Makeup

Little girls get their picture of beauty from their moms. Mom is the first beautiful thing that is encountered and therefore anything mom does is beautiful and good. And my mom always wears makeup. Always. She literally will not leave the house without it on.

So using my mom as my earliest example, and the media only backing up these thoughts, I thought makeup made you pretty and you had to wear makeup to be pretty. When I could wear makeup…then I’d be pretty. Just like mom.

And so for the past 5 years, I used makeup to be pretty. I would hardly leave my house or my dorm without at least liquid and powder foundation. And that was for my tired days. Good days also featured eyeliner and mascara. And fantastic days had eyeshadow.

For the past 5 years I’ve shaved and plucked and primped and groomed and straightened and curled and painted and applied chemical after substance after cream. All to be beautiful.

But after 20 years of the thought that makeup makes women beautiful, I disagree.

Our culture has a messed up perception of beauty. Why is it that the average American model is 5’10” & 115 pounds but the average American woman is 5’4” and 140 pounds? (Straight outta America the Beautiful, which is a wonderful documentary.) Why do we think that shaving so that our skin looks like that of a child is more beautiful than actually letting our bodies do what they do when they mature? Why does the modern woman have so many self-image issues and eating disorders? Why are our children infected with this lack of self-confidence, too? Why don’t we believe that we’re beautiful?

I think a lot of it’s because our society is just trying to sell us things. And we want to be beautiful. So selling us things to make us beautiful is a surefire way to make money. And to tell us that this product would make us beautiful is to say that without it, we are not beautiful.

(And talking about making money, they make bank. I didn’t even wear much makeup, but I easily spent $70 a year on it… That’s $70 a year of chipotle burritos, tanks of gas, Sufjan Stevens albums, and chai lattes that I have lost out on.)

I think we replace actually taking care of our bodies with makeup and creams and powders. My skin looks better when I really take care of it than when I cake foundation on top of it. We need to stop treating makeup like the cure all and actually take care of our body’s issues, and not just cover them up. (I think this applies to the rest of our lives, too, but that’s another lengthy blog for another time.)

So I think I’m pretty much done with makeup. I gave eyeliner and mascara one last shot today, but it was just too itchy. I’ve come to the point where I’m okay with my acquaintances not knowing that I actually do have quite long eyelashes, they’re just blonde on the tips. I’ve come to the point where I’m okay with the pink tint that my skin has and the occasional pimple. I’ve come to the point where I’m just too much of a hippie/feminist to be okay with painting myself a different color every day.

I am me. I will look like me. You can do as you please and wear makeup if you like and I’m not going to rant at you past this vent, or at least I’ll try not to, but you should know you’re beautiful without coverup, foundation, blush, and mascara. America has a really screwed up perception of beauty. Consider this.