Scary Beauty: Pins a Risky Solution to Clumpy Mascara

Clumpy mascara - it's happened to the best of us. A bad mascara, product buildup on the brush, too many coats and suddenly your lashes are stuck together in big spidery clumps - never an attractive look.

It doesn't always have to mean disaster, though. That's why God invented the eyelash comb after all. Get to your lashes before they dry, run the tiny comb through and you can generally separate the clumps into individual lashes again, restoring order to the world.

So when something as brilliantly simple as the lash comb exists, I had to wonder when I read a recent beauty tip in a magazine. The solution to the clumpy lash problem, according to the beauty page in the Sunday Times Style supplement (not the Ireland edition that Kirstie writes, I hasten to add), was to use a pin to separate them. And I'll admit that yes, a pin could indeed be employed to separate stuck-together lashes and it would probably do the job.

But imagine the ocular misadventures that could also result from such an endeavour? Raise your hand if you've ever sneezed while applying mascara, or indeed shortly thereafter (if you're going to sneeze while applying eye makeup, Murphy's law states that it will always happen while mascara is still wet). Now imagine you're holding the sharp end of a pin pointing towards your eye while you sneeze. My eyes water at the very thought of it. A particularly violent sneeze and a scratched cornea might be the least of your worries ...

My own metal eyelash comb is sharp, I'll admit, but its well designed handle means I have a better degree of control over it than I imagine I would with a single pin and as I've managed to avoid serious injury to my eyes thus far, I think I'll be sticking with it and leaving the pins in the sewing box.