I used to think of Maybelline and L’Oréal as though they were a couple of cool, white girlfriends from New York and Paris.  Black Radiance and Opal, although attractive, had long let me down.  I even tried the Queen’s product but I was dissatisfied with the feel of it between my thumb and forefinger.  Didn’t care for the consistency, it felt like oil—a little too rich for my taste.

For a reasonable price, from Maybelline and L’Oréal or even Cover Girl, I could always get a little powder.  Despite every use leaving me looking either pasty, sun burnt, or embalmed, over the years I had grown comfortable with getting less for less, a less than ideal product for a decent price.  It was a trade off I could live with.

Recently, on the verge of running out of powder, I ran out to the corner, peeping around for a dream, on the lookout for something clean, a truer match.  This time was different.  Somewhere between my last fix and this arrival, the terms had changed.  The sign screamed in big letters 50% off!!!  At first, I was excited.  Then I read the fine print.  “Buy one for $10.89 and get a second for 50% off.”

‘Leven dollars for some run-of-the-mill drug sto’ powder?!!  When did these boutique prices happen?  Was I out sick when the job passed out raises?

Who told these New York and Paris chicks I had won the Ohio lottery?

No one asked Maybelline to trick out her packaging with a fly sideways-opening mirror in its own separate compartment.

No one asked L’Oréal to bury her puff and mirror on the underside of the powder out of sight in its own separate compartment.

Did you ask for it?  I didn’t.

Sure it’s nice to be able to see the stuff before you buy it.  But there was no real need to top the compact with a plastic window.

The old-fashioned, inexpensive way of leaving the compact open like a sandwich worked just fine.

I would argue that the old packaging took up less space, thin and flayed like a fish, than these newer chunky hockey pucks.

All of this extra plastic and packaging is just excess, an excuse to hike up prices while offering fewer ounces of the only thing a user needs more of, which is the powder.

Acnegenic. More loose than pressed. You will scrape the bottom in days. It will be a wonder if this powder lasts a month. And there’s less of it than in Dream Matte.

With all of these inflated prices, you would think the stuff was pure cocaine.

Needless to say, pissed off by the widening gap between what you earn and what you can afford to pay, compounded by the jacked-up prices of plain old face powder, I left the pharmacy empty-handed.

As any user can imagine, being left without an ample supply of powder left me nervous, a bit shaky.  That’s because, since I stubbornly refused to pay the price, in the coming days, like a broke fiend, I knew I would have no choice but to scrape around the corners of the compact with a pinky nail until the last of it was gone.