How did your beauty “thing” become your beauty “thing”? That’s the question we’re posing to celebrities in our new series, Just One Thing. Of course, journalists that we are, we’re also taking the opportunity to ask about the one beauty product that helps keep their thing… thing-ing. In this installment, comedian (her new standup special, Come For Me, drops this fall) and actor (she appears in the new season of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, out August 27th) Catherine Cohen tells us about her long-time obsession with winged eyeliner.
I remember so vividly being in the sixth grade and watching the seventh graders start to wear makeup. I think it was a rule that you couldn’t wear makeup until seventh grade at my school. And I remember all of a sudden all the girls were doing tight waterline black eyeliner every day. And I was like, ‘That is the coolest thing you could ever do.’ I could not wait until I was in the seventh grade and I could experiment with eyeliner.
Until the end of college, I was doing just black tight lines on the top and bottom lid. I was really giving that pic of Miley Cyrus where she’s smiling with those crazy eyes. That was me. When I moved to New York, I was exposed to so many fabulous, cool people, and I would see girls walking around Williamsburg with their wing eyeliner, and I was like, ‘I have to try that.’
I asked a friend who was wearing it, like, ‘How did you draw that on?’ And she showed me that basically, you draw the little point and then you connect it. You draw a little triangle. [Today] I do a joke about how going down on a girl is putting eyeliner on someone else. But I was a natural at mine, I have to say. And I’ve been doing it ever since.
I do always feel like if I’m nervous for an event, then I struggle to draw it on. And if it’s just some random day, it’s always a perfect wing. When I have a show or a performance, I do a really intense, long line. An everyday look is more of just a little flip. I actually really like the Amy Winehouse way. The up and out—the way it sort of pulls [the eye up] up. I like that look.
I don’t know when it started, but for many years I’ve just been using the Maybelline New York Master Precise Liquid Eyeliner. It’s the best one. I feel like fancier people will use a pot and draw it on [with a brush], but I find it easier to do the marker. I’ve spent more on [brands like] KVD and Stila but there’s no point; the Maybelline one does the job. It just stays on.