Shadow Play
Vogue|July 2019

Eye shadow doesn’t express us, it transforms us. Leslie Jamison dissects the alchemical appeal.

Leslie Jamison
Shadow Play

BACK IN 1998, I WAS FIFTEEN years old and perpetually afraid to speak. I hated being tall because I hated being looked at. I never wanted to call attention to my face, because I didn’t believe I was beautiful enough to deserve anyone’s gaze. It was easy to dismiss makeup as superficial. Lipstick, blush, mascara: These were for the popular girls, the ones who never seemed to have trouble figuring out what to say. But eye shadow was mine. Leaning in close to the bathroom mirror before semiformal dances, brushing postapocalyptic shades from Urban Decay across my lids, I found a way to speak loudly—to trade my inside voice for an outside voice at last.

This story is from the July 2019 edition of Vogue.

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This story is from the July 2019 edition of Vogue.

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