I like makeup. I’ve always liked makeup. Back in college, I wrote a terrible slam poem about being a feminist who wears makeup. Then I abruptly dropped the class because I couldn’t go through with actually performing that piece of shit. I mean, can you imagine? But in my head, I think the professor thought I was talented because he looked at me once.
Back to Ulta where it is bright as fuck. Brighter than bright. Bright like the Griswold house at Christmas. Bright like everyone who shops there has seasonal depression. Bright like a sanitarium. Bright like you’re Harry Potter, and look there’s Dumbledore and am I dead or what?
Seriously, there is no reason for this place of cosmetics to be brighter than Snooki’s veneers. Or whiter than Taylor Swift. I mean, my god, hallelujah, because I think I just saw Jesus in the self-tanner aisle.
I stop by Ulta occasionally. It shouldn’t come as a shock to assume I avoid the place for its french tip mani color palette. But sometimes I need to go in there and only under these conditions: buy two, get two free WITH a $3.50 off coupon in hand. I like hand soaps. I like them a lot. I also enjoy Yankee Candles, cats, granny panties and my un-manicured lady lawn I’ve nicknamed “the turnpike median.”
Every time I go into the store, I make my way to the hand soap pumps where I grab four bottles of stuff that smells like fruit with micro-beads. As I make my way down the aisle, something will catch my eye and I’ll pause just a second too long and — this never fails — a girl will approach. And before I even turn around I know exactly what she’s going to look like:
Every Ulta has at least one 1990s WWF wrestler waiting to scare the shit out of you with her Expendables machine gun set to contour. I mean, I’ve been to drag shows with more subtle layers. And yet, the Ultimate Warrior of Ulta is practically divine intervention — she puts everything into perspective. She’s been there too long, she’s a total junkie. And you’re just, you know, there for the soaps, which are supposed to be a gateway purchase.
Ulta makes their stores biblically bright so no matter how good you look outside of the store, inside you’ll look like Sloth — all droopy-eyed and sweaty, with pores the size of craters and a t-zone doubling as a water slide to One-Eyed Willy’s pirate ship.
But the Ultimate Warrior, bless her heart, snaps you out of your self-hating, gotta-buy-all-the-stuff-to-fill-the-void lull so you can peace the fuck out with your soaps and middle fingers ablaze. Because you got out of that place in one piece and didn’t get stranded in the light like Carol Ann. It’s that bright.
