A funny thing happened when Kevin insisted I wear makeup for the wedding. I discovered that I liked it.
Back in middle and high school, I had to glob makeup on my face every time I performed in a dance recital or musical. It was always heavy and felt caked on. It always made me break out. The experience led me to reject makeup altogether, and for years I almost never wore any. Unless a friend decided she wanted to make me over for a party, in which case I often felt awkward unless I managed to forget I was wearing makeup. But then I inevitably smudged my eyeliner or mascara or whatever, and looked awful by the end of the night.
Once Kevin asked me to wear makeup for the wedding, I knew I'd have to get in practice. I needed to remember how to apply it and learn how to get through a day without messing it up. I bought some stuff at the drug store and started playing.
It was surprising how quickly things started coming back to me. The realization that I needed to buy some extra brushes to get my eyeshadow just right. Mourning for the eyebrow brush I threw away so many years ago. Not to mention that it was satisfying. When I got my eyes looking just right, I was proud of myself.
In addition to this, I'd been looking for a specific shade of lipstick I loved in high school. It was being re-released in a limited run, and tracking it down was really difficult. In the process of trying to find it, I ended up visiting a lot of beauty sites and began to see tips on applying eye liner, keeping lipstick from smearing, finding brands that actually last all day. It all looked so fun and, more importantly, accessible. See part of my disinterest in makeup can be traced to my mom's disinterest in makeup. Without her to teach me the finer points I had a hard time learning. Though if I'd really wanted to I probably could have.
I also started seeing articles about women wearing too much makeup. Hand in hand with articles styling their hair in the wrong way or wearing the wrong shorts or just generally not being appealing in the right way. And I thought fuck that. I've never much cared about fashion or anything, opting for ease and comfort over style. But if men were going to tell me not to wear makeup, then I was damn well going to start wearing makeup.
And finally, the snowflake that caused the avalanche. Being one of the only women at work. Seeing twenty interns hired with nary a woman in sight. I got fed up with being one of the guys and decided to deliberately other myself. Because it turns out I do have a pretty strong contrary streak. I'm surprised I wasn't a more rebellious teenager (though I didn't really have anything to rebel against, so).
I went out and bought eyeshadows in fun shades. Blues and purples and pinks. I picked up some bright lipsticks to play with. I signed up for birchbox, because getting samples in the mail every month seemed like the ideal way to experiment. And in the very first box I found a hair product that I definitely have to start buying and using. It's amazing.
Incorporating makeup into my morning routine was surprisingly easy. I never do anything that takes more than five minutes, so it's not a big time suck. And it's so fun and satisfying that I find myself wanting to do things. I probably shouldn't have tried eyeliner for the first time on a work day, but it all worked out okay in the end.
Through all of this, the words of a guy I almost dated have started echoing in my head again. When I asked him about his tattoos, he replied "You only get one life, you might as well decorate it." It was these words that pushed me into getting my first tattoo and that are defining my experiments with making my face up every day. It's one more way to play with color, decorate myself, and define the way I look. It really is an art form, one that I'm getting better at and having a lot of fun with in the meantime.
No comments:
Post a Comment