With Eyeshadow

Help!
Recently I have read a number of articles emphatically stating that any woman in her right mind should NOT match her eye shadow to her outfit. If this is indeed true, what should determine the eye shadow colour I should wear?

Jen. x

Dear Jen X.,

Have you been reading The London Review of Books again? You simply must diversify your media intake and, also, not take any advice therein (especially stern eyeshadow admonishments) to heart too much. We know JUST what sort of alarming article you speak of. We'll never forget: We once read something (perhaps not even an article, but rather a piece of short fiction) that contained a line about how only whores wear green eyeshadow. This line was burned into our corneas (retinas?), and it was nearly a decade before we could apply green eyeshadow with confidence of impunity.

What emboldened us? The realization that those articles are written (by 24-year-old editorial assistants fresh off the boat from Ohio) to prevent wishy-washy women with no confidence from stumbling accidentally into garishness. (And also, one day our v. elegant Aunt Toddy took us for ice cream wearing an oatmeal tee, grey wool trousers, and a gorgeous, casual smudge of irredescent green eye shadow the color of dragonfly wings on each lid. She looked gorgeous.)

If you want to bat sparkling green eyelids at a handsome stranger while wearing a sparkly green dress, then you should! If you feel it deep in your bones that your eyelids should be taupe when you wear your taupe pantsuit, then do that. What the writers of those articles you read REALLY meant to say was: "The girl in the next cubicle, Esmé, rubs me the wrong way. And yesterday she wore blue eyeshadow with a blue dress. How can I secretly turn the world against her and also make her feel uncomfortably self-conscious when she reads the proofs for this sidebar?"

Yrs,
J

UPDATE: Questions about eyeshadow, especially green, are among the most common on this site. To read more from Jeepers on the topic, go here.