow fast and long is an old wives tale since both my sister and I are still afflicted with eyelashes that need a curler and gobs of mascara to give the illusion of Betty Boop peepers.
All this changed a month ago when I visited my boyfriend’s family. His mom introduced me to this fairly new product called the “Jan Marini Age Intervention Eyelash Conditioner” which apparently can’t be kept in stock at beauty stores, spas and salons. So when her favorite beauty shop called and said they had received a new shipment, she kindly offered to buy a tube for her daughter and me to experience this incredible serum. She batted her lashes at me and said they have never been this long and thick in her life. However, this is coming from a woman who bore a son with some ridiculously long and perfectly curled eyelashes that give the best butterfly kisses in the world (as opposed to my attempts to give, at the very best, “moth kisses”). When she handed me the box with the tube containing .23 oz of the eyelash conditioner, I went into sticker shock. Marked as $160, I thought it HAD to be a typo and the decimal point needed to move one space to the left. When she proceeded to tell me that my eyes weren’t deceiving me (thanks to the brilliant job her husband did to allow me to see well!), I envisioned that getting long eyelashes meant putting diamond dust or platinum on one’s lashline. My skepticism only increased when I started my first application that night, saw that the conditioner was neither diamond nor platimum infused. I sparingly applied it thinking I would need to stretch the use of this tube as much as possible, seeing that refilling it would cost far more than some shopping sprees I have.
Here we are, 6 weeks later, and I gotta say…I’m a true believer! I’ve now got longer and fuller lashes without the need of using mascara, handling tricky eyelash glue or paying for pricey extensions. The real test was when I curled them with my beloved Shu Uemura Eyelash Curler, I actually see a row of black, thick hair, and not the wisps I had gotten so used to. I hope to pass this info along to the millions of other asian women, who would benefit greatly from this magical potion for hair growth (sorry guys, but I think this is a little too expensive to replace the Rogaine). I can’t wait when I see Mama Mo this weekend, give her a hug and (butterfly) kiss to thank her for such a hair-altering experience. And before my own mom can raise some sharp scissors near her granddaughter(s) eyes, I will make sure she’s been introduced to a “duller” method that will actually get results!
