#1 rule for daughter's first make-up application: Don't mention it.

I still remember the first time I applied a full face of make-up.

After working diligently for the guts of an hour, I slowly swivelled away from the mirror and turned to face my sister who let out a shriek.

Yes, I had gotten it very badly wrong, but for years afterwards I considered her reaction over-the-top, unnecessarily dramatic and just so very…her.

And then yesterday my 12-year-old daughter walked down the stairs wearing a full face of make-up; foundation, mascara, bronzer, (oh, so very much bronzer) and suddenly I understood my sister’s melodramatic outburst all those years ago.

The beautiful girl I knew was no longer present and in her place stood a surly-looking adolescent, eyes rimmed in kohl and lips sticky with gloss; a person I could barely recognise.

Asking if she was trying out a new look, I was met with rolled eyes and shrugged shoulders.

Wondering where she had acquired her loot (Yes, I said ‘loot’, it was the shock talking), I was told ‘nowhere’.

Suggesting she mightn’t need to wear quite so much, I was called a killjoy.

Then it occurred to me, this new look had done more than make my daughter look like a Jersey Shore extra, it had given her a whole new attitude.

Make-up is meant to change the way you feel. Well, believe me, in the case of my daughter it changed the way she felt, looked, behaved, sat, stood and spoke.

Her father and brothers, on pain of death (or in our house, no dessert) were told not to mention what was happening on our daughter’s face. They did their best, but my God, it wasn’t easy.

Her 2 year-old brother burst out crying when she leaned into his playpen. Her 7-year-old brother demanded he got to use the face paint too. And her 14-year-old brother burst out laughing in her beautiful, bright orange face before asking if she’d ever heard of Donatella Versace. To be honest, I’m more interested in the fact that he has than she hasn’t.

And her dad…well, the less said about her dad the better. He managed to look appalled, and then heartbroken. But mostly, if I'm honest, he looked concerned about the lack of dessert 

And then there was my reaction. The visceral response I had to the transformation surprised me. And believe me, after I found my seven-year-old son trying to make toasted sandwiches with the clothes iron, I thought I was immune to shock.

But seeing my daughter’s delicate features in a different light unnerved me. It gave me a brief glimpse into the future. It suggested a specific time was coming sooner than I thought. And in those three seconds when she paused, in spite of herself, on the bottom step to gauge my reaction, I realised that soon my reaction wouldn’t even factor on her radar.

First make-up, then what? I braced myself for what was to come next, but shouldn’t have worried.

I found her later that evening, sitting at her mirror removing every last trace of her first step into womanhood and mumbling that she was starting to look too much like me.

She wishes.