“All right, we have a small problem here,” Riley said. “Do we actually look like people who belong in that neighborhood?”
“This is a problem,” Angel said without being asked. “Rich Russians make themselves up. But so far none of us have put on much makeup.”
“Do you normally carry cosmetics with you?” Stacy asked her team members.
Marilyn explained. After they were rescued, they had some free time before picking up Stacy, but they had not prioritized replenishing their cosmetics. So now they had very limited cosmetics with them. Apart from Stacy, the other four had spent only about two weeks in Moscow after their own initial rescue, so they had only bothered to shop for basic stuff that they used often.
“We had better pool resources,” Naz suggested.
And when resources were pooled, Stacy noted that these were very measly. The five ZIL members had between them, cosmetics not even equal to what one ordinary European woman might have.
“All right, this is a real problem,” Stacy said. “We wouldn’t be able to pass unnoticed in a billionaires’ neighborhood if we look like peasants.”
“If we want to get cosmetics, it is best to resupply in a big and sophisticated city like Moscow,” Naz commented. “Angel, you only have moisturizer and lip balm? That’s not cosmetics.”
“I never make myself up for men!” Angel announced without being asked.
“You never wear?”
“Actually, they make us wear when doing cheerleading performances. But I always think of that as battle paint; not something to make me look attractive for men.”
Riley made a face and turned her face slightly away. Even knowing Angel’s personality, it sounded like a joke. Battle paint!
Naz twirled her finger. “So you do know how to put on makeup?”
“Of course!”
“So if we buy some cosmetics…”
“I would be able to put them on myself,” Angel said. “Although whether I actually look like somebody’s mistress would be a different issue. I know how to emphasize my presence and personality but haven’t a clue how to subtly make myself look gorgeous.”
“That’s all right, you don’t need to,” Riley said. “In fact, over make up might be good. You know, look like a vulgar Central Asian noveau rich.”
“You could go by the name Sika Elbasyovka,” Marilyn purred.
“I don’t even want to know what that means in Kazakh,” Naz smiled.
…
“Uh, what about you Naz?” Stacy asked.
“I do like looking good,” Naz said. “And I’m good with makeup too!”
“Wow, it’s our mechanical engineer who wears makeup,” Angel commented.
“Makeup is like any tool application. It has its uses and is intended to get results,” Naz said. “But I’m not like most city women. I usually only spend a few minutes a day on makeup. Whatever I put on, cannot take longer than that.”
“That’s astoundingly fast.” Stacy reflected that Naz might still be influenced by Soviet-era lack of resources. So she was sparing with her cosmetics usage.
“I’m efficient with all tools,” Naz said proudly. “And oh, please don’t think I stop at that. If I really like a guy I might go up to ten, fifteen minutes on makeup for him. Not including the waiting for stuff to dry, of course.”
“Whew, that’s scary,” Riley said. “Anything more than seven minutes, is something that requires professional help for me.”
“It’s all right,” Angel said with her usual bluntness. “You’re so pale, that any eyeshadow is good.”
“Another way of putting it,” Marilyn said perkily, “is that you have a face that can’t be destroyed with bad makeup skills.” And Marilyn made a face at Angel.
Stacy hastily came in to distract people before Riley got offended.
“Here’s my bag. It’s nothing great either,” she said.
“Seriously! Most of the contents are just moisturizer and chap stick!” Naz exclaimed.
“An emollient for below, and a moisturizer on top,” Stacy said. “Our winters are bad on the skin.”
“Greases, vaseline or moisturizer are all normal for rural women in cold places,” Riley reflected on the Siberians she had known. “But this is almost a peasant or herder’s bag.”
“I just want to keep my skin in good condition; men in these parts aren’t so awesome that I want to go around seducing them,” Stacy returned.
Everyone agreed readily.
“I’ll help Angel with makeup,” Naz said. “At least Angel should wind up looking like she’s worn makeup before.”
…
Stacy turned her attention to Riley.
“Riley, how much do you know about makeup?”
“I do wear a bit. Can’t help it!”
“Can’t help putting on makeup, Riley?” Stacy asked slyly. She was trying to tease out information on the full extent of Riley’s skills. Riley usually spent only a few minutes, but that didn’t mean that she completely lacked makeup skills.
“Not for men. For myself,” Riley said hastily. “Sometimes my appearance is really too pale to be attractive even to myself! Gotta do something about my eyes and eyebrows otherwise I can’t even stand looking into a mirror. I look so dead. And my default lipstick is a neutral; it’s to keep lips from chafing and not to look more attractive to men. Apart from moisturizer, this sums up everything that I do with makeup normally.”
“All right, this can’t remain the same,” Naz said. “Riley, you are not going to look like anybody’s mistress or wife in your current state.”
“I could pose as some big shot tech female executive. You know, the nerdy kind.”
“The number of such women are few enough that they would be recognizable in Rublevka,” Naz snorted. “Nope. You’re going to need some big time help from me.”
…
This wasn’t going well. Stacy now asked Marilyn about her makeup skills.
Uzbekistan is a poor country, and Marilyn was a state employee. She didn’t have that much money to spend, so she had been careful and purchased only limited supplies, often local or traditional brands.
Marilyn’s words suggested that she had some competence with makeup. She could do rouge/ blush, lipstick and eyeshadow. But again it was entirely under Marilyn’s control. She wore makeup on occasion, and only to feel good about herself. Coming from a conservative society she didn’t have much dating experience, so she really didn’t know how men thought about her makeup.
“Most of the time I have no makeup other than blush,” Marilyn said.
It occurred to Riley that Marilyn liked blush because it made her look more adorable. Marilyn seemed to have a slight need or desire to look cute. Since Riley was the second person who boarded the airship, she had been with Marilyn for more than a month. In her experience, Marilyn often attained that goal.
“Stacy, it’s your turn,” Naz said.
“I am not particularly good with makeup as it’s not part of my personality. I do wear, because I’m aware that I often need to give others a good impression or look attractive. Even to other women, so that I can get a good response from them.”
“What do you do with makeup?” Naz wanted more specificity.
“To be honest, most of my work is done with my eyes. I’ve got narrow eyes, so I need to bring them out, make them look bigger and brighter, so that I look more trustworthy,” Stacy admitted.
“Yes, I can see eyeshadow and concealer in your bag,” Naz observed. “But no false eyelashes? That would have been the basic to make eyes look bigger and more appealing.”
“I can’t go for false stuff,” Stacy said. “Other women will see the false stuff, and it’s not something that a journalist can sport.”
Everybody nodded. No one was accustomed to false eyelashes. False things felt too much like an era they had hoped to put behind.
“… apart from that I use a lot of lipstick, since I have to talk when on the job and really can’t afford to get ugly chapped lips. Prominent lips are more appealing to both men and women and looks a lot more conversational, so I do bring out my lips a bit.”
“Wait, no foundation?” Marilyn suddenly realized Stacy’s bag seemed to be missing some basics.
“Foundation takes too long to apply, isn’t good for a whole day, and covers up my blemishes too much,” Stacy explained.
Riley grinned. “Agree with the first two, but the third?”
“A journalist can’t look too good when she wants genuine information from normal people,” Stacy said. “I have to show that I’m a flawed human like everyone else. Anyway perfect makeup is for interviewing rich and powerful people, and frankly, I don’t want to do that anymore. And in our current job, hopefully we won’t ever have to again.”
“We’ll just be spying on them, investigating them, taking stuff from them, doing a klepto on the Kleptocratovs,” Marilyn deadpanned cheerily. “Who cares about makeup?”
…
There was a pause, then Riley’s attention turned to everyone’s footwear.
“Should we get, um, more ladylike looking footwear?” Riley asked nobody and everybody at the same time. Even if rich men might not notice, rich women would. Whatever ZIL members claimed to be, their footwear had to match.
Angel was first to speak.
“I only wear sneakers, boots or slippers. I’m really a barbarian. Haven’t a clue how to put on heels like a rich woman.”
Riley rolled her gray eyes visibly.
“I don’t wear heels either. Closest to ladywear shoes would be gladiator sandals, which I do like. Otherwise I just make do with moccasins, ballerina flats or loafers.”
Stacy turned her hazel eyes to look at Naz, who replied.
“I mostly wear boots of various types. If I’m not in boots, it’s either slippers or mules.”
Stacy’s disappointed expression must have shown, because Naz continued:
“I’ve worked and traveled in different places, and I generally find boots are the best. Good for Kavkaz mountains, good for Ukrainian mud, good for all work situations that a mechanical engineer might find herself in. Not really a sophisticated city girl.”
“Says the one who knows makeup best among us all!” Angel hooted.
“I have zero experience of heels,” Naz replied. “And I don’t want to ever wear anything with stability issues. These rub me the wrong way as a mechanical engineer.”
Stacy turned her eyes in Marilyn’s direction. Ever alert to a commanding officer’s body language, Marilyn spoke up with alacrity.
“I’m not that feminine, so I don’t have heels. I suppose they look good. But I’m too practical to spend money on these. So I’m mostly in boots. Even when I am in civilian dress, I still wear boots.”
“Uzbek women’s boots are some of the prettiest in the world,” Angel commented. “Much too feminine for me.”
“Come on! Do you really think I had that kind of money? I just went for plain leather with a few small embellishments sewn by my aunt!”
When Marilyn talked like this, she didn’t mean to say she wore plain boots. She was actually saying that she didn’t take bribes.
Riley quietly shook her head to herself. She didn’t have the sense that anybody here knew how to dress like a classy, wealthy woman.
“Stacy, what about you?”
“As you can see, I’m also in boots now,” Stacy said. “I won’t wear regular heels. Not practical. Boots with heels look good, but will protect my ankles and also my feet from mud, snow and so on. But I only go for slightly elevated heels; nothing that really affects my balance.”
…
At the end of the conversation, Stacy noted with a mix of both approval and concern. Five ZIL members were all practical, commonsensical, working class types. Good for academic expeditions, practical fact finding and general do-gooder missions! But what only rated a qualified good, was the fact that none of them were particularly in contact with what was conventionally feminine. Westerners would probably deride Stacy’s team as a bunch of unsophisticated Soviet women.
Sigh.
ZIL was going to travel across vast areas in a cloaked airship. They would have to be incognito or disguised or extremely low profile when they disembarked. Most of the time nobody was going to look at them, so they didn’t need cosmetics.
But sometimes you might need women to know cosmetics, dress, and so on. And it seemed that with three engineers by training, one former member of a state security service and one nerdy journalist, no one was particularly skilled or experienced with ‘feminine matters’.
Just consider how the other ZIL members referred to women’s shoes.
Men normally had a limited vocabulary when it came to female footwear. Pretty much anything with elevated heels was going to be called heels. Rich or poor, educated or not, all men regarded heeled women’s shoes the same.
Stacy had expected at least two of her teammates to think the same way, since they were engineering-trained ex-Soviet citizens. But all four referred to heeled shoes with limited vocabulary.
Stacy did know the difference between a block heel and a flare heel, or stilettos and kitten heels. But that was because she was a professional journalist and had to be careful with words when writing reports. She had to learn all these things when doing articles about rich people and Moscow’s rising new elite. In personal life, Stacy normally employed pretty limited vocabulary for shoes too. She didn’t wear any heeled shoes that offered inadequate ankle support, so all elevated women’s footwear outside boots was also ‘heels’ to her.
…
This might not be a problem if ZIL was only going to talk to peasants, babushkas and other working class common folk.
But ZIL was going to ride around in a Rolls-Royce and act rich and powerful at times… It would be a problem if ZIL members couldn’t tell the difference between types of cosmetics, perfumes, clothing and shoes when the situation called for it.
…
Stacy laughed gently to herself.
As a journalist, Stacy had never needed to put on an act. It was more adviseable that she did not, because that was a sure way to damage trust and not get information from people that she wanted to interview. But now as the leader of a secretive team that was going to travel around in a cloaked airship, she would have to work on her teammates’ language skills. If they were going to act like rich people at times, they needed at least some superficial, very basic knowledge of rich people’s lives…
Wait…
Come to think of it, was that really necessary? Russians were famous for being some of the least sophisticated noveau riche anywhere in the world.
But Stacy remembered Marilyn’s question. No foundation?
That’s right! Stacy had practically made it a career to work without foundation and concealer. She did want people to see her skin blemishes. In a country where all adults could remember times when the news was entirely propaganda, journalists were not trusted. Covering up one’s imperfections and acne scars would definitely remind people of times when the job of a journalist was to cover up problems for the state.
…
What about now? ZIL is now a mix of research vessel and secretive team of do-dooder investigators. There would be times when subterfudge and makeup were essential.
Not wearing foundation was a very good thing when trying to win the trust of unfamiliar people. It was a dead giveaway at other times. Because any rich Oligarchenko woman would definitely wear foundation and concealer at the first opportunity.
She made a note to bring up the issue again…
Something appeared in Stacy’s peripheral vision. It was at about elbow height if you were standing up.
Stacy found herself looking at Marilyn’s head and nothing else.
Oh, Marilyn’s head was (probably) still attached to her body. Just that the body was not visible.
“Stacy, can we get any guidance from you about cosmetics? Buy, or don’t buy, at the first opportunity?”
“Maybe get Naz to do the purchasing, since Naz appears most knowledgeable,” Stacy responded. “Buy everything that Naz can possibly use or knows how to use.”
“Common funds, not Naz’s personal account, right? We can just get one complete set; Naz says she’ll help everyone with makeup if mission calls for it. I would urge getting individual brushes for everyone though. Just for hygiene.”
“I approve the use of common funds to purchase at least one very complete set of cosmetics that everyone can share,” Stacy gave her leader’s official reply. “And multiple individual brushes for hygiene purposes.”
“Done!” Marilyn’s head vanished.
It seems that Marilyn had a cute way of doing everything. Instead of walking into the room like normal people, Marilyn had popped her head in sideways, as though she was standing on one foot outside the room. This would give the people talking to Marilyn from inside the room a Cheshire-Cat like impression.
…
Something made Stacy want to start laughing to herself. But she had to control this, in case anybody was watching.
In rich Western countries, cosmetics were normally a very private type of property. It would probably be unthinkable for French women to share their cosmetics with anyone not a close relative.
But here on board the MMM, they were going to purchase just one set of cosmetics. To be shared by everyone.
It was quite the irony.
Years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and years after privatization had proceeded at full swing, some distinctly Soviet, Socialist things were taking place here.
Strictly speaking, a Soviet was a voluntary association of free persons. Much like a Western NGO.
They were practicing some form of socialism here, by sharing a common living space, common facilities, and even a common set of cosmetics. Given resource constraints, this was unavoidable. Most were not experienced with makeup anyway. If they were going to wear makeup during specific missions, they might as well just use a common pool of resources and share their modest makeup skills.
…
Oh, and ZIL made group decisions by voting, so there was a republic here.
Stacy shook her head in bemusement. The ZIL Soviet Socialist Republic. A shadow traveling over the former Soviet Union. You couldn’t see the cloaked airship in the sky, but you could still see the shadow on the ground.
Let’s hope the intent of the name is right. ZIL.
Stacy had not explained to anyone why she liked the name. But zil had an association for her, something to do with justice and conscience too…
The shadow of the Soviet Union, traveling over the former Soviet Union, addressing problems with causes mostly originating from Soviet times!