The Part Where I'm Not Really a Fan of Make-Up
Hm.... yeah, that's better. But not as much fun and not strangely provocative.
So here's the sitch.
I work in retail, more specifically, at a place that likes to think consider itself catering towards the "real" women of the world, women who like colorful clothes and being able to wear their wardrobes both to work and out on the town. And that, is actually kinda cool. I promise I'm not being facetious, even though most people who know me know that I'm not the biggest fan of working retail and things like key words or talking about fashion or getting people to sign up for extra credit cards.
Yeah, that sounded facetious.
But really, working at my store is an eye-opening experience, and is something that I really have enjoyed for the most part despite my antagonistic view on working retail.
See, this is how it is: I can deal with the necessity of getting 1,100 pieces of shipment, and needing to get it completely unpacked in 11 man hours, and with customers who can't decide on what they want, and then have a 15 piece transaction that somehow includes purchases, exchanges, returns, and a price adjustment (yeah, kids, that's happened).
What I've been having a harder and harder time wrapping my head around -- and this points to a larger problem I've been mulling over for some time -- is the focus on make up.
Now, as I've said already, I work in retail; I get that I have to look nice, I have to look the brand and dress up way more than I usually do. What I get a lot less, is the constant focus on having to wear make up at work... and therefore, since we cater to the "real" woman, projecting the idea that "real" women need to wear make up in the real world in order to be fashion forward and beautiful.
Whenever we get a visit from corporate, all of us associates are repeatedly reminded that we have to look the brand, that we have to have our hair done, our make up done ... that we have to be completely dolled up to impress our corporate visitors, and of all the things I've had to do for this job, this is the one that bothers me the most.
Allow me a moment for a sidebar before I tie this all together: I am in no way delusional about the way I look. I'm not drop dead gorgeous, I won't turn heads just by walking into a bar, but, despite that, I like to think that I'm at least not bad looking. I think, here, the operative word is "cute". And while that is its own problem completely on its own, this whole post is not about my varying level of cuteness. For the most part, I've only started wearing make up daily in the past calendar year. More specifically, since October. Since I got hired.
Now, most days that I have work, I only put on eyeliner and mascara (aka, the eyelash stuff). If I'm feeling adventurous, I'll slap on some eye shadow, in varying shades of color based on what I'm wearing. When it comes to corporate visits, I bust out every piece of make up I own: eyeliner, mascara, eye shadow, concealer, and lipstick.
I feel like I literally am painting over my face.
And I want my face back.
I get it -- I'm cute, not gorgeous, so I need make up to make me gorgeous.
But do I really? I try not to think that I have body image issues, but there are some undeniable things about me: I'm Asian, so I'll always have a little, flat nose, I'm never going to quite reach 5'4", and my hair is never going to curl the way I want it to, no matter how good of a perm job I get.
Despite all this, I like to think that I am a confident, beautiful woman. Despite my ethnicity, I don't totally have the stereo-typically "squinty" Asian eyes, so why do I need eyeliner or mascara to make my eyes look bigger than what they really are? If I want to be perceived as a working, adult woman, I wouldn't want to have humongous eyes like a baby; that would psychologically imply that I'm immature and need to be helped, not confident about selling clothes and having a well-formed opinion on fashion. I haven't had any sorts of gross acne since I was in high school, and even when pimples do pop up, they're pretty minuscule and go away after like a day, so why do I need concealer to "even out" my skin tone? A little blood in the cheeks just means I'm working hard; isn't that what my bosses expect from me when I work for them? As for my lips, they're well proportioned to the rest of my face, and their natural pinkish hue is a color I've seen being sold at Target or Macy's or Sephora. Why should I cover up my lips with something redder?
In essence, by using make up, by covering my natural self up, I am silently conceding that the current standards of beauty are the correct standards of beauty; but does being beautiful mean we all have to look the same? In my opinion, by using and overusing make up, we are caking on layers and layers of product and cosmetics that just take away from the natural beauty that all of us have.
For example, we (the royal we of the female population) cover up "blemishes" so that people won't see them, but my favorite part about my face is a line of freckles that only runs on the left side of my face. No one gets to see that when I have concealer on; it just fades away, the skin tone on my face is even across the board, and I have just gotten a step closer to being "beautiful".
Too bad I don't feel it on the inside.
On the inside, I feel ... well, like crap, to be completely honest. I feel like I am using make up as a mask and covering up my smarts, my charm, my personality, the things that make me... me! and becoming just another pretty face because it happens to coincide with the standard of beauty that is expected of me by my employer. I don't feel beautiful when I have to completely alter my face to be considered pretty. And I don't understand how anyone can consider me to be beautiful if they don't even know what I really look like!
I'm not going to lie, I feel beautiful when I wake up in the morning. I like looking in the mirror when I wake up; the way I look then makes me smile... because I look real, I look like myself! I look like a normal human being! When I get make up on, I worry constantly about smudging it, pushing it the wrong way -- I worry about not. looking. perfect. Since when did perfection become necessary to be beautiful? Think about it; all the product that people use on themselves to look good are just a means to an end, an end considered to be visual perfection, by social standards.
Thus, I want my face back.
And I hope other women out there do too.
Maybe I don't know how I hope this will happen, or how I plan on promoting this idea, but I really, truly hope that this idea touches a few people.
The idea is this: we are, all of us, human. Humans weren't made for perfection; we were made for inconsistencies and asymmetry. Nothing in nature is perfect; everything is just ... ordered, and as part of the natural world, the same goes for us. I firmly believe that we, as women, need to take back our faces, take them back from the media, the social standards, the everything that tells us we aren't good enough -- that we aren't beautiful -- the way we look in the morning before we put on all that product that just covers up what was already beautiful to begin with.
So ... to anyone who reads this, I have a challenge for you. If you agree with anything I just wrote, and it's not detrimental to your life in any way (i.e. you don't work in an environment that demands make up), go without make up for one day this coming week. And do it again next week, and the week after, and the week after that, maybe take two days off, instead of one. And so on and so forth.
And each day, when you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror and really look at your face. Find something to love that maybe has been covered up in the past. Embrace the "imperfection" and revel in it! And use that extra twenty minutes to sleep, or read, or do homework, or talk to that cute boy before class. Live life away from the mirror and away from the idea of perfection.
You never know, maybe this'll happen:
It can never hurt to try. =)
--Tiffany
This made the rounds a few years back. I just thought it'd be an apt reminder that what we see in the media and out in the world that describe visual beauty may be more deceiving than it seems.
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