My Lifelong Relationship with Makeup: It’s Complicated

By Caity



My first post for this blog was an emotional/intellectual look into my multicultural classroom and how I have been struggling with my first year teaching in an urban school. This will be nothing like that at all. This will have a lot less social justice and a lot more borderline narcissism. (I’d say about equal amounts of feminism, though, so that’s cool I guess.)

On the off chance there are any strangers on the internet reading this, here is a pretty recent picture of me in my natural habitat:

You probably noticed my face is plastered with the pure joy that can only happen when I am holding a giant ice cream cone. You may or may not have noticed my face is without any makeup.

I basically never wear makeup. I think I tried to wear it daily for a grand total of two weeks in 8th grade and then gave up to sleep an extra 15 minutes every morning. Since then, makeup has only graced my face for a few dances, performances, and weddings. (And I mean like, me BEING IN the wedding. Merely attending one does not warrant the work.)

Part of this stems from my aforementioned love of sleep. Part of it is also probably because my mom—a full time nurse and mother of four—didn’t wear a lot of makeup, and we never really had a “this is how you put on mascara without poking yourself in the eye or getting it all over your upper eyelid and cheek simultaneously” bonding moment. A third reason (and quite possibly the one that really matters to defenders of daily makeup) is I basically never got acne and have a ton of freckles, so wearing foundation daily would only “cover up” a physical trait that I think is adorable. Which is why my high school make up slumber parties turned out like this:

Disclaimer: I had just applied a home hair dye (red) to a friend, thus the red stained gloves.

No joke, I have 33 pictures from this night, and not a single one has me attempting to look attractive. This may be because I’ve always been a bit of a goof, and so posing like a creep presented more promising results. But honestly, I think part of it is because the ice queen eye shadow and lip gloss my friends applied, however expertly, didn’t feel like me.

So while my peers figured out how to wear makeup for various occasions—from the everyday “doesn’t look like you’re wearing any, but that’s how you know it’s good” to the “super bold and sexy for a night out”—I was arguing with whoever was telling me I needed to put more stuff on my face. (I maintain the fact that marching band judges are looking at the overall aesthetic, skill level, and synchronization of the show, not how defined the color guard members’ eyes and lips are.) Makeup was a necessary evil for some things I liked to do.

When I went to college, I eventually ended up living with three of my best friends. This was the first time I got a firsthand experience with other girls’ morning routines. I knew, obviously, that makeup was worn regularly and had to be put on at some point, but I hadn’t seen the sinks of other girls or the time spent on perfecting it. One of my roommates, for lack of a better phrase, wore a “full face” of makeup everyday if she was leaving the house. One of them based her makeup level on what she was doing that day—going out? Gotta look cute. Doing a presentation? Better look my best. 8 a.m. lecture class? Yeah, no way. The final one was so consumed with her studies and working out that makeup didn’t really make an impact on her morning routine.

And yet, I distinctly remember being astounded when this third roommate mentioned she almost always put on some mascara because her eyelashes were really light or something. Here I was, the least makeup inclined girl in an apartment, and I didn’t really have a reason other than laziness. I wasn’t some hippie morally opposed to the idea. I liked to be feminine! Skirts—adorable! Braids and curls—I’ll spend hours on my hair. Makeup? No thanks.

If you are still with me, you may be questioning my “it’s complicated” relationship status of the title, considering so far it sounds like I mostly just don’t like makeup. That leads me to my first professional makeup experience. When my sister, Erin, got married, I did my own makeup. I was 16 and thought it was totally no big deal. But I noticed I looked significantly less put together than the other bridesmaids, so when my sister, Meghan, got married, I was NOT going to be the one to mess up the pictures. I paid a woman something like 60 bucks to put on a TON of makeup. I remember my then-boyfriend-now-husband seeing me for the first time and being completely taken aback when he saw me (and not in the good way). I’m pretty sure he actually said, “What is on your face?” Truth be told, I couldn’t completely answer his question. Whatever it was, there was a lot of it. But in the pictures, it looks pretty good!

I mean, obviously, the best part of this picture is my husband in an adorable bowtie. But my face is a not too distant second.

When I finally came around to MY wedding, I knew the plan. I went to a woman and said, “I don’t wear makeup. I want the pictures to look like me—so like I’m not wearing makeup. But I’m also getting married in a dark theater and taking some pictures outside, so do whatever you need to do to make it look like I’m my best me without makeup…but with makeup.”

Not bad, right? Anyway, I walked away thinking, “Okay fine, makeup isn’t so bad. Still not my thing.” And I didn’t touch it for almost two years.

Flash-forward to March 2015, and I have decided to go to Emerald City Comicon as Peggy Carter from the Marvel universe. (Yeah, nerd alert. But Peggy Carter is the ONLY woman in a field of men, does her job super well, and is just plain badass.) Peggy is KNOWN for her bright red lips, so I watched some 1940s inspired makeup tutorials, went to a drug store, and bought the cheapest makeup I could find for it. (It was still $50. How do women AFFORD to wear this daily!?) Below are some before and afters of me messing around with the hair and makeup and my final full costume, because I am just a little bit proud.

What did I take away from this experience? Makeup can be super fun. I had a blast figuring out how to get the eyeliner and lips just right to match her look. It was crazy to see how different I looked just by spending 15 minutes in the bathroom. And even though I’ll probably never wear the red lipstick regularly, it was exhilarating wearing it for a day.

This was a big discovery for me: some women wear makeup because they actually like wearing it. They like the power of being able to change their face to match the outfit or event. They like seeing how they look different. It’s fun to master new skills. It’s basically art for your face! And hey, sometimes it makes you look really cute, so that’s a plus!

But my feminism does kick in whenever I talk to girls who feel like they NEED to wear it, who feel they are not beautiful without it. This stems from the ridiculous standards of beauty we see in the media. It only leads to self-esteem issues. My lips are too thin. My pores are too big. My cheeks are too rosy. My cheeks aren’t rosy enough. I wish my eyes were bigger. I wish my nose was cuter. The list goes on. Why is it that when men have particularly large noses or thick eyebrows, we say they are unique? That it adds character? But with women, we tell them to change it. Pluck. Exfoliate. Peel. Plump. Cover up.

And then you have songs like “That’s What Makes You Beautiful” where One Direction claims you “don’t need makeup to cover up, being the way that you are is enough,” but then later “it ain’t hard to tell you don’t know you’re beautiful. THAT’s what makes you beautiful.” They’re saying what makes this girl beautiful is her lack of self-confidence. And maybe their point was to say, you should be more confident and ditch the makeup. But what I’m hearing is that boys find it attractive when girls are unsure of themselves and have low self-esteems. And that is not the message I want to be sending to girls and women across the world.

I was talking with my students this week about Coming-of-Age stories, and I told them to describe what it looks like to grow up. I asked them “what do adults do that children do not?” I got a lot responses about playing with toys or crying over little things. But one that stood out to me came from a female student who said, “They do not think they are good enough.” She’s right. When little girls play with makeup, it’s fun. They’re coloring their faces, looking in the mirror, and enjoying the ride as they pretend to be grownups. They aren’t doing it to hide their true selves. So, what does our society need to do tell all women, “You know, actually, you are good enough.”

So to end, here’s Amy Schumer pointing out the mixed messages we’re receiving about makeup:

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