Picture perfect painted smile

I never wore a lot of make-up for the first half of high school.

While the 'popular' girls discovered foundation I barely knew how to apply mascara. It was never an issue to me, I was always happy with the way I looked.

I guess I didn't care what I looked like, there was never any reason for me to look my best because there was never anybody I was interested in looking good for.

When the hormones kicked in age 13 and I also started dying my hair dark as I was going through a 'goth phase' which I didn't really grow out of, despite now having blonde hair and currently wearing a floral top. I started wearing heavy eyeliner and resenting being told to take it off. I was convinced there was a double standard; the orange girls were never told to take their layers of the wrong shade foundation off - probably because they would quit the sports teams if the sports staff had a go at them. I was probably right about the double standard but I was young and didn't know how to deal with it.

At college I changed to just mascara and lip gloss, I still didn't see the appeal in foundation, I'd never been taught how to choose the proper shade or how to put it on and I found women at cosmetic counters in department stores a little intimidating.

But one day sat in the back corner of our college library (as we always did) my good friend Beth told me to stop moaning about the state of the skin on my nose and smoothed some of her foundation over it. She then thought it made a good fit and applied a little along my jawline to check it was as good a match as it looks. She didn't know it then, but she had created a monster.

I lasted about 6 months only applying foundation to my nose - covering up the slight difference in colour by the skin being dragged by a bump in the middle - before progressing to applying it to my T-Zone to cover spots for a night out. Now, I wear foundation all over my face, everyday. I was taught to apply it by the girls at college and I've never looked back.

You always hear about girls calling other girls 'fake' because of their application of make-up in this way; and in some sense I agree with this because the skin tone you see on my face is not the skintone that I actually have. My eyes aren't as big as the eyeliner tricks your eyes into thinking they are and my lips are not that dark. My eyelashes are not as long as my quest for the best mascara is gradually making them look; but that is what you see when you look at me. And it isn't a case of what you see is what you get like a lot of people think it is, it is far from that. What you see is what I want you to see, and I don't see any problem with this.

I don't wear make-up to be more attractive to other people. Whether that is or isn't a side effect is up to you to decide and not me; but it isn't the reasoning behind why I do it. If anything, I wear make-up to make me more attractive to me. Sometimes I look in the mirror and can't believe how ugly I look. I hate my spots and my bumpy nose and the fact that one of my eyes is bigger than the other and it does restrict how I think about myself; no matter how much I try to convince myself that it doesn't. An application of foundation and mascara can make me confident enough in myself to face the day if my self-confidence is hit - even if it's only because I don't want to have wasted the effort.

So if I look in the mirror after applying full make-up following a few days slap free and feel like I look fake, it's probably a good sign and not me insulting myself. And I'm certainly not comparing myself to the girls in high school - it's not natural, but it's not orange.

Trick or treat? (Obligatory Halloween post)

I can't remember the age at which I stopped trick-or-treating.

I remember it was the same year that my brother stopped, even though he's three years younger than I am. It's also the same year that my parents stopped giving out sweets to trick-or-treaters. We used to turn of the lights and go to the cinema to get away from them.

We live in an area where it is not unusual to have your house egged if you ignore them, but it they seem to have gotten tamer in recent years and it seems to be an unwritten Halloween rule that if the lights are off they will assume that you're not in.

I lived in the same house for 15 years. Having studied memory, I know that that is as long as I can remember. We did live in a flat before that but I wasn't old enough at that time.

When you've been going trick-or-treating on the same street for at least a decade, you learn a little something about the people that live in the same place as you. You know which ones are 'never in', you know who gives the best sweets, who is likely to trick you, who will be dressed up as well, who will give you money and even the exact house that the old man who gives you the tangerine lives in. You know which houses have different people in from last year, who has a dog and who has kids and roughly how old they are.

I didn't realise until recently that you learn something about your neighbours on Halloween that you wouldn't learn any other time of the year. It also doesn't seem to be as useful as anything you would learn any other day of the year, but the point still stands.

The last year I went trick-or-treating I went with my best friend at the time in her estate rather than my own. It's a refreshing experience when you go trick-or-treating somewhere new, and you get all new sweets and new faces but I can't help but think back and think that I should have done my last round in my own street, for the memories more than anything else, but as is life.

This year I went out with my best friend. We dressed up (like the big kids that we are at heart), and we went out clubbing and got drunk in fancy dress. My skirt was so short she spent the entire night following me around pulling it down but overall the whole experience was good.

I don't know when the shift happened. Less than half a decade ago I was dressed as a much more innocent looking; last minute, makeshift zombie; with a different best friend asking strangers for sweets and we fast forward to the 18 year old me in the shortest skirt of my life and a pair of fishnet tights and high heeled boots (which did not last all night I will tell you now).

In Mean Girls, they say that 'Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.' When does this occur? When do you stop seeing Halloween as a fun way to get free sweets and start seeing it as an 'excuse' to dress like a slut and get drunk?

I mean, from what I've seen, most people don't need an excuse.

I'm not going to go into if I think it is begging and if children should do it and some of the extreme measures I've seen mentioned regarding it (laxative chocolate so they won't call again next year) because I don't think it's worth the debate. For me Halloween has always been fun and I think that is what it will stay as.

My definition of fun has just changed considerably since I was 5.