"You should wear makeup. You look so pretty when you wear makeup," you said.
As if to say I don't look pretty when I don't. As if to say the only time that I'm pretty is when I don't look like me. As if to say when I'm not wearing anything on my face not only am I not good enough in your eyes, but I'm not good enough in society's either. Because surely all pretty girls wear makeup, right?
According to you, natural beauty doesn't exist. Your definition of beauty is nothing more than a face full of foundation and mascara. In your dictionary, beauty is falsely defined as having an attractive exterior rather than what's on the inside. Or maybe it's about having that attractive interior but how you look on the outside just so happens to be way more important.
Perhaps that's simply how society is and there's no escaping it. And I don't blame you for thinking this way; I blame society. From magazines to diet commercials, we're constantly being told that we need to look better. These messages and beauty ideals have been engrained in our minds since the dawn of time -- that you need to look a particular way in order to be accepted. That we need to alter our appearance to be considered "attractive." We're told that we aren't entitled to feel beautiful and confident unless we're wearing makeup. It could be argued that I, much like most people, do not look like my natural self when I'm wearing makeup. I may look like myself to an extent, but a more improved version of myself. So when you say that I look prettier when I'm wearing makeup, you are essentially saying that I look better when I don't look like me.
One could choose to rise above these ideals and be their own kind of beautiful, but society eventually steals that from us and our definition of beauty soon turn into society's. We fall into the trap of believing that we are nothing without means of artificial and superficial beauty. By doing so, we become yet another fallen victim to society. We become carbon copies of one another and the original are nowhere to be found.
You tell me that I'm pretty, but which version are you referring to?
