Fashion

Halloween Makeup for Mere Mortals #4: The Cat

by Tori Telfer

To be honest, I basically fell asleep while wondering how to do cat makeup for halloween. Let's not beat around the bush here: being a cat is the most boring thing you can ever be on Halloween, unless you're being something hilariously conceptual (not) like a "normal person." I guess I'm biased, because I had this sorta-friend back in college who would just throw on a pair of cat ears and wear a black dress, while the rest of us were tearing through our closets for the rattiest Kurt Cobain shirt and the most kinderwhore Courtney Love tights we could find. It was artistically offensive.

#grumpycat

But okay, maybe cat costumes don't have to be boring. Maybe they can be subtle and mysterious, just like cats are in real life. And yeah, sometimes low maintenance is good. Really good. We don't all have hours each day to play around with Halloween makeup. So in the spirit of both speed and artistic integrity, let's make this the world's fastest, most non-annoying cat look ever. You can do it in three steps. Three! PS: This is not an excuse to go around seductively making "claw hands" and purring. I will eye roll you into oblivion.

1. Slap on your regular old going-out makeup look: brows, mascara, eyeshadow, concealer, wiping cat hair off your favorite dress. Here's guessing your go-to nighttime look involves a...cat eye! Felis catus power! I did a sorta regular brown smoky/glittery eye, because a black cat eye is so cliché (and because I've been getting black paint in my eyes all week; the poor dears are crying out for relief).

Simple and fast, because "smoky" is just another word for "smeared-on and imperfect!"

I will NOT meow.

2. This next part is super fun. Add cat spots to both eyes, mimicking the upward sweep of the cat-eye. I just used brown eyeliner to make little horseshoe shapes that grew smaller as they moved away from my eye. It looks — dare I say it? — glamorous.

I take back my feline snark, I like this look! Can I wear it this weekend, Internet? Dare I?

3. The final step is as simple as this: six dots on your upper lip. I don't know, it's how sophisticated women convey "whiskers."

Now listen, I am not a fan of black cat noses. Noses are weird enough anyway without drawing spots on them. So if you're a makeup minimalist, you can stop here — but for those feline purists out there, I reluctantly took the look one step further:

I'm a cat now, okay? I'm a cat. Happy? (Fine, it's kinda cute.)