‘Totally Lila’ and the Totally Awesome Beauty Tips for Tweens

One of Lila’s favorite Saturday morning pastimes? Deep diving into my make-up bag. Lipstick, blush, eye shadow, eye liner, gloss—none of it goes untouched. Let her loose in the beauty aisle at CVS or near a Lush pop-up store in our local Macy’s, and it’s pretty hard to keep Little Girlpie from losing her natural born mind. Just last night, after performing in a school play in which she work a face-full of rosy Covergirl blush on her cheeks, she announced, breathlessly, “Mommy, I loooooooooove make-up! I can’t wait until I’m old enough to wear it!”

Now understand: this has me just a tad bit discombobulated. I mean, my mother insisted that I skip loading up my face with make-up, and I made a point of keeping my face mostly clear of the stuff through college and years into my adult life at her direction, until Hollywood legend and all-around beauty Diahann Carroll schooled me on the finer points of the need to look my best “to show that you like you.” Thanks to my girl Muse, I do play in my Iman, Bobbi Brown, Aveda, E.L.F and M.A.C more because it makes me look and feel more delicious. Still, as a mom of two beautiful, chocolate girlpies, I do think it’s important that they learn to love what the Good Lord gave them before they set about changing it. So I’m just as quick to leave the house with my “fresh face” to show them that rocking natural hair and a natural face is, in itself, its own form of beauty.

For the most part, I’ve gotten little push back on my stance.  At age 14, Mari is only now starting to ask to wear a little liner and lip gloss. I’ll oblige her when she’s 15. But I think Lila is going to be that girl child who sneaks out a cosmetics bag full of beauty contraband to junior high—you know, that girl who comes to school barefaced, slips into the bathroom before homeroom with her mom’s make-up stash and comes out looking like Ru Paul. I can feel it.

Consider her latest Totally Lila video: in her Totally Juicy Lip Tutorial, girlfriend insisted on putting together a little how-to video on ways she keeps her lips moist and shiny during winter, when harsh weather tends to turn her kissers from juicy to dry before she makes it out of the front door good. Apparently, her lip moisturizing process is quite the thing. A lot of products are involved. And I’m a little scared that when she’s finally allowed to wear make-up—at least five years from now!—she’s going to raid my make-up bag and break my make-up budget. So long as she stays away from my Iman and M.A.C, we won’t have no problems. None at all.

Enjoy Totally Lila’s Totally Juicy Lip Tutorial. Show it to your girlpies, and if you or they dig it, by all means, tell Lila in the comments section on her YouTube page or here at MyBrownBaby. She loves those. For real.