The smell of makeup

In our apartment, each of the bedrooms has an ensuite. Mine has the advantage of including a bath. My son’s has the advantage of a sink set into a bench with cupboards beneath and a mirror running its length and height. With no surface on which to place anything in my own, and no drawers in which to keep things, I have taken to applying makeup in my son’s bathroom. I lay out brushes, bottles, compacts and containers, and take each one as I need it.

My son complains. “Why is your makeup in here?”

“Because I needed a bench. Does it matter?”

He pulls a face. “Can you do it somewhere else? It smells funny”.

At this point, I adopt my favoured parenting strategy, which is do nothing and see what happens.

A day or two later there is a similar interchange. I look at his small nose twitch. The edges of his mouth quiver, like he isn’t sure whether he’s allowed to comment on this.

I can’t smell anything.

I think it through that evening after he’s asleep. Transgender parenting is like all parenting –complex, regularly beset by competing priorities and uncertainties, all the while trying to do one’s best for this small person who is more important to me than myself. Upon that is an additional layer of daily questions, possibilities and doubts arising from the change in the gender dynamic and norms I have brought to our family.

All of which is very abstract. However, what requires attention is the question of where to locate my foundation, powder, blusher and lipstick.

Does he really smell anything? I can’t detect it. But then I think back to my childhood, and the scent of old ladies’ dressers or clothes. A scent that I always inferred had to do with makeup, without ever really knowing why. It was distinct, powdery, and like my son I remember finding it strangely repellent.

Is his issue really that he does not want to have anything to do with makeup? Is it deeper, in that he rejects the idea of my transition impinging on what he perceives as his safe space?

I remember back to when we still all lived together; how he never wanted his mum to kiss him goodbye if she had her lipstick on. Was this a sensory thing for him – the touch or smell of a product – and nothing to do with gender?

Then I think – this is ridiculous, we are a two-person family with two damned bathrooms – of course I shouldn’t be in his! That’s just rude from his point of view. I go online and order a tall, thin nightstand, collect it and assemble it the following weekend. In my best handy‘man’ mode, I get out power tools and screw the thing to the wall so it won’t topple. It has six shelves, which might just be enough for my makeup, facecloth collection and one tartan-covered hot water bottle. I move all the cosmetics across that day.

I don’t hear anything more about makeup.