this post comes to you from a tumblr post i saw not five minutes ago about makeup and it sparked some of my own thoughts on the topic. when i was growing up my parents were very strict with me, and i think part of it stemmed from the fact that in my culture most girls, if they don't go to university after high school, end up married at 18 and with children. and it's a mindset that is so enforced that many girls don't really aspire to much beyond that, so i'm sure from their point of view, their strictness, particularly in how i presented myself physically, stemmed from trying to prevent me from becoming fixated on the way that i look and wasting my academic potential.

when i entered middle school, many of the girls that i had in my classes in elementary had gotten brand new clothes at the start of our first year in middle school and haircuts, highlights, and wore makeup that i'd previously never seen them wear. and for me...nothing really changed. i was still the same lanky girl with knobby knees who dressed very tomboyishly. i wasn't allowed to do a lot of things when i finally hit puberty at 13 including things like shave my legs, or wear makeup to school, or dress in the more sophisticated manner that the popular girls in my grade dressed. my parents wouldn't even let me wear nail polish to school (because i guess they thought it was the "gateway drug" so to speak to teenage pregnancy or something, i really don't even know). 

and while this would be understandably stifling for many children, i had never really been all that concerned with my appearance as a child, and i also knew my parents, so it was not a fight i was willing to have. part of this lack of preoccupation i suspect was that i had learned early on that i was just not going to be popular with the boys because i couldn't go like one day without them picking a fight with me up until the fifth grade. on top of that, my natural aggression, competitiveness, and generally getting better grades than all the boys in my class did not work to make me popular with them romantically. all of this combined meant that as long as i was clean, and i didn't dress like a clown, i was willing to go along with these restrictions.

to my mom's credit when she explained why she enforced those rules with me, her reasoning was very simple and it all came down to this: i was a child. shaving your legs was an adult woman task in her eyes, and i was merely a child, there was no reason for me to shave my legs. she saw the act as a form of me being forced to grow up too quickly. she had similar views about makeup or my clothes: i was a child. those things would've served to make me look older than i was and in her eyes all children were beautiful as they were and didn't need makeup or more mature clothes. that is to say that in her eyes all children were perfect the way they were and should be allowed to look and be treated like children without imposing adult beauty standards on them.

(and i think the reason that she probably didn't say was that adult women are seggualized and presenting yourself as more mature or older opened you up to those kind of advances from other adults and she didn't want that. and while we all know that men will prey on women and girls regardless of how childlike they look, i get the idea.)

all of this to say that i was faced with either letting these differences between me and other girls become crippling insecurities that lowered my self-esteem, or i had to make my peace with it and move on. so i chose to make my peace with it.

which brings me to makeup as an adult. i started using makeup very late in the game compared to most women my age. so around the age of 21. and the reason for that was that only was i comfortable in my own skin from being au natural for so long, but i didn't like the way i felt about myself after i took the makeup off. i was always, at worst, neutral about the state of my natural face, and at best, i liked the way i looked. i never really saw anything wrong with myself and when i would put on makeup on super rare occasions, i would get used to the way i looked and like my appearance, and then i would take the makeup off and start noticing what was "wrong" about my face when i hadn't noticed it before. so i wouldn't wear it. 

i recognized enough about my reaction to know that if i made makeup use a regular part of my routine, i ran the very real risk of becoming too anxious to leave my house barefaced, or lowering my self-esteem because i didn't look as flawless without makeup on. so i would abandon it. and every couple of years i would try it out and see how i felt about myself after i took it off until i reached the point where i didn't feel any different about myself with or without it on.

but this also means that for me, no matter how much i admire the artistry and beauty of makeup and the skill that so many women display, i also don't have that skill. i am years behind in practicing the skill that so many women seem to have perfected. it can often be frustrating for me because it means i'm unable to replicate some of the makeup looks i see online which is compounded by the fact that i also really do not care enough to be willing to practice and perfect it.

did this post have any sort of purpose. absolutely not, i'm surprised there's even a coherent sentence in this whole thing. but when i think back on those formative years, in a way i'm glad for my mom's strictness even knowing it was probably bordering on unhealthy because it forced me to make peace with the way i look, knowing that it was out of my control to change it. i think in the end it has made me into an adult more secure in myself which is a big middle finger to the corporations out there who want to profit off my insecurities and the men who would take advantage of it.

thank you for coming to my ted talk.