However, Blair found much of that spirit shifted as her physical ability wavered. “When I started having inconsistencies with my movement and vision, I didn’t care to proceed [with putting on makeup] anymore.” In one particular incident, Blair injured herself while trying to apply eyeliner. “I can’t use pencils anymore. They break,” she says. “I had a pencil that broke, and I just couldn’t see it. And the wood goes and scrapes my cornea. It was a whole thing. So it’s like, ‘I’m done.’”
Blair says her tics and vocal dystonias can be triggered in moments when she speaks about her condition. “I am so expressive, but sometimes when I talk about myself, or some challenges, or things I’m processing, I really have some quirky blocks—tics and things, vocal dystonias.” This was confusing for Blair—she would be seemingly symptomless one moment and have a spasm the next.
For a while, she thought the tics were in her head because of their conspicuous timing. “Even though I have a diagnosis, there was so much that I still thought was like, ‘Do better. You were walking fine a minute ago, and then you see people and you start walking so dramatically.’ I would just say, ‘If it’s in my head, help me. Stop this. Why is this happening?’”
Blair was frustrated and ceded her case with makeup and style—two ways the actor had always loved to express herself—altogether. “I cut my hair shorter because I couldn’t brush it. I wasn’t ashamed of how I looked, it just wasn’t on the table anymore. I kind of counted myself out.”
She didn’t see this as a failure. It was simply her reality. In her view, she had other ways to fill that space anyway. “I thought that I was great, and I was strong. I’m so talkative, chatty, love attention, love giving love. I was like, ‘I’m not really so affected by this diagnosis or the way I am,’” Blair says. “[When] I lost my eyelashes in one eye, I felt kind of imbalanced, but nothing was a horror story.”
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Nevertheless, beauty is something everyone deserves to find joy and creativity in. Blair and Bryant say the spark between them was so instantaneous not only because they shared a common ground, but because they had a relationship that was built on so much more than their conditions. Instead, Bryant and Blair bonded over everything from their love for makeup to their Jewish upbringings. “I found how important it was to commune over something much more lighthearted,” Blair says.
So began her journey back into the colorful world she once occupied—but with a twist. Blair says she can still wear certain heels, pointing to the stilettos on her feet during our interview. But she swapped other items in her wardrobe to make room for comfort: “I didn’t feel great in a sequin mini-skirt anymore when my legs go akimbo easily.” She’s kept her hair short since shaving it before a stem cell transplant in 2019, and dyes it bleach blonde. (“I want to be a shiksa,” she joked to The New York Times last year.)
Slowly, and with the guiding hand of Bryant, Blair found her way back into the play space of beauty too. Now she hopes to offer others the opportunity to do the same, creating products that are “considerate and thoughtful to people’s experiences,” she says—as everyone deserves to take part in the age-old tradition of applying some makeup “without so much frustration to start your day.”
“It was a thrill to be able to start to stretch my brain again and think, I can start to do this. I can even want to.”
Source: SELF
