so this past weekend, one of my favourite people got married
Didi and i drove down to Bombay for the wedding. although originally a small affair, it had become even smaller because of the new lockdown restrictions. my cousin had to cancel the reception after her Church wedding, which was a bit of a bummer, but most of the arrangements for the wedding stayed the same.
a month in advance, my cousin had asked us if we’d like to wear a little make-up for the wedding and, cluelessly, we had said yes. on the day of the wedding it became evident that this make-up wasn’t the simple lipstick-and-eyeliner affair i thought i had signed up for. the make-up technician arrived four hours before the wedding Mass was scheduled to begin, and she spent two of those hours on my cousin’s face alone.
after that, she turned her attention to my sister; and after Didi, onto me.
i had never worn this much make-up in my life. when i first saw myself in the mirror, i didn’t recognise myself at all. every part of my face was suddenly the same skin tone; the shadows under my eyes and pimples on my right cheek had disappeared; even my neck was made to be a few shades lighter!
that day we spent a considerable amount of time in the car, driving to the church, and then from church to dinner, and then back home after that. i spent a lot of that time staring at my face in the tiny mirror over the passenger seat. i liked the way my eyes looked, shrouded in eyeliner, kajal and mascara. i liked the slight pink over my cheeks, and the absence of any blemishes in my skin. i liked the new shape of my nose and the dark shade of my lips.
it was a strange feeling, because i was suddenly proud of a face that looked nothing like me.
sometime last week, i slept at 3am because i couldn’t stop watching Instagram reels.
i don’t know if you’ve spent any significant amount of time watching reels on IG. one of the most popular trends on reels (and tiktoks too, i’m guessing) are videos of girls wearing drab clothes/no makeup, and then transforming into extremely dressed up, made up versions of themselves. there’s the buss it challenge, the pass the brush challenge, and so on.
i also noticed that a lot of tiktoks and reels are just videos of really well-dressed and well-groomed women showing themselves off to the camera.
this is probably old news to you, but for some reason i’m continually surprised by how image-centered the internet has become. some people have massive followings on social media just because they look good.
there used to be a time when people were funny on the internet without having to show their faces. in fact, Vines (which were, in a way, the spiritual prequels to TikTok) were primarily videos of people in their home attire with no makeup doing absolutely whack stuff without an ounce of shame
things are different now, and i think it might be because of the influencer culture on instagram. people dress up to make silly videos on the internet. of course, the other side of this is that some people feel really bad about the way they look.
an image-centric culture has given people issues with the way they look. who would have thought?
all of this to say that the day after the wedding, when i sat in our car again and looked at my naked face in the little mirror above the passenger seat, i had a thought i haven’t had in a very long time: boy am i ugly.
one of my favourite blogs on Tumblr had some thoughts about this phenomenon recently:
it’s nice to know that you dont have to earn your comfort. You can literally be comfortable and ugly and un made up and unfashionable for your whole life, you don’t have to have the glow up, you don’t have to balance the two and show how pretty you can make yourself with clothes and makeup , you don’t have to earn your comfort by being uncomfortable. U don’t owe it to anyone
Only women do this fuck ass balancing act . Only letting themselves be “ugly” temporarily. Only if theres the eventual reveal of the makeover/glowup/tiktok trend. there’s always that resolution of beauty that lets people feel relieved. PHEW SHE’S STILL A WOMAN. PHEW SHE STILL KNOWS HER PLACE.
this really resonated with me. i’ve always been acutely aware of how i’m not “conventionally” attractive, but never more than in this age of social media. everyone seems to be looking at the world through a lens; and then we look at ourselves through that same lens, and find ourselves wanting.
when i was 17 or 18 i realised that i no longer wanted to think of myself as a woman; not because i felt like a man instead, but because i felt like i wasn’t enough of a woman to count as one. my perception of femininity was horribly skewed: i thought all women applied foundation and concealer every morning, obsessed over the food they ate and spent an inordinate amount of effort on their outfits. i didn’t nor did i want to do any of those things, and as a result, i always felt a little like an outsider to my own gender.
this is not just a me thing, though. more and more i see women feeling the need to put on a performance in order to be noticed. filters on snapchat and Instagram alter our facial features so that we look more desirable. i know women who refuse to take selfies without these filters. i know women who apologise for the state of their skin when they come to see me without makeup on.
these days, when a young woman i know informs me that they’re now on Instagram, my knee-jerk response is: oh, no.
obviously, it doesn’t make sense to respond to this phenomenon by avoiding social media entirely. not only is that tantamount to running away, but it’s near impossible in this day and age to be completely disconnected from the virtual world.
so what is the solution?
like most things, step one is admitting you have a problem.
if it makes you feel better, think of this way: we have a problem. if we carry on this way, we’ll ruin the generations of strong young women who look up to us.
the catch is that the last time we tried to fix this problem, we only made it worse.
today there’s more content and conversation on body positivity than ever before. and yet we’re more obsessed with our image and appearance than we ever were. what went wrong?
i’ve written about this once before, but i’ll say it again. the world’s response to “dark-skinned is ugly” or “fat is ugly” has always been “dark-skinned is beautiful, perfect, flawless” and “fat is beautiful, perfect, flawless”. why are we so scared of middling? why are we always aiming for the stars, for the best possible version of our physical selves?
i don’t think we can have this conversation until we know what we’re really talking about. why do we care so much about the way we look? why are we willing to give up our time, energy and peace of mind just so we can look “good”?
because we all want to be loved, right?
and what if we all realised that we’re already perfectly loved?
would that ache, that longing buried deep in us that powers every foolish endeavour to conform to the world’s standards of beauty, would that go away?
it’s worth a shot.
hey y’all! if you liked this post, or it gave you something to think about, feel free to drop a comment or reply to this email.
hope everyone’s doing well. i’ve recently gotten really into sudoku; i’ll let you draw your own conclusions regarding my mental state from that random fact.
until next time!
krys
I only got into makeup in 2019 and two years later, I still feel strange when my face is caked up with foundation. it feels almost...unreal. so can relate