Sight Unseen

There is implicit strength in the ritual of getting ready. And the women who know this best may be the ones who have been forgotten by the beauty industry. Now they’re claiming their place.

- April Long

Christine Ha swirls her foundation on with a brush, feeling precisely where its bristles kiss her skin. She presses an eyelash curler to her face, sensing its two pressure points on her cheekbone, and closes her eyes, trusting that her lashes are hovering between the hinges of its convex jaw. She clamps it shut. Next she positions a mascara wand near her lashes, inching it closer until the gentle tension of its stiff bristles lifts the tiny hairs. Finally, she carefully traces the outline of her lips with a pencil and fills in the fleshy part with a creamy lipstick as one would smear on ChapStick.

Ha is a chef (you may know her as a past MasterChef winner), she is an author, and she is blind. Despite having only 20 percent of her vision (she can see shades of darkness), she has always loved makeup and often does her own for TV appearances. But the beauty industry, which increasingly aims to cater to every creed and color, has largely ignored visually impaired people like Ha. This is bizarre when you consider that 36 million people worldwide are totally blind, and 217 million have moderate to severe visual impairment.