Icing

I was in the bathroom working on my face this morning when it occurred to me how similar this was to another job I sometimes have to do.

That similar job is icing a cake.

These tasks both precede having to see and be seen by other people. I have to work on my face this morning because twice today I will be seen by other people: first, at the gym (make-up optional) and second, at bridge (make-up desirable).

I am pleased to compare and contrast these high-skill activities for you.

When you bake a cake, you may end up with an unseemly crown, or it may have caved in. These things you can fix along with the icing. You get that cake onto a plate, and you place three or four strips of waxed paper under the cake edges so that you don’t get icing everywhere. First, you conduct any necessary plastic surgery on the cake. Then you take a knife or spatula and ice the sides of the cake with the frosting you have just made.

Here is the tricky part: if you are too generous with the side icing, you won’t have enough left for the top. If you are too stingy with the side icing, you will cause cake crumbs to appear all over the sides. So you have to keep at it until you have concealed those unsightly crumbs. The experienced woman will have learned that both face and cake require concealing skills.

Sides done, you now move to the top. That’s the cake I am talking about. Here you get to pile on the icing and then create attractive swirls of some sort. You then add some tasteful decoration if you are so inclined. This involves tubes of colour, fancy lines, and different textures. You might have some sort of a theme. Now, when doing your own face, you employ exactly the same artistry, and your theme is probably “young woman, very pretty.” Lots of tools, brushes, and fiddling.

It is well known that you must not ice a cake until it has cooled. However, you are always working with a warm face (excluding, of course, undertakers), so there is a certain amount of waiting for things to dry, sort of, before you pile on the next layer. That is one difference.

Some cakes are finished with a simple dusting of icing sugar. I think that is a poor excuse for icing, but the Germans seem to think that’s fine. Further, and unexplainedly, they think a very dry cake is perfectly good too.

With the face, it is best to finish with a simple dusting of face powder.

The cake looks very lovely when finished, and then, as it is cut into and eaten, the composition and decoration are all consumed.

Same with a face. When first put on, it is quite lovely (or at least an improvement on what you started with), but as the day goes on, the effects disintegrate, starting with the lipstick being consumed (yes, you literally ate it), and followed by other well-known compromises such as concealer failure, greasiness, lopsided evaporation, and got rubbed off through ordinary living.

Moving on, even from a mere icing sugar dusting, are those cakes with no icing whatsoever. These are usually called quick breads, or “loaves,” as in banana loaf. No icing, but delicious served warm with a lot of butter.

Many older women actually settle on the quick-bread approach when they conclude that they look like marionettes in the make-up they wore in their thirties, and instead go about as is. WYSIWYG: what you see is what you get. It is a very sensible and artistically sound choice.

This morning, I don’t know what it was — maybe I have been out in the sun too much — but the places to apply concealer seemed pretty endless. I might be moving to the banana-loaf stage.

I am not even going to get into hair.