Priscilla Presley Got Special Permission to Keep on Her Heavy Lashes While Giving Birth
When Priscilla Presley realized she was in labor, she took a moment to fix her hair and apply heavy mascara to her lashes. She never left the house without it and wasn’t going to make an exception for her daughter’s birth. When she arrived at the hospital, she even got special permission to wear her heavy false lashes. Here’s why she likely felt this was necessary.
Priscilla Presley required special permission to give birth wearing false lashes
On Feb. 1, 1968, Priscilla woke up and realized her water had broken. When she called her doctor, he advised her to go to the hospital immediately. She didn’t immediately get out the front door, though.
Elvis Presley took time to rouse the household, find the cigars he planned to pass out at the hospital, and have a leisurely meal. While he did this, Priscilla took a quiet moment to freshen up her appearance.
“Ignoring his frenzy, I disappeared calmly into the bathroom and applied my ever-so-black mascara and teased my ever-so-black hair,” she wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “Later at the hospital I requested special permission to keep on my double set of lashes.”
This was likely part of a larger effort to prove to Elvis that her pregnancy was not going to change her appearance.
Elvis Presley frequently complained about the appearance of pregnant women
When Priscilla discovered she was pregnant, one of her first concerns was about her appearance. Elvis had frequently commented about how pregnant women “let themselves go.” Priscilla grew worried he would view her this way.
“As far as I was concerned, the less people mentioned about my looking pregnant, the better,” she wrote. “I intended to prove that a pregnant woman did not have to get fat. I wanted to refute Elvis’ claim that ‘women use the excuse of their pregnancy to let themselves go.’ Although the doctor said that a twenty-five pound gain would be fine, I immediately dropped from my normal one hundred ten pounds to one hundred.”
Priscilla restricted her diet to avoid gaining weight and prided herself on how little her appearance changed.
Priscilla Presley wore more makeup at Elvis’ request
Priscilla also was used to wearing heavy makeup. When she first moved in with Elvis, he instructed her to wear more makeup around her eyes, dye her hair, and wear different clothes.
“It was the early sixties, when clothes and makeup veered to extremes,” Priscilla wrote. “Women’s eyeliner was heavier, their hair more teased, and their skirts shorter than ever before. All the rules I’d learned about dressing and applying makeup (less is more, the simpler the better) were being broken, and men seemed to love it. Elvis certainly did. If I went a little light with the mascara or black eyeliner, he’d send me back upstairs to apply it more heavily.”
While she was happy to apply more makeup for him, she looked back on her dramatic appearance and laughed.
“Today I have to laugh when I look at the pictures taken of me then,” she wrote. “I can hardly find my eyes under all that camouflage.”
