By Lisa Chau, 21, reporting from Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the eyelash curler she goes to bat for
I have been obsessed with my eyelashes ever since the day I-seventh grade, age 12-stole my sister's eyelash curler. You see, my little Asian eyes were blessed with scraggly, thin lashes that point straight down. Occasionally right into my eyeballs. But the moment I used that magical device for the first time, I realized what I was missing out on. My eyes were finally open to the world.
Since then, I've tried all different types of eyelash curlers: heated ones, mini ones, gold ones, silver ones, plastic ones, you name it. Yet they only managed to make my lashes look like tangled dead spider legs or checkmarks from the side. I could never create that "natural" curled look. Then it got worse: One morning I pressed too hard on my $5 metal curler and chopped my left set of fringe off. For the next month or so, I walked the halls of my high school looking like a mangled doll whose younger sibling had ripped off 50 percent of her eyelashes.
After this incident, I finally decided to splurge more than the cost of a fast-food value meal on a curler. And I found the greatest one ever: Shu Uemura's Eyelash Curler ($19). It fits the curve of my eye perfectly and has just the right amount of spring. I even learned a little trick to make my eyelashes curl faster. I heat my Shu up with a hairdryer for a few seconds first, and voila!
Topped with my favorite waterproof mascara, my lashes stay curled all day. My Shu sits in my makeup bag, loved and used regularly; I even have spares in my car and my purse. Sometimes my older sister will call and simply tell me, "I need a new Shu" and I know exactly what she means. - Lisa Chau