I've actually been thinking a bit about make-up lately, so when I saw the theme for the new
Ladies of Hive contest, I figured it was an invitation:
Do you like makeup? How does it make you feel? Tell us about your makeup routine. Are you an expert? Do you use a lot of products? Or do you prefer something simpler?
Personally, I've always had a difficult relationship with make-up. Like most teenagers, I was fascinated by it, and pestered my mum for nice, fancy palettes with two dozen different shades for the perfect smokey eye or whatever. I even on occasion went through the laborious process of following all the million steps of the recommended make-up routines. The foundation, concealer, powder, base, all that ritual.
And hated it immediately afterward.
I always had troublesome skin as a teenager, and whenever I did the whole face mask-up, I ended up feeling like a fraud, especially since I lacked the skills to perfectly camouflage my skin. Which I love now, but was quite embarrassed by at the time, and whenever I'd put on loads of make-up, I'd feel somehow inevitably even worse. Not only did I feel ugly because of my skin, now I felt like a fraud, as well. Like someone ugly trying to pretend they weren't.
Of course, skipping the face stuff and only applying stuff on my eyes and mouth didn't really work either, because then I just thought I looked like a narcoleptic frog. Still, somehow, I persevered. And I don't know what happened. Maybe it was growing up, maybe it was becoming more comfortable in my skin (buah at the cliche, but it does seem to occur naturally as you go). My skin never fully cleared up, not to this day, despite efforts, but somewhere along the line, my thinking just... changed.
I started embracing a more natural approach to most things - diet, relationships, personal care. I realized you could step outside without any make-up whatsoever and still feel quite good. In fact, I often felt better without make-up because then I didn't think I looked like a fraud. Didn't need to worry about that, so I was free to just be. And lo and behold, when you "just be" and allow yourself to enjoy wherever you are, it makes you more attractive to others, which in turn boosts your self-confidence.
And to think of all that money wasted on expensive make-up brands.
Nowadays, my make-up is pretty minimal. I love, still, a smokey eye, though it no longer follows any rules other than black eyeliner and finger-smudge. I love it. Takes a minute to get out the door and I feel hella sexy while wearing it. I also feel pretty damn good when I go without make-up, which I often do as I'm skeptical about the healthiness of always having these products smeared around your eyes. But I do, as I recently mentioned, like to doll myself up on occasion.
My confidence no longer relies on it, though. I find I feel about the same level of good and confident when I'm wearing make-up and when I don't.
Now, to be fair, that's not always true in reverse. When I'm having a shit day, I do find it's true - putting on a bit of make-up and a nice outfit does make all the difference (and thank goodness for it!).
That's just around the eyes, though. bit of eyeliner and mascara is enough for me. I no longer go for all that foundation, BB, concealer stuff on my face, and for several reasons, most of them to do with health. I don't like the thought of smearing unknown chemicals on my face and neck and letting them sit for hours and hours. And I look sometimes at the women that I meet, at the obvious layers of hiding necessitated to look like they're normal. I've often been noticing it in women a little older, say 40 and above, and it just seems to me they look that much worse with those cakey layers just sitting on their face.
I get it. Confidence is a hard trick, especially for us ladies, especially when so much of your worth is (in our society) tied to your looks. But I've known some damn attractive women over 40 in my time, and none of them were the wearers of masks.
I think (though I don't know for sure) they were lovers of smiles and imperfection. Women for whom lines around the eyes were markers of great memories. So what if there's lines on your face? I was drying my hair yesterday and looking at the lines already forming on my brow. It doesn't really matter, it's just a habit of you making a face.
And it seems to me, this excessively painting your face to look like you're still 20 or whatever signals a terrible denial of the natural passage of time, which in the end only makes your life harder for you. If you have trouble accepting a couple of lines on the face, you will have a hard time with the other, more serious markers of time going by like illness or death.
Is that morbid to say? I don't know, but it seems to me the more we fight the passage of time, the harder a go we have of it. So maybe where we can, it's worth embracing it instead.
I'm often struck, as I go, by this great, unbearable beauty in the women that I meet, and crushed each time when I see how little they realize. How much they try to hide or change about themselves.
And I get it, I do. At the end of the day, we all want to still be of value, to still be attractive to the world. And people are. Staggeringly so. With wrinkles and age spots and pimples and ingrown hairs and outgrown hairs and crooked teeth and clear eyes and white hairs and sagging breasts. And with make-up, ultimately, of course. But happy make-up. I-like-this-look make-up. Not make-up because you feel ugly without. Because you're not.
