Raise your hand if you don't leave the house without a little bit of makeup. Some concealer, a little blush, a coat of mascara...You know the drill! I just want to take a bit of your time to talk about the stigma behind women wearing and not wearing makeup, and what it was like for a die-hard, "I Need Makeup To Be Pretty" enthusiast to start her college journey on a quest to feel comfortable without spending over an hour on beating her face.
Throughout high school, I was in such a small pool of people. I felt like everyone around me actively looked for my flaws. I had to paint my face Mulan style so people would compliment me, or at least that was my outlook on gaining satisfaction. I never believed that I could be pretty with a fraction of the products I was using. I HAD to wake up at 5:30 AM, take a shower, then spend the next hour and a half making sure my make up was perfect. Foundation, concealer, powder, brows, eyeliner, lipstick, bronzer...The works. People used to be appalled when I told them I got up two hours early to make sure my face looked beautiful. My mom would come in morning after morning to me sitting in front of a mirror, late for school, telling me that I didn't need any more makeup. And, even after I spent all that time on trying to be perfect, I still felt self conscious. I tried forcing beauty from the outside, thinking, "If I look good, and I get compliments, I must be pretty, right?" Wrong. Sure, the attention was great, but it was never what I needed if I wanted to embody true beauty. I thought my appearance had become more important than my mind--something I truly want to nurture and get attention for. High school is confusing like that, right?
It wasn't until I started college when I gave up on the two hour routine. Somehow, I reduced it to a maximum of twenty minutes on a normal day. I was ready to start finding genuine happiness in a fresher, cleaner face. My skin cleared up. I don't look down when I walk anymore. I figure now that if anyone is going to find me pretty, they'll find me pretty for my natural features, and for my brain. I don't have to be obsessed anymore with making sure every single person I pass on the street will find me "hot." The drama of high school, the nosy omniscience of knowing everyone's business, and the performance of "I don't care about anything," (when, like a normal human being, you care about everything) melted away in college. Everyone expects of you what you can expect of yourself. When I want to think of the idea of myself, I don't want to be the person obsessed with whether or not people accept me, especially if they are only accepting me because of my looks. When I became okay with wearing makeup and not wearing makeup, I no longer felt like there was a version of myself I didn't want others to see. (Props to the girls who beautifully contour every single day and look like Instagram models. Whatever makes you feel beautiful and yourself is what you should do.)
To make a long journey short-ish, to be okay with the world around you, you have to be okay with yourself first. If how you look is your first priority, and you spend hours and hundreds of dollars trying your best to alter your appearance, and you STILL aren't happy and confident, then the problem is not with your looks but with your mindset. We think everyone else is judging us as harshly as we judge ourselves, but that is not the case. Everyone has their own crap to deal with, and no one thinks they are perfect. The best thing you can do is to study your body, know what kind of skin you have, eat well, educate yourself on the things you care most for, and, overall, surround yourself with people who could care less what you looked like. You'll learn to do it, too.
