A Year Ago, I Started Wearing Makeup. I Think It Was a Mistake
I've never felt less pretty.
Two years ago, you could have said “buccal fat removal” and I would’ve looked at you and said, “What?!” When I first heard the term, I immediately envisioned buckles, as in shoes and bags and luggage. Not the fat pads in my cheeks—which, I soon learned, was a common procedure behind many a sculpted Hollywood visage.
Four years ago, I didn’t even have a skincare routine. A few months after I returned to the U.S. from a year and a half abroad, a friend showed up on my doorstep with an armload of products and written instructions because I was *clueless*. But I continued to give it very little thought—more from habit than anything else. My whole life, I have lived in the tension of wishing I was “pretty” by “conventional” standards, and believing that people who partook in regimes and procedures to achieve it were mollifying their vanity. I grew up with the implication that it was wrong to pander to beauty norms—in fact, it was somehow noble, better if you resisted. To be frivolous, I somehow learned, was a sin.
Let’s fast forward to last year, at which point I was firmly entrenched in the world women’s lifestyle media. Every day I’d get hundreds of emails, many of them touting beauty products that promised something violent: to zap, fight, vanquish, eradicate, control, conquer, inject, sculpt, control. Then I’d spend innumerable hours looking at pretty people—usually movie stars—to fill galleries with the best hairstyle for [insert your hair type here] and illustrate the latest makeup trends (ever heard of boyfriend blush?!). These people were often naturally, conventionally beautiful, but also had all the tools at their disposal to create this image—a fact that’s conveniently easy to forget, especially when I’m sitting in my pajamas in front of my computer at 9 a.m. with eyes the size of golf balls thanks to wild and ruthless allergies. Thoughts that had only whispered were now blaring through a bullhorn, as the cavalcade of images paraded across my computer screen eight hours a day.
Is my face to round?
Is my nose too flat?
Are my eyelashes (!) too short?
Is my hair too thin?
Shoulders too wide?
Hands too stubby.
Teeth not white enough?
Complexion uneven?
Waist not narrow enough?
Eyes not big enough?
Are those…lines…on my forehead?
My friends are getting Botox. Should I get Botox?!
The worries came like rain, torrential, relentlessly pelting me with insecurities, perceived or imagined, questions I’d never even considered until now. Then, the email arrived. A staycation in Soho in a hotel where the base rate was $700 per night, with the chance to have a makeup artist fuss over you and dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant. For some, I suppose this is a run-of-the-mill weekend. I, on the other hand, work in an industry where the starting salary can still be as low as $38,000 per year. (I know someone who got this offer. In New York. In the 2020s. And that’s if you’re lucky to get a full-time offer, as the industry continues to cut staff and rely more heavily on freelancers.) If I didn’t say yes, I reasoned, I would be throwing away something perfectly good that I would not be affording otherwise. At least, that’s what I told myself when I enthusiastically replied, YES! I was just doing what I’d been trained to do since I was a kid following my mom through Costco. If there’s a free sample, you take it. (And maybe go back for seconds.)
Underneath the pretenses of “doing my job” (LOL but true) was a deep and sinister curiosity. I wanted to know if I could actually be pretty, to debunk the childhood belief that I wasn’t. Indeed, I’ve always been quick to acknowledge that I have very pretty friends. I’m the one who’s always cute but never beautiful—and that’s eaten at me more than I’d care to admit.
The day of the event, I was checked into a hotel room, in which had been stockpiled what felt like the brand’s entire inventory. This is 100 percent hyperbole—the amount of makeup wouldn’t even hold a candle to the average girl’s makeup bag, I’m sure—but to me, who could count the number of cosmetics she had ever bought on one hand, it felt like my own personal Sephora. Then, a knock at the door. The makeup artist (who has actually become a lovely friend) arrived.
I just want to look like myself, I said. That was the mistake.
If I had said let’s do Old Hollywood or high-glam or smokey eyes or something that had felt otherworldly, maybe I wouldn’t be in a complex right now. But one look in the mirror and I knew. I loved it, and I hated that I loved it. I knew the girl who was staring back at me in the mirror, and it felt like looking at a final draft after having pored over the rough manuscript for years. Once you have the final draft, there’s no going back.
In the days and months that followed, I found myself reaching, more and more often, for the makeup kit I had been given, and my cosmetic collection slowly ballooned as more product launches found their way into my mailbox. It’s just for work, I told myself. In a way, maybe it was. The events I’d go to were rooms full of pretty people. It felt, in this contrast, almost unprofessional to show up with a bare face and limp hair. That was the surface-level explanation I told myself to justify the continually increased cadence at which I was opening bottles of foundation, swiping on lipstick and wrangling my eyelids in to lash curlers that pinched. Underneath, there was a quiet but steady chant that said, you could be prettier, you could be prettier, you could be prettier.
I never thought I’d consider going outside bare faced an act of rebellion but now, I feel a distinct absence when I walk outside with only sunscreen. And I hate it. But I can’t resist.
I didn’t write this because I’m searching for pity or platitudes or to make the baseless conclusion that it’s going to be fine™! This essay is so late because I’ve been wondering what to say and how to say it. It’s a strange world in which we’re all just here on this wild and wacky planet searching for beauty, and that includes in ourselves. My question is, how far will I be willing to go in the pursuit of pretty? How far should I? Maybe this all was a mistake. But somehow, I don’t think there’s a going back.
What I’m Reading
“I Went Looking for a Man in Finance” - Joanna Rothkopf, The Cut
“The Man Behind the Minions” - Calum Marsh, The New York Times
“How GoFundMe Perpetuates Myths of Merit and Deservingness” - Nora Kenworthy, The MIT Press Reader
“Mitzvah Night Is CANCELLED” - Talia Lavin, The Cut
“In the Race for Space Metals, Companies Hope to Cash In” - Sarah Scoles, Undark
“The Last Thing My Mother Wanted” - Evelyn Jouvenet, The Cut
What I’m Writing
“I’m Writing a Rom-Com—But I’d Never Been on a Date Until Last Week”
“10 Brands to Shop That’ll Help You Nail the French Girl Makeup Look”
“An Honest Review of Typology Makeup, the Brand French Women Swear By”
“I Have Flat Feet and Bunions, and These Are 7 Pairs of Shoes That Actually Fit Me Perfectly”
“The 12 Best Dry Shampoos for Fine Hair That Boost Volume, Tested & Vetted”
“Are Youngest Children Bad with Money? What Your Birth Order Really Says About Your Spending Habits”
Love your honesty. I grew up in the exact opposite environment. Four sisters gave up a bedroom so we could devote it to makeup. I've often envied women like you, who felt comfortable bare faced. But on the other hand, makeup is fun!