—Crystal, Akron, Ohio
The B!tch Replies: So, you want to wear false eyelashes. Battle stations! You're in for a fine rassling match involving tweezers, sticks and glue with a vapor so toxic it can dissolve a small burrowing animal within 24 hours. Hollywood has tussled with falsies since 1916, when they first appeared on a large screen, and they remain a reliable source of scare stories in backlots all over town. But remember: An actress also has a makeup artist to back her up in the melee. You do not.
This B!tch has never had to apply her own false lashes, of course—God bless the Hollywood celebrity freebie train!—but I did persuade a makeup artist to the stars to share some pointers.
First, the basics: Some false-eyelash looks are more attainable than others. It's best to know your limits. If you want to mimic J.Lo, for example, you'd best load up your rifle with hollow points and head into the forest, because La Lopez has been photographed with real fox fur supplementing her lashes.
Paris Hilton's mom, Kathy, loves fake lashes so much she'll don up to four layers before skittering off to parties--a look best handled by a trained professional. And Ghost Whisperer's Jennifer Love Hewitt? Whenever she smiles, her face seems to be swallowed up by a primeval forest o' fiber. (Helps her hide from evil spirits, I guess, but the look is way too much work for those of us living in the real world.)
So, what's a nonfamous person to do? Well, if you can't hire someone like L.A. makeup artist Alison Gladieux to tussle with the falsies, you can at least follow her advice:
Full bands of false eyelashes are certainly easier to affix than individual, but they're not as natural looking. So, be really careful when applying. "The biggest mistake I see is when the band is longer than the person's eye, and so it goes way out past the person's lash line," says Gladieux, who has made up Pink, Nicky Hilton, Paula Abdul and Queen Latifah. "Be sure to hold up the band to your eye before you glue it, and trim it if necessary."
No false eyelashes should ever sit anywhere but directly on top of real lashes. Place them any higher, and you're Yosemite Sam. Do not glue your false eyelashes on your eyelid; instead, lay the falsies right on top of the real hairs and parallel to them, with the ends just touching the skin.
Too much glue will not make your false eyelashes stay on longer. It will only make you look weepy and unhinged and pose a danger to yourself and others. Think Beyoncé in her "Ring the Alarm" video. And don't dip your falsies directly into glue. Instead, take the end of a makeup brush or some other small stick, and use it to apply the glue to the band.
Too much work for you? Another option involves eyelash extensions applied by a pro. However, those can be even more of a pain in the eyeball. A beautician meticulously glues a long hair on top of each eyelash—the process can take hours—and then the look disappears within three months. Who knows? Maybe that's what got Beyoncé all het up in the first place.