Makeup

Makeup is an interesting thing.  When you think about it, it is extremely fake.  So fake in fact that a careful application of it can make a man look like quite a passable woman.  (Look at this). Yet so many women feel they must have it, must be wearing it, or they are ugly.  Even my gorgeous little sister, who could roll out of bed and still look like sleeping beauty, looks at a picture of herself in high school before she discovered makeup and groans about how awful she looked.  She couldn't be more wrong.  She was beautiful then too.

So what happens?  Well, I can't say what happens in every case, but I can say what happened to me.  Yes, I too have joined the ranks of women who wear makeup so much they no longer feel comfortable in public in just the skin God gave them.  How on earth did I get here?

When I was in my middle teens my older sister started to urge me to wear makeup.  I didn't care for it, didn't want to expend the time or money it would require to use it.  She told me I would attract more men if I wore it.  My reply was that I wanted to attract men who could look a little more than skin deep, and besides, I felt pretty how I was.  She kept at it, until one Christmas she gave me some makeup for Christmas, shortly after I turned nineteen.  Most of it I used once, and never again, but the mascara . . . well, it got me hooked.  My eyes looked bigger in it.  More boys actually did start flirting with me when I wore it.  I went from no makeup to mascara every day.

By the time I was twenty two my older sister was ready to despair over me.  "This foundation is really good.  You should get it," and similar comments followed me almost everywhere.  "I am going to give you a new thing to buy every week," she would say.  "This week I want you to buy an eyelash curler."
I would roll my eyes and decline.  But I also didn't get any dates, my little sister joined the "lets get Marianne to wear makeup" crusade, and eventually I broke down, hoping makeup would indeed make me feel better.  I let my sister lead me through the grocery store makeup aisle.  Miser that I am, I shuddered at the price of the amassed items she piled into my basket.  Meekly, I bought them, and wore them, and hated them.  And interestingly, I became less invisible.  Instead of looking sixteen, I actually looked like I might be every day of twenty years old.

It was never enough for my sisters.  They moved on from the grocery store to the designer brands, the ones sold at Sephora and expensive department stores.  It was a place I set my heals and refused to go.  At first.  Until one day I bought a product that was supposed to do about ten beneficial things for my skin, and discovered that it was a lot better than that grocery store stuff.  And I really only needed a new tube of it about every six months.  What was an unthinkable expense one day was suddenly a necessity the next.

Worst, I found myself ashamed to be seen outside of my house without makeup on.  Not just a little, the whole deal.  Beauty balm cream and/or foundation.  Bronzer or blush.  Highlighter.  Mascara.  Eyeliner.  A little something to darken my brows.  Distressingly, I became more and more visible, and got more and more dates.  And I became more and more shackled to an outlay of time and money for which I can still think of dozens of more productive uses.

Do I feel prettier after carefully making myself up and picking a nice outfit?  Yes.  Do I have any self-confidence whatsoever that anyone will like to look at me without the makeup?  No.  Am I secretly afraid of the day that I fall in love, and then my love sees me without makeup for the first time?  Yes.

What a price to pay for visibility!  Still, now that I have felt it, how can I return to being invisible to 3/4 of the world?  Some confinements are found in the bottom of deep dungeons, in rusty iron chains.  Mine come in shiny little bags, covered in bright red tissue paper, with a side of a free fragrance sample.

So next time you see a woman not wearing makeup, particularly if that woman is in the mirror, give her a compliment.  Don't tell her you have one simple product that will solve all her problems.