All of them are the same type; girls with overprocessed hair and too much makeup and way too much access to Daddy’s credit cards. Girls who, if you took away the designer labels, hair dye and cover-up, wouldn’t be more than average-looking, but with all that stuff look too plastic to be pretty.
Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted makeup.Forget the laughs, forget the fights, forget the sex, forget the jealousy. But take off your hat and observe a moment's silence for the legions of unknown tubes of foundation, mascara, eyeliner, blusher and lipstick who died that it might all have been possible. But who died in vain.
Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. It is misogynistic to suggest that they are. Sadly, women have learned to be ashamed and apologetic about pursuits that are seen as traditionally female, such as fashion and makeup. But our society does not expect men to feel ashamed of pursuits considered generally male - sports cars, certain professional sports. In the same way, men's grooming is never suspect in the way women's grooming is - a well-dressed man does not worry that, because he is dressed well, certain assumptions might be made about his intelligence, his ability, or his seriousness. A woman, on the other hand, is always aware of how a bright lipstick or a carefully-put-together outfit might very well make others assume her to be frivolous.
Consider the fact that maybe…just maybe…beauty and worth aren’t found in a makeup bottle, or a salon-fresh hairstyle, or a fabulous outfit. Maybe our sparkle comes from somewhere deeper inside, somewhere so pure and authentic and REAL, it doesn’t need gloss or polish or glitter to shine.
Why hoard away so many back-issues of People Magazine? Fashion magazines are just empty promises. You can go bankrupt blowing all your cash on expensive beauty products, but the only way you’ll ever look just like the people on those glossy front covers is if you know how to use computer editing software for photographs. Besides, people who think they are ugly, are never really all that ugly anyway. People who think they are pretty, are rarely ever all that pretty.
My general feeling is that date make-up should be an honest advertisement for a potential relationship. Frankly, it’s easier for you that way. There’s no point labouring over lots of perfectly applied make-up if you are, in reality, a low-maintenance kind of girl who can’t possibly keep it up beyond the honeymoon period. Equally, it seems unwise to imply you’re someone who rolls out of bed and out to a Sunday farmer’s market all natural skin, flushed cheeks and a smidge of lip balm when your real life is spent in full coverage foundation and smoky eyes. Like any part of dating, it is always safer to be yourself because who can maintain a lie for long?
Leave your hair natural. Let your beard grow out. Leave the makeup in the bag. Wear comfortable clothes. Stop worrying so much about your looks and start looking around you. You have missed so much beauty trying to become beautiful. You have missed your own worth trying to become worthy. Let the mask break open. Let it lie on the floor. Let yourself be seen. Let yourself see.
I PAINT MY FACE.By Omrane Khuder.Mirror, distorted; I sit, paint my Face,Toxic white Make-up buries my Scars,My Eyes tell lies; Dumbfounded Confidence hides the Disgrace.Place the tragic Vehicle called My Life in to Drive,Sad pathetic Clown; Late for the suppression show,Despair another time; Let the chuckles and defeat derive.I paint my Heart; I hide my True.I paint my Soul; I keep it from You.I paint, I cannot accept; To ignore you the way you ignore Me?I paint my scarred and pitiful Face; No Will left to restore Me.I paint my Face; it’s all I know to do.My painted Face shatters the Mirror, yet still all I see is You.
The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that's unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn't blame them, having done the same once myself.
Clara smoked in the shallow pool as Lana del Rey poured from her phone. She shaded her eyes. She liked the shallow pool because she could lay out, half in the sun, half in the water, and not get her hair wet. She had black eyeliner smeared under her eyes from who-knows-when, and while she never bothered to fix it, she did apply more, so she looked permanently hung over. She liked that.