CHENNAI : To wear stilettos and a tight pencil skirt is to accept the inevitable reality that an awkward pigeon walk is bound to happen. To wear false eyelashes means to accept the eventual reality of picking on bits of dried up glue and fuss about the band not sitting quite right. I’m fairly certain that glue lash extensions are designed by evil Santa or the devil himself.
I lost a week of my life trying to get them to work, poked each eye a modest estimate of 12 times, and tried multiple ways on multiple days. From a distance, they’d look decent enough. Truth is, the ends would poke out, they wouldn’t align quite right, and I would want to be standing six feet apart from anyone who saw me. There is something about the Liza Minelli look that I absolutely love. So, I decided to power through the trauma. The good news is that it paid off, and given 20 minutes extra, I can manage to add a perfect wing to my lash, and fly away on all my problems.
Needless to say I was smitten by the concept of magnetic eyelashes when I first heard of it. They look like any standard lash set — a little like an insect museum in the tray. However, they work a little differently. Two lash strips sandwich your real lashes and click together with their attached tiny magnets. Then you just slide the bands between your fingers to release the connection and they slip off. The fact that they come without glue meant that I didn’t have to wait for the quick five second window of perfect stickiness to place them, and there was no mess afterward.
Here’s the verdict: they’re definitely cute and easy to remove, but putting them on is a different story. Perhaps this is just me with all lashes, considering my history and all that. My issue with these is that the magnets attract so fast and move the top lash entirely from the root to the centre. Seriously, there is practically no way of getting the top lash to stay while you’re trying to align both the layers.
Sure cutting the lash in half, and applying mascara before application really helped; but the entire point of falsies is that you don’t have to wear mascara! What I absolutely love about these is that they come off like a breeze which also makes me wonder if they’d hold up on a windy day. A concerned and dear flatmate suggested that I don’t venture near the refrigerator, fearing the magnet on my lash will get attracted to the ones at home.
Magnetic lashes seem to be getting a lot of mixed love and reviews. They’re certainly a lot of fun after the initial trial and error (lots of error) but that is the story with all lash extensions. Would I use these on a weekly basis? Probably not. Would I wear them for a fun night out and trick my friends into thinking I’m a Snapchat filter, Bambi, or Janice the Muppet? Absolutely!