In preparation for big moves following graduation, I’ve started the journey of donating or throwing away half of everything I own. One item to recently meet the trash was a five-year-old Morphe Jaclyn Hill Eyeshadow palette, gifted to me by my well-intended but misguided father in high school.
The palette was called Ring The Alarm. Its shades included bright reds and golds labeled Lolli, Siren, Mugshot and Bomb Ass. I don’t doubt it was a good product, but it felt strange to have it. Aside from a few clear or pink lip glosses, it was the only makeup product I had ever owned.
I still don’t know what exactly prompted my dad to buy me something I’d never used or even spoken about before, but it at least made for a few nice Instagram posts. It was the assumption that any 16-year-old girl would jump at pink makeup, I suppose.
Similar to my aversion to drinking alcohol, part of me feels like I missed the entryway to wearing makeup, which keeps me away to this day.
At ages four and five, I had surgery on each of my eyes to remove cysts. They were extremely minor and seemed like a great reason to miss school at the time, but left me slightly changed.
My left eye remains scarred underneath, and I never got all of its eyelashes back. It’s the kind of abnormality that an onlooker could completely miss but is beyond obvious in my own gaze. I was advised to stay away from all eye makeup for a number of years.
I lived with the cysts and got the scar before I was old enough to know insecurity. A five-year-old in 2007, thankfully, rarely saw her own face. I’m grateful this all happened before everyone had front-facing phone cameras.
Eventually, I watched girls my age become interested in candy-scented blush from Claire’s. This feels so innocent compared to the deep-seated need for Kylie Jenner’s lip kit that came over girls as young as 14.
If I ever tried to join in on this fun, something in me rejected it. My sensitive skin reacted to certain products, and I wasn’t particularly good at using any of them.
More than anything else, I felt like I was lying when I left the house with darker eyelashes or brighter cheeks. Then I’d spend hours trying to take it off, sometimes to no avail.
I knew that wasn’t what I looked like, and I didn’t care to convince anyone that it was. I also saw that no boy or man had the expectation to spend the time and money required to change their face the way women often did.
While men receive a terrible amount of societal pressure to look and act a certain way, it is not nearly an equal comparison to the way women and girls are preyed upon for their lucrative insecurities the second they have memorized the imperfections on their faces.
One feminist interpretation of beauty products is that people of all genders should be free to spend their money and present themselves any way they see fit.
I believe in this wholeheartedly, but to leave the conversation there would be reductionist at best.
I don’t look down on individual women who enjoy makeup, as it can truly be an art. Instead, I resent the marketers who make money by convincing girls of all ages that they need to be painted, covered and altered.
Estée Lauder, Maybelline, L’Oréal, Mac, Mary Kay, Sephora and Ulta are all run by male millionaires and billionaires. Men in these industries build their wealth by stepping on girl’s insecurities under women’s names. As much as I can help it, I do not want to contribute to their success.
I understand the desire to change my appearance. Young people were never meant to look at their faces as often as we do today. I can see in every photo how my eyes are forever uneven, my skin is pal as paper and my top lip nearly disappears when I smile.
To waste my time, energy and money on changing these things would be disrespectful to myself and all the women before me whose genes made me look exactly the way I do.
C.E. C.F. / AM