Lunch With Laura Daniels

Laura Daniels is a cosmetologist, which is someone who studied make-up at university. She knows the science behind applying mascara and lipstick, the complex procedures required when wielding blusher. I met her in a piazza for a pizza. Normally she wouldn’t be seen dead with a scrofulous anvil like me, but I was helping proof her new nonfiction book Make Up Your Mind: How Cosmetics Can Be Philosophy.

She explained: “People think putting on make-up is easy. Then why do you see so many women stumbling like clowns out their houses, lipstick smeared on their eyes, mascara dripping from their nostrils? It’s because they don’t have the right cosmetologist mindset. They are not monopolising their cosmetology. I call it cosmonopolising.” I blinked. “Oh no. You don’t, do you?” She blinked back. “Yes. Problem?”

She added: “Women have to learn, make-up is an integral part of the female mindset. It’s a physical philosophy, a philosophy of the features. That’s in the book. See, if women learn to view their faces as canvases onto which men project their feelings, desires, needs and wants, they can wheedle their way to becoming the dominant species on a global scale.”

I knifed a fifth of Mario’s. “So what you’re saying is, by the diligent application of make-up, women can supersede men and become the world leaders, the top business people, and so on? Is that plausible?” She snorted. “Of course! The lipstick is a wand, the blusher a big button marked OBEY. Our faces can be set in such a way that men will come to us and break down, they will crumble under the perfection of our visages.”

“How does a woman set her face in such a philosophical way?” I asked. She wrinkled her nose, which was powdered with something like snot soup. “You’ll have to read to find out,” she said. She picked up her pizza, which was coated in a sooty blanket of mascara. “I’m not very hungry right now,” she said. I took my £2.50 cheque and left the table.