I believe I was about twelve when my parents finally allowed me to wear makeup. It began with a cheap, single palette of baby blue eyeshadow. I was in junior high then, & I remember feeling so grown up as I applied the washed out color to my eyelids before I went to school. Eventually, I graduated from eyeshadow only to eyeliner pencils, but I wasn’t allowed anything dark & I couldn’t apply liner to the bottom of my lids. It wasn’t much, but I felt pretty.
When my mom finally allowed me to wear darker eyeliner, I chose a red wine color at a beauty supply shop. I remember being fascinated by how different my eyes looked after I applied the dark hue near my eyelashes. I had no skill in putting on makeup, & I remember putting thick, heavy lines all around my eyes, making them look what I thought to be very dark, dramatic, & mysterious.
Thus started my obsession with making up my face.
Months went by & I was practically wearing everything — dark eyeshadows & liners, glosses & mascaras, blushes & bronzers — all except foundation. Neither my mother nor my father would allow me that privilege & I think it’s because they feared that I’d paint my face like an indigenous tribe member. It didn’t bother me that I didn’t wear foundation until I went to school & saw that all the girls carried around pretty little compacts filled with their favorite facial goop, & every so often they would take it out, primp in their tiny mirrors & touch-up their faux imperfections. I was enamored by this, & I remember coming home & begging my mom to help me buy my own compact. But she stood firm & said that I didn’t need it; that my complexion was flawless (& at the time of my youth, I’m sure it was).
Still, I was convinced that I needed my own pretty little compact to whip out from my backpack.
So… I defied my mother.
When she wasn’t home one day, I went inside her makeup box & found a small purple compact of cream foundation in a hue three shades darker than my skin tone. I remember that it smelled funny — I had no idea at the time that it was really, really old — but it was practically unused. I slipped it into my pocket until I got to my room & stored it in my own ever-growing makeup collection. This was the only time that I’ve ever been so bold as to go behind my mother’s back, steal something of hers, wear it, & hope to God that she wouldn’t notice. All for the sake of desperately wanting to look beautiful.
That night before I went to youth group at my church, I swabbed the funky cream all over my face with a sponge in the bathroom, coating every single crevice of my skin with this artificial shade of brown. I remember looking in the mirror at how flawless my face was. There were no discolorations, no blemishes, no birthmarks, no scars; it was all one matte color. That, to me, was real beauty. & regardless of how ridiculous I must have looked in that moment, I felt absolutely beautiful.
It wasn’t until my father was picking me up from church that he noticed my cakey complexion. He had asked me what on earth I had done to my face, & I lied & lied, hoping he would just believe that it was the way my face normally looked. But parents have a way about knowing these things, & they eventually found out about my deceit.
Naturally, they were furious & my makeup was taken away for a few weeks. I think back at that story now & laugh because despite my being sneaky, I was really just curious, innocently wondering what it would feel like to change my face & how that would affect the rest of me. It was exciting & new; I loved that feeling of being someone else for a brief moment, of exploring different ways to enhance my beauty. I enjoyed the experimentation.
But as I grew older, the thrill & excitement of makeup transformed into feelings of obligation & resentment. Makeup became an elaborate mask I wore to conceal my real face rather than to enhance my natural beauty. I would paint over my true self with thick swipes of Very Black eyeliner, Blackest Black mascara, & #7 foundation, not realizing that my efforts in looking exotic were being drowned by layers & layers of pigmented goop. I used products I didn’t even need (heavy foundations, concealers, powders) in order to make the perfect mask. Back then, I wouldn’t have been caught dead walking about town with a fresh, clean face. I found my natural face to be too ordinary & refused to accept that I actually looked so plain. I was so consumed with keeping up appearances that my made-up face became the only face I wanted to see in the mirror.
Thankfully, it was all just a phase; a phase that I think every girl goes through while trying to find their limits within makeup.
It took a lot of personal maturing before I could see that I was using makeup the wrong way. If I was being perfectly honest with myself, I was really quite weary of having two faces: the one that was artificially flawless & the other that was the plain, true me. I hated that duality & that fueled me even more to reevaluate my obsession with makeup. Not soon after, I did a makeup purge. I tossed out all of the heavy foundations, concealers, dried out mascaras, gloppy lipglosses, & washed out eyeshadows, & I challenged myself to perfect & fall in love with a more natural looking face, something more me.
Instead of heavy foundations, I switched to tinted moisturizers which evened my skin tone, but still allowed my freckles & beauty marks to show through. Instead of thick, black eyeliner, I chose a chocolate brown hue, which contrasted beautifully against my caramel skin. Instead of using concealers, I concentrated more on taking better care of my skin, so I wouldn’t need to hide blemishes in the first place. Instead of bright colors, I switched to more neutral tones, like browns, bronzes, greys, even shimmers, which played up the color of my eyes so that they shined rather than hid behind dark shadows. Instead of relying on myself with self-taught application techniques, I did research & read makeup books that showed me the correct way to use the brushes & the sponges.
Trial by error, to say the least.
Today, I no longer have a love/hate relationship with makeup. I no longer place it on a pedastal of importance & necessity. I see it only as an added pleasure to my daily beauty routine that I can comfortably choose to be without, but I indulge in often. Because there’s no denying that makeup & the process of applying it is a passion of mine, & I would never want to rid myself of the enjoyment of it. Having a face that glows with the help of bronzer & mascara leaves me feeling feminine, polished, pretty. I feel glamorous knowing that my eyelashes are elongated or that my cheeks are defined. But I also know that I can feel just as glamorous with a bare face, as well.
Which isn’t to say that I am 100% confident in my skin sans makeup. On the contrary, I still get the willies running errands without a smudge of makeup on & I still nitpick at my facial imperfections. It’s inevitable; makeup will always be my instant self-esteem boost.
What matters most to me, though, is that I no longer have a dependence on making my face up & that I can finally appreciate my natural face, even in spite of the blemishes, freckles, & scars.
That, to me, is true beauty.
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