Lashing Out

A tacit understanding is an agreement made without anyone saying anything; it's just understood without discussion.

That's what I have with the women of the world who put on false eyelashes and whatnot. I don't question that choice and they keep mum on my predilection for wearing cargo pants, and everyone is happy.

Listen, a little bit of sumpin' is always good, and there are fake lashes that look fine. But the other day at the checkout stand at the BuySumMor, the cashier had eyelashes that looked like she could have swept up the dust with them just by leaning forward. They must have been an inch long, but I said nothing because I was reaching into the pocket of my cargo shorts for my change holder, which shares a pocket with my calendar and several knives.

Mike Nichols, the movie and Broadway director, was totally depilous - left hairless all over from a bad whooping cough vaccine he received as a child in Germany in the 1930s. He wore wigs and false eyebrows ever since childhood, but he had no eyelashes, meaning that when he cried, the tears ran directly down his cheeks with no lashes to hold them back. 

I guess if he had wanted to, he could have added false lashes, but he didn't, and that was in the days before auxiliary lashes became as popular as they are now. The other day,  U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents grabbed three thousand pairs of false eyelashes that were illegally imported from China to New Orleans.

Officials took away four boxes of long lashes at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. They were headed for a local beauty supply store, as agency spokesperson Matthew Dyman reported. 

I didn't even know that there was a federal Eyelash Approval Committee, but these hadn’t been approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration and weren’t labeled with the distributor's name or the manufacturer’s name, Dyman said.

As Dyman said, "There’s no way to tell whether the eyelashes had been exposed to disease during manufacturing or whether they were stored properly and kept away from insect-infested areas."

Oh! Now I see why there's a need for the eyelash squad.

“There’s no telling what’s on these eyelashes,” Dyman said.

Ewwwwwww.

You take synthetic eyelashes and adhere them to your lids and you're looking at  allergic reactions, eye irritation or worse, Dyman wants you to know.

WVUE-TV reports that unlabeled, non-FDA-approved false lashes are often seized in New Orleans, but this shipment was “particularly large,” according to officials.

"Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye." - William Shakespeare