Living Life the Essex Way (10 page)

My sister Billie was really good to me about it, and would help me make up stories to stop people from asking me about it all the time. I remember one time she told me to say I had done a
handstand against the wall and then I’d fallen over and all my eyelashes had fallen out. How crazy is that? It shows how a kid’s mind works, because I am sure it made sense to the pair
of us at the time. Who knows, maybe the other little kids believed it!

Once I got to secondary school, I discovered eyeliner, so things weren’t so bad. I learned to smudge a bit around my eyes, and then people didn’t notice my lack of lashes so much.
That made me more relaxed about it, and I was able to just tell people the truth if they asked me.

Now I feel I have kind of come to terms with it. If anything, it annoys my mum more than me now. I probably will try to overcome the problem eventually, but I don’t feel as though I have
the time for it at the moment. I still don’t normally talk to people about it though. It’s just those close to me that know about it – up until now of course! My family and
boyfriends all say I look beautiful either way – but I guess they have to! I can see that other people are surprised the first time they see me without my lashes or make-up on.

I have actually done two shoots for magazines where I was supposed to be make-up free. They were articles to show that despite being on a TV show where appearance is so important, we are just
like anyone else without the make-up. People wanted to see what we looked like once the make-up was stripped away, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do the shoot with no lashes. So on one
shoot, I wore a little bit of eyeliner smudged in, and on the other, I wore a really thin pair of false lashes. They were so thin though, they were still smaller than most people’s own lashes
– and definitely a lot smaller than Amy’s, who was doing the same shoot! I hope no one thinks that was cheating. I felt so exposed, there was no way I’d have done the shoots
otherwise.

Luckily my eyelashes are the only hair on my body I pull out – other people with trichotillomania pull out hair from all over their bodies so, for example, they might have no eyebrows. But
while my eyebrows are naturally thin, they are all mine! My eyebrows are quite fair, but annoyingly they are not the shape I want them to be, so I have changed them quite a bit.

I think I waxed them for the first time around Year 11. I tried eyebrow tattooing once, but I didn’t like it. It was too painful to get done, actually quite stressful, and I didn’t
even think they looked good. They were too dark and prominent, and on me the colour didn’t hold well and faded quickly. I think they look too obvious – I prefer them to be more
subtle.

I get HD brows now. It is the most fashionable way to do them, and for a reason – it works really well. The beautician uses a mix of techniques to get you the right brows, so they do
things like threading, waxing, tinting and tweezing. It is so much better and despite all the work that goes into them they are actually quite natural looking.

I need my eyebrows to be quite thin and well shaped because of the shape of my eyes. I love my eyes – they are one of my favourite features about myself. Everyone always says they are very
cat-like, and I think they are unique. Over the last year I have used a lot of make-up artists, and they always say they love working on my eyes, as you can do a lot with them. They can carry off
most styles and types of make-up and I try to make them the focus of my face.

I like to have smokey eyes, and use a lot of light- and dark-brown eye shadow colours blended together, although I generally avoid black, as it is a bit too dark and heavy on my eyes. I also
like using a lot of gold, which is great for my eyes – if you have green eyes like me, it always looks good, as it really complements them. It’s important that you learn which colours
work best for you, to go with both your eye colour and skin tone.

Having my make-up done by other people was something I got used to when I was modelling. I already had a reasonable idea of how to go about things, as Aunt Libby had taught me and Billie a few
good basics, but it was the artists on those early modelling shoots who I learned the most from.

Whoever organises the shoot will normally arrange for a make-up artist to come along too, and before anything else is done, they will do your make-up to go with the theme of the shoot. I would
watch closely in the mirror and ask them to explain things, then I would buy the products and brushes that I thought worked best and copy their techniques myself at home.

The two main things I learned during those shoots were blending and the importance of brushes, both of which I think people forget about. Blending the right colours together, and really making
it look like one flows into the other, is so important for a good look. But equally, so are the brushes you use. They need to be of a good quality – trust me, you can see the difference when
someone has used a low-quality, cheap brush. And you need at least one different brush for everything. I will use four different brushes just to put on my foundation.

Now that I have done so many shoots and learned so much about make-up and techniques, sometimes it is hard for me to keep my opinion to myself – if I disagree with what the makeup artist
is doing, I really have to bite my tongue and put my trust in them. Generally though they are pretty good and talk it through with you. And occasionally, if I am given the choice, I will opt to do
my own make-up, because I am so confident in it now.

On the actual show, we all do our own make-up. Everyone is surprised by that, but it is our real lives, so it wouldn’t make sense if we had make-up artists coming to our houses and making
us look different from how we usually do. Having said that, all us girls will get people in before big events such as awards ceremonies to help us out.

I reckon the person who does her make-up best out of the cast is Billie, because like me she has spent a lot of time working out what works best for her. But I also think Maria does a really
good job. She spends a lot of time on her skin and foundation, and gets it pretty perfect – her skin looks so even sometimes, it is like she is a mannequin!

I reckon I spend about £75 a month on make-up, and my favourite brand is MAC. I am quite a loyal customer, and go to their Bluewater store all the time to stock up. As a perk of being well
known, I have a loyalty card that gets me 20 per cent off. I find that weird though – that the more famous you get, and the more money you have, the more perks you get. It’s like things
are the wrong way around – not that I’m complaining! I get sent a lot of free make-up now too. Sometimes it comes in goody bags at events, sometimes it is given to me when I do
signings, but a lot of the time it is sent to my management. I am really appreciative and thankful for it, but obviously I can’t use it all, and it is not all appropriate for me. I have quite
sensitive eyes, so I need to be careful when it comes to eye make-up in particular. But of course I never throw any of it away, and a lot of it goes to friends and family. I also have a huge drawer
full of products for when I want a change. It’s great fun digging through it.

The one make-up item I can never have too much of is lip gloss. Never underestimate the power of the lip gloss! I am addicted to it, nearly as much as I am my lashes. When I put it on I
instantly feel happier with myself, and sexier. I don’t know whether it’s the way it reflects light or what, but my lips look instantly bigger and better – and it’s the same
for everyone. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t look better with a touch of lip gloss, whether it is tinted or clear.

My favourite is MAC’s Dazzleglass Lip Gloss. Sometimes I just wear it on its own, but if I want to make more of an impact, I will wear lipstick as well. I like to experiment with colours
– I wore dark-purple recently, and I have coral and nude shades too, but really I prefer them in matte-red and dark-red. And I will always use a lip pencil too – mostly MAC Spice Lip
Liner. It makes quite an impact.

I haven’t always worn these products though. At school everyone was obsessed with Nivea’s Pearly Shine, which came in a candy-pink colour and made your lips all shimmery It only cost
a couple of quid, and everyone had it. I think they still sell it today. Now, however, it’s all about the gloss.

No matter how much I love my make-up, I make sure I take it off at night. Or at least, I try to most of the time – sometimes, after a heavy night, I admit, it may have to wait until the
next morning! But generally I will take it off before bed and put Nivea moisturiser on all over my face and body, so I can wake up fresh the next morning and put all the make-up on again!

Like everything in life, being famous has a good and a bad side.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining about the bad bits – there is nothing more annoying than a famous person, who’s living a great life and enjoying all the perks, having
a good whinge about how tough things are for them, just because of a few less than amazing things they have to deal with. That really gets my back up, so I promise this chapter won’t be like
that . . . And to be honest, I thought there would be a lot more negatives to being in the public eye than there have been. I was actually prepared for a lot more, but really the press and the
public have been good to me and the rest of the
TOWIE
crew the majority of the time.

For a lot of famous people, one of the big problems is who you can trust. When a family member or friend gets offered big money to sell photos or stories, it can often prove to be too tempting.
But luckily I can happily say this has not happened to me so far.

Billie and I share our friends, and our friendship group is the same now as it was before
TOWIE
. It is the same bunch of girls we have sleepovers with, go out partying with, and share
our secrets with. That is how I like it, and I want it to stay that way. Our friends think it is funny when we go out and we get people coming over wanting a photograph or a chat, but they are fine
with it, and just roll their eyes and laugh. They know we haven’t changed, so they treat us exactly the same as they always have, and I know I can trust them. Occasionally the odd person who
I haven’t spoken to for years will get in touch, but I don’t really fall for that – I’m just polite, and then get on with my life.

Touch wood, I also trust my ex-boyfriends not to sell stories as, while things might not have worked out for us, I think they are all decent blokes really. Anyway, even if they did, I
don’t think there is anything for me to be embarrassed about. I can be quite a prude, so nobody has naked pictures of me on their phones to sell to the papers or anything like that!

As for the people in Brentwood, local businesses are loving the show. Business is booming because of the attention
TOWIE
has brought to the town, and a lot of them have had renovations
and other work done. If anything, the only bad thing is that sometimes there are so many tourists around now, especially at night, that the locals occasionally say they can feel a bit pushed out
– like when their local pubs become crowded. But I guess there are always two sides to these changes.

Most people in Essex are really friendly to me. All the young girls and their parents that I bump into around the place on a day-to-day basis love the show, and will stop to give me advice on
what I should be doing next, or who I should be dating. Sometimes older women in their thirties and forties, who didn’t get the chance to do what we are doing when they were younger, will
make comments about our dresses, or look at us like we are dirt in a club. But I take no notice of that.