On my twenty-five minute ride on the train into the cty this morning, I had to stand from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I was holding on to the bar directly in front of a woman who was sitting down doing her make-up. I watched her as she squirted Maybeline liquid foundation onto a triangular sponge and smeared it across her face and neck. She then loaded a billowey brush with coral pink blush and swept it across her cheekbones and around the edges of her temples and then under her chin and on her neck. Next, she dabbed on a few dots of liquid highlighter on the apples of her cheeks and rubbed it in with her ring finger. After that she loaded a small brush with Rimmel grey-blue eyeshadow--two shades--and applied it to her eyelids, followed by more highlighter, in a different shade of course, directly underneath her eyebrow. She took out a charcoal colored pencil and drew in lines around the top and bottom of her eyes and then smeared them with yet another brush. She pulled out a wand and brushed her eyebrows, three swipes each. After that she pulled out her pink Maybeline mascara tube and applied it to her lashes, both tops and bottoms. She then coated her lips with a shimmery pink lip gloss, blotted, then repeated. She piled all of her weapontry back into it's large black case just as we crossed the bridge into ChinaTown. As we were going into the tunnel I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the window of the subway car. Me and my lipgloss, and I smiled. And then I sighed, took a deep breath, and thanked God that I wasn't a girl.