*picture heavy post*
One of the things that fuelled my obsession with make-up when I was growing up was teen magazines and annuals. Though I was still far from being a teenager in the mid to late 80s, I had female relatives and family friends who were aged between 15 and 21 and who all seemed impossibly glamorous to me. I would snaffle their back issues of Blue Jeans, My Guy and Just 17 as often as I could.
The Blue Jeans annual of 1984 was one of my particular favourites and I would spend hours studying the photo love stories, problem pages, beauty tips and fashion. I could not wait to be 18 when I would be able to live my life as I wanted, and what I wanted was a life based on the Blue Jeans annual, 1984. I wanted stripes of tawny blusher, lurid blue eyeshadow and frosted pink lips. I wanted a curly perm sculpted into an immovable style and enhanced with plastic hoop earrings. I wanted to be a sophisticated woman. When I eventually did reach 18 in 1995, that dream had been long forgotten.
