iBeheld is Melody Nelson … sort of! A #BeMoreFrench Make-Up Attempt

This post (and anything I write relating to Breast Cancer Awareness this year) is a #Sponsored Post and an #Ad according to Advertising Standards.

And sound the trumpets loud: this post also contains #AFFILIATELINKS ! 

(N.B. The Affiliate Links are to my Amazon Affiliate thing, and there are no affiliate links to any beauty or skincare products mentioned.) 

If you missed my last (related) post, I was writing about my personal and professional fears around the subject of  Breast Cancer Awareness, and how the need to overcome those fears led me to produce a piece of content that involved me stripping off and trying to channel Jane Birkin as Melody Nelson. Click here if you’d like to catch up, if not: let’s talk make-up!

Attempting to copy Jane Birkin’s make up from the cover of Histoire de Melody Nelson was fun and distracted me nicely from the horrible prospect ahead of me: standing around with no top on having my picture taken to promote Breast Cancer Awareness.

The products I used to get myself into a Melody Nelson state of mind

Nivea Day Cream Light Skin Tone (£3.99 from Superdrug, when I was looking for something cheap, simple and basic to wear as a base this summer)

Sephora Blush To Go Stick Blush in 01 Miss Busy (bought from Sephora in Rome on a press trip March 2019, when I found I’d left my make-up bag at home, can’t remember the price)

Top Shop Freckle Pencil in Forever Young (lid missing. I think the cats stole it. I bought this in July 2014 for the princely sum of £5.00. I’m slightly horrified to think it will be ten years old soon. Never mind, I cleaned it and sharpened it before using, and it doesn’t seem to have deteriorated 🙂 )

Makeup Obsession Dark Brown Fibre Brow Gel (bought from Boots April 2021 £4.80 I actually can’t work out if I applied it or not before taking the pictures but I think I forgot to!)

By Terry Baume De Rose Lip Essentials Lip Scrub and Lip Care (Please note: a press sample from By Terry to celebrate and  promote Ruban Rose) 

I used the scrub then applied the balm, gave it a few minutes to work its magic while I did the rest of my face. All that involved was applying the Nivea day Cream with a more generous hand than usual, and then going at it with the Sephora Blush Stick, also with unrestrained abandon.  Finally,  I made a kiss-pout to the mirror, and dabbed a circle of the Sephora apricot blush smack bang in the centre of my lips, and then patted the balm on top to blend it a little and smudge it all down to my desired outcome of looking like ‘nothing very much’. I was really impressed with how this balm-colour-balm application worked. My lips are naturally a very strong colour and I had thought that I’d have to mess about with concealer to get the mouth looking as soft and un-made-up as I wanted, but no!

This is what it looked like when I was done.

Who does this look remind you of?

In Birkin’s recently published Munkey Diaries 1975 – 1982 she explains that to create the Melody Nelson look, the freckles were drawn on by Serge, the red wig was inspired by a daughter’s friend’s hair and that ‘there are shades of Nabokov’s Lolita‘. 

Beauty being in The Eye of the Beholder and all that, actually trying to replicate the Melody Nelson make-up made me see something else … it’s Pippi Långstrump in her mid-twenties, don’t you think?

To me, Birkin’s personification of that ‘ …petit animal, que cette (Melody Nelson)/Une adorable garçonne/Et si délicieuse enfant/Que je n’ai connue qu’un instant/Oh, ma Melody, ma (Melody Nelson)/Aimable petite conne …’ resembles a 25 year old Pippi who has chopped off her plaits in favour of a lower maintenance coupe sauvage, and is stomping around her garden bare-chested in the summer, her flares trailing in the dirt, with faithful Herr Nilsson at her side (or in her arms). 

Back to the make-up and photo-prep

As you can see, I was very heavy-handed with the base, blush and freckle pencil, because I didn’t want the photographer getting too close, not with me in a state of undress! So the make-up had to show up from far away.

People say that you should always have your face and neck the same colour, but I disagree, and so (if memory serves) does Joan Collins. My face and neck don’t match even when I don’t have make-up on. I think this is because my poor old eek is out in all weathers, whilst below the jaw tends to get some level of protection from the elements. The idea of slathering foundation over my neck and ears gives me the horrors, but lots of people do go to that effort.

Effort is not my thing – this Melody-Nelson-but-thirty-five-years-older look took about 15 minutes to do, didn’t require any messing about with brushes (everything was daubed on or swiped off with fingertips), and I liked it so much I went out to review a cocktail bar without removing it.

By Terry Baume De Rose Body Cream (Please note: a press sample from By Terry to celebrate and promote Ruban Rose) This product was essential to my cunning plan to scare myself into doing another thing even more scary! I refused to allow myself to try out this body cream until the morning that found me cowering in my dressing gown, trying to get up the nerve to strip off for a photo for the first time in my life.

Younger readers of the ‘send nudes’ generation almost certainly can’t relate, but I’m part of the ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’ generation. Polaroid film is expensive … and as I have a fatal weakness for men as broke as me, I’ve never been in a compromising situation with anyone who wasn’t horribly skint.

It was my burning impatience to try out the BY TERRY Baume De Rose Body Cream that got me to take my dressing gown off to apply it, and effectively stopped me chickening out of this entire enterprise at the last minute.

And THIS is what it was all in aid of

the EOTB Jeans Week! #PinkOctober Instagram post

a.k.a. the iBeheld is Melody Nelson … sort of! Moment

Thank you to BY TERRY  – who inspired me to write about Breast Cancer Awareness and to discover more about Ruban Rose