I was going to college during the summertime after my junior year of high school when a fellow student of the university said something to me that changed my opinion so completely about her. I was always friendly towards this girl, and she seemed to be nice. We talked during class and even ate together sometimes at lunch and dinner. It was the remark she made to me in my dorm while I was getting ready that changed everything. I was in front of my mirror doing my makeup when she said something along the lines of how she doesn’t like to wear makeup. I just replied with “yeah, I knew a few people that don’t either.” After I said that she started telling me I should stop wearing it too. Her reasoning was “real women don’t wear makeup.” That is the one part of the conversation that I remember word for word, “real women don’t wear makeup.” I wanted to yell. I wanted to kick her out of my room, but me being the non-confrontational person I am just laughed it off - though she was completely serious.

I’m guessing she was implying I wasn’t a real woman, and she was. What is the definition of a real woman? By what she said, I guess a woman is this: someone who judges a person’s inner qualities by their outer shell. According to her, a woman thinks they are entitled to come up to someone who has invited them into their private space and speak down to them. A woman is apparently someone who thinks their way is the only way, and anyone unlike her is inferior. By her definition, I don’t want to be a woman; her version is everything I strive never to be. I’m not sure what telling me I’m not real helped her accomplish that day, but it did accomplish something. Those words left me with a thought in my head- a thought that I need to convey to anyone who thinks they can tell any woman or any man what they should be.

Wearing makeup does not make you un-real. I was also told once that as a Christian woman I should not wear makeup or dress up at all for that matter. “Do you not know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?” 1 Corinthians 3:16. Reading that verse tells me each person is important and special, wouldn’t I dress up my Lord’s temple? Why would I not do my best to present myself and my religion in an appealing way? Yes, God gave me this face, and this face I will use to the best of my abilities for God gave us the materials to make makeup too. You shouldn’t judge someone because they dress nicely because they care how they present themselves, or because of the amount of money they may have accumulated. Just as you shouldn’t judge a person, who has ragged clothes, who doesn’t have the option in how they present themselves, and is poor.

When my aunt was living in Manhattan (she has moved to Brooklyn now) she went on a trip with her workplace to Canada. The Canadians she met were rude to her, and it was because they thought she was a stuck up New-Yorker. They assumed that she was rich and had been all her life, but when she mentioned she grew up most of her life in Arkansas, everything changed. This in itself shows how people are so quick to judge you by petty things such as your location when half the time you are somewhere because you had no other option. Even if she were born and raised in New York, that wouldn’t have changed the fact that she has a wonderful personality.

No person can tell anyone else who they are or what they are, because what validation is in their opinion? A woman is what a woman is. She can decorate herself in the finest of jewelry or the dirtiest of rags. A man is what a man is. He can be masculine or feminine or whatever else he is. As long as I am here on this earth, I will remain a woman striving to achieve a pretty heart with a pretty face. I know that God and the people that matter will love me no matter what I have on my face or body, and that is the beauty of it all.