Category Archives: Stereotypes/Blason Populaire

Foundation Lips: A Lipstick Trick

Nationality: Mexican/American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/23/18
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Background information:

I worked at Sephora for around seven months. During my time at this job, I absorbed a great deal of information, learning tips and tricks to flawlessly applying makeup, recommending products to clients, and expanding on my skincare products and fragrance knowledge. What truly stuck out to me during my experience aside from the fantastic coworkers was the vast amount of knowledge that my coworkers had surrounding specific tips to apply makeup in a better way. One of my coworkers, Erika, told me about countless tricks, as she is a phenomenal makeup artist. The trick of applying foundation before applying lipstick was one that had a huge impact on me and was widespread and heavily used amongst my coworkers at the store.

Main Piece:

There are many different “hacks” that people use to help or simplify different actions in their lives. At Sephora, I learned about an integral step to easily apply lipstick and make the most out of a certain lipstick shade. Erika, my coworker, introduced me to this makeup hack, and learned this hack from the other coworkers at the Sephora location in which I worked at. To properly make a bright color pop, she said, one needs to first moisturize the lips, then let that dry. Once the lips have dried, she said that it was crucial to use a relatively pale foundation shade relative to one’s skin color, and apply a decently thick coat onto the lips. Upon applying this coat of foundation onto the lips and letting this amply dry, she said that any lipstick could be applied and the color would pop and be more vibrant than if the shade of lipstick had been applied to one’s lips without the layer of foundation underneath. She swears by this trick, as do many of my past coworkers, each of them claiming that it has completely revolutionized the way in which they apply lip shades to not only themselves, but also to their clients.

 

Personal thoughts:

When I first heard of this makeup trick upon my first month working at Sephora, I thought that it sounded bizarre. I wondered why foundation would be applied to the lips as I felt that this would simply dry them out and would not have a big effect on the outcome of the lip color. Upon hesitantly trying this trick before applying a bright scarlet red lipstick, however, I realized why this was such a popular trick at my store: it made the color appear much more intense and did not dry out my lips in the slightest. Therefore, whenever I apply bright lipstick shades to myself or others, I now do this foundation trick and teach others about this fantastic trick!

Q-tip to clean off mascara

Nationality: Mexican/American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/23/18
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Background information:

I worked at Sephora for around seven months. During my time at this job, I absorbed a great deal of information, learning tips and tricks to flawlessly applying makeup, recommending products to clients, and expanding on my skincare products and fragrance knowledge. What truly stuck out to me during my experience aside from the fantastic coworkers was the vast amount of knowledge that my coworkers had surrounding specific tips to apply makeup in a better way. One of my coworkers, Erica, told me about countless tricks, as she is a phenomenal makeup artist. Erica has shaped an entire culture of makeup application tips in the Sephora store that I worked at and has taught the entire team numerous tips to applying various products.

 

Main Piece:

Once complaining about constantly getting mascara residue on my eyelids after completing an eye look, Erica, my coworker at Sephora, told me an incredibly useful trick to removing the mascara without messing up the eyeshadow under the mascara stains. She told me that sometime when she would apply eyeshadow on herself or other and think that she had completed the look, she would sometimes move forward to apply mascara, which would more often than not ruin the look because of mascara residue. The thing about mascara, she stated, is that it is very easy to transfer onto the eyelids when you move in zig-zag motion upwards through the eyelashes. Therefore, since the eyelashes are so susceptible to transferring mascara onto the eyelids, she tried everything she could to remove the mascara from the eyelids without messing up the artistic masterpiece that she had created with eyeshadow and eyeliner on the eyelids. She said that through years of trial and error of trying different techniques to remove these burdensome and often inevitable mascara stains, she finally arrived at a solution a few years ago, and this was to gently use a q-tip, or cotton swab, to pick up the excess mascara on the eyelids and remove the mascara stains, which ultimately proved to be the most efficient way to remove mascara stains. When she found out this trick, she immediately notified all of my coworkers, who were also struggling with this problem, and this became a revolutionary new trick that was shared with all of the employees at Sephora. Because Sephora is also known for its vast array of teaching opportunities and makeup applications in store, this new trick quickly spread to our client-base and is a very popular method in removing small makeup mishaps.

 

Personal thoughts:

When my coworker, Erica, introduced me to this trick, I was so relieved to know that there was a solution to a problem that I so regularly faced throughout makeup applications on both myself, as well as others. It is extremely frustrating when you spend more than an hour on a specific eye makeup look, blending eyeshadows together to perfection, and seamlessly weave all of the colors together, only to have it ruined by harsh-looking mascara stains. Although this is definitely a very trivial problem and does not have a large impact on my life, my coworker at Sephora helped me overcome an application mishap that has transformed the way in which I can create makeup looks.

The Joke of the Google Self-Driving Car

Nationality: Swedish
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/24/18
Primary Language: Swedish
Language: English

Background information:

Palo Alto in the Silicon Valley area is located in California and is beautiful in a myriad of different ways. It is close to nature, has beautiful architecture, and is an extremely environmentally conscious, friendly, and accepting location. I grew up in Palo Alto since I moved from Sweden to the United States when I was almost six years old and went to high school just around the time that Google started releasing their self-driving cars to test-drive around in the Palo Alto and Mountain View area, as Google’s headquarters is located right next to Palo Alto in Mountain View. The Google self-driving car projected was later named Waymo, but people always referred to these unique cars as the Google self-driving cars.

 

Main piece:

Because I was enrolled in high school around the time that Google released their self-driving cars out into the public traffic, I would often see them on my way to school and driving around my neighborhood. They truly began to gain popularity throughout my junior and senior year of high school (2015-2016), however, which was just around the time that everyone my age was receiving their driver’s license. Therefore, as more and more high school students started driving themselves to and from school, and Google started releasing more self-driving cars into the public, students my age would often run into them in the traffic to and from school everyday. The Google self-driving cars are amazing in their technologically advanced feats, but the one striking problem is that they drive very slowly. Therefore, because they are extremely slow cars, people would often get stuck behind them on the rush-hour getting to school and leaving school, so getting stuck behind the Google self-driving cars became a local joke in Palo Alto that people would always use if they were running late or to simply be funny.

 

Personal thoughts:

I am very grateful to have lived in the Palo Alto community because there are countless technological advancements around us everyday. Some of these advancements come with their host of disadvantages, however, as was seen with the Google self-driving cars. I remember being very frustrated when I was in a rush and ended up behind one of these cars because there were often very few ways to get around them and they often contributed to the traffic overall, so it is nice that there are no Google self-driving cars near USC.

Litchfield Biker Gang

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: USC Student - Interactive Meida, Music Production
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/26/18
Primary Language: English

Transcription:

Interviewer: “You’re from Litchfield?”

Informant: “Yes.”

Interviewer: “Is that a small town or a big town?”

Informant: “Small town 8000 but between two cities that I think are 50(000) or 80000, respectively.”

Interviewer: “Are there any stories with Litchfield?”

Informant: “Um…(laughs) so okay so I don’t…so there’s not really…there’s a rope swing which is creepy but…and I’m sure that had I frequented it more, I would have found some more creepy lore there but I never really did go there. Um…but…so there really isn’t a ton of specific lore. I know the town is almost 300 years old so there’s a lot of like local history. Um…there’s like a graveyard. That kind of thing. So it’s a very uh…there are spooky places in it. But what got me laughing was…there is… and this isn’t necessarily lore as it is objectively factually true but I will continue, I will tell my kids about this. Um…there’s this group of children…we called them the LBK: Litchfield Biker Krew with a ‘k’. Because they’re basically a bunch of um… I think I was in high school when we sorta like designated them but they’re about like just this pack of like 8th graders…like not even like super big but like it was a pack of like 8th graders or something who would just bike around, be punks, smoke cigarettes. And like…yeah it was just so funny because they thought they were such badasses but we’re just like ‘heh look at those kids biking like…around and just thinking that they’re badass’. So it’s like…it’s sorta just this think like ‘oh lol that’s Litchfield Biker Crew’ like everyone sorta knew about that and it was sorta like a rich topic to explore in terms of just like…jokes and things.”

Summary:

So the informant talks about a group of bikers in his hometown, known as the Litchfield Biker Krew. The LBK, as they’re known are a group of 8th grade kids who would ride around on bikes and smoke. They were well known throughout the town. The informant plans to pass this story along to his own family one day, making him an active bearer of this legend.

Lawyer joke

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Southern California (San Diego/Los Angeles)
Performance Date: 3/28/18
Primary Language: English

My friend and classmate Pauline told me the following joke, which she learned from her dad, who is a lawyer:

“It was so cold outside today that earlier, I saw a lawyer with his hands in his own pockets.”

This joke relies upon the stereotype that lawyers are greedy and corrupt, and the metonymic use of the phrase “having one’s hands in someone’s pockets” to refer to squeezing money out of someone, like a legal client. The humor of the joke may be based in a genuine belief in this stereotype for people resentful of lawyers, but in this case its humor comes from a self-aware and ironic acknowledgement of the stereotype by a lawyer who presumably does not believe in it.

Pauline says that her dad has a number of lawyer jokes in his repertoire, which he tells “any time we’re with, like, any other lawyers, or if someone’s giving him a hard time about being a lawyer.” Such jokes are pieces of occupational folklore, which may serve to bond lawyers over their common identity, or may function as self-deprecating humor performed for the entertainment of non-lawyers. Lawyer jokes are a common staple of mainstream American humor, indicating a distrust of or misanthropic feeling toward lawyers from the general public outside of the profession. Their embrace by lawyers themselves is somewhat surprising, but is representative of the ways folklore may shift meaning depending on context.