The Drugstore Mascara That Made Me Rethink My Makeup Bag

My makeup bag used to be a graveyard of half-finished mascaras. I would buy one, decide it was too stiff or too clumpy, and quietly retire it to the back of the drawer. The routine was always the same. Two coats of whatever was on sale, a smudge check at lunch, and an evening face wash that never quite seemed to get all of it off. None of it was terrible. None of it was worth talking about either.

I am 48 now. I spent 19 years as the office manager of a dental practice and I work part time from home these days, so getting ready means a walk with Pepper, our nine-year-old terrier mix, and then four minutes at the bathroom sink. My eyes are where the years show first. Fine lines that started in my early forties. The skin around them is the most easily irritated part of my face, and anything heavily scented makes it worse.

Seven months ago, on an errand where you go in for toothpaste and come out with three things you did not plan on, I picked up Maybelline Lash Sensational Sky High Washable Mascara. I had no expectations. I had been disappointed by drugstore mascara enough times to treat the whole aisle with suspicion. What made me keep using it past the first week was simple. My lashes looked longer and fuller, they stayed separated, and nothing had flaked onto my cheek by mid morning.

The listing calls it volumizing, lengthening, defining and curling, and it is buildable, which in plain English means a second coat does not turn the whole thing into a mess. The formula has bamboo extract and fibers in it. The wand is straight, not one of those curved brushes that always seem to miss the outer corner. I use two coats. That is the number that works for me and I have stopped fiddling with it.

Here is what it is not. It is not waterproof and it is not water resistant, and Maybelline says so plainly on the label. I would not wear it to a swimming pool and I would not wear it on a hot walk in July. It is a washable mascara for ordinary days. That is not a flaw, it is a category. If you want something that survives a cry at a wedding, this is the wrong tube.

By two in the afternoon my lashes still looked like lashes, not like three separate clusters of dust.

The first two weeks were a lesson in restraint. I am the sort of person who assumes that if two coats are good, three must be better, and this mascara does not reward that. Two coats, the second one applied while the first is still a little tacky, gives length and separation. I work the wand from the base of the lash upward in small wiggles and I save the outer corner for last, because that is where I always run out of patience.

Add a third coat and it starts to clump. Not immediately and not badly, but by the end of the day the tips have gathered into little points that look more spidery than lash-like. I tested that more than once, hoping I was wrong. I was not. Two coats it is.

The upside of a washable formula is how easily it comes off. My normal evening face wash takes it off without a separate eye makeup remover, no tugging and no leftover smudge under the eyes the next morning. After years of scrubbing at waterproof mascara with a cotton pad and telling myself it was fine, that alone was worth the switch.

The tube lives on the narrow shelf beside the sink, which is the only storage I have in a shared bathroom. My one real complaint is shelf life. A tube starts to feel thicker and drier at around the three month mark, and application gets clumpier as it goes. I have made my peace with replacing it a few times a year. That is ordinary for a washable mascara, and it is why I no longer buy two at once the way I used to with things I assumed would last forever.

On Saturdays I go to a Pilates class, and on warm mornings I walk Pepper before the sun gets high. I put mascara on after both of those, not before. Washable means washable. I learned that on a muggy morning in September, when I came home looking like I had been crying about something I could not remember.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

What I would tell you, if we were sitting at my kitchen table with the good coffee out and nobody trying to sell you anything, is this. Maybelline Sky High is not a product that changes your face. It does one small job well, which is more than I can say for most of the tubes in the back of my drawer. It gives you longer, fuller looking lashes in two coats, it comes off with your normal face wash, and it is not precious about being replaced every few months. If your lashes are sparse, or your eyes water easily, or you need something that survives a swim, keep looking. If you want an everyday mascara that behaves itself from seven in the morning until dinner, this is the one I keep reaching for.