Unfinished Conversations

I’ve loved makeup for as long as I can remember.

I’ve NEVER been one of those girls that didn’t try hard to look good. I’ve always, ALWAYS made an effort. It has always mattered to me. Whether I was ‘naturally pretty’ or not was irrelevant. If there was an opportunity to look prettier, it felt stupid for me not to take it.

I started wearing makeup around 13 or 14 when my dad bought these glossy LipSmackers lip balms from a trip to the States. They came in all these cool flavors – cola, cherry, vanilla, Dr. Pepper (my favorite!!!)

My social life at the time mostly involved playing hours of chor-police (cops and robbers) with my friends in our building compound. There was a ton of running, sweating, and – for some reason – lip gloss. And it wasn’t just for me, my friends caught on to this pretty quickly.

Right before we made our teams for chor-police, I would quickly pass around whichever lip gloss I had in my pocket so we could glam up before the games began. I cringe so painfully hard when I think back to those days.

It’s one of those embarrassing childhood stories that for some reason, everyone still remembers. But that’s the girl I was.

Absurd, but glamorous.

Through the years, my relationship with makeup evolved in tandem with my understanding of myself.

At 14, it was to signal some form of identity. I wanted to stand out AND be myself AND fit in AND be cool, whilst obviously NOT being like other girls because in 2008, being like other girls was a cardinal sin.

At 20, I felt like I needed makeup because, honestly, my lifestyle choices weren’t doing my skin any favors. Too much partying, not enough sleep, less water than a cactus, and a vada-pav for lunch. Everyday.

By 25, I was in a better place. I wore makeup because I enjoyed it as an art form. I watched a ton of YouTube tutorials by beauty influencers like Wayne Goss that taught me how to use makeup to hide my flaws. No more eye bags! No more cheek chubbs! Give yourself a jawline! Make your eyes look less droopy! All this turned into a bit of a hobby for me. I actually began having fun with makeup.

At 28, my approach to makeup mellowed. I used it to enhance, not transform. I was finally okay with my face; makeup helped me look better, not different. And in my mind, if you could look better, then why the hell wouldn’t you?

Now at 30, makeup has become such a habit that the thought of not wearing it feels almost alien. It’s part of my identity. And that has begun to scare me a little.

What I haven’t mentioned so far is that at every stage, no matter WHY I wore makeup, the singular truth was that I always benefited from wearing it.

I’d often get told that I didn’t ‘need’ makeup, but trying to think about who needs it and who doesn’t is a slippery slope. None of us need makeup, some of us might just want what it does for us. And I’ve thought long and hard about what makeup really does for me apart from hiding the fact that I haven’t slept enough.

It’s not just vanity; it’s strategy.

Makeup helps me look my ‘best’, and like I said, I benefit from looking my best. Beauty is bankable. Aesthetic presentation is a powerful form of communication. It signals morality, health, respectability, and value.

All this falls under the umbrella of ‘pretty privilege’ – a fairly self-explanatory, discussed-to-death idea that explains how beauty can buy you attention, opportunity, and perceived worthiness.

Pretty privilege means that the adherence to conventional beauty standards comes with very real benefits: better job prospects, higher salaries, being deemed more trustworthy and intelligent – it’s a long and fairly unsurprising list.

Once you get past your own reasons for using makeup or leveraging anything that gives you some ‘pretty privilege’, and if you have the courage to face the ugly truth, you’ll realize that beauty, as dictated by societal norms, demands performance.

It takes work, time, effort, money, and often, pain. A weekend dedicated to self-care might look like getting your nails done, doing your hair, waxing, getting a facial. And it is NOT an occasional act reserved for special events; it is a relentless, daily expectation. It’s invisible labor – a default setting that demands constant maintenance.

Whenever something is being sold to you as ‘self-care’, a good way to spot the BS is to ask yourself if a man would do the same thing and consider it self-care. This should help us tease out the tricky ways that beauty culture has forced us into believing that this performance is somehow for our physical or mental well-being.

Beauty performance is not just about looking presentable; it’s about strategic maneuvering within a society that disproportionately judges women based on their appearance. It tells you that your natural state is unacceptable.

Is beauty empowering?

Because it sure does feel like it.

Frankly, I love the confidence boost that comes with doing my makeup and looking ‘put together’ but it’s naive to assume that it’s a healthy or sustainable form of confidence.

Jessica DeFino, a noted beauty critic, offers a striking perspective:

“Wearing makeup does make us feel more confident in the moment, psychologically speaking. So will a bump of cocaine, by the way — which is not to say that wearing makeup and using cocaine are comparable behaviors by any means, but to say that not everything that momentarily boosts our confidence is fine and healthy. The fact that makeup delivers such a powerful confidence boost should start a conversation, not end it. It should prompt us to dig deeper, to ask why it makes us feel confident.”

Make-up, or any beauty routine for that matter, can only give you the confidence that beauty culture stole from you in the first place. It’s a cycle that feeds on insecurity, packaging and selling confidence back to us at a premium.

And yes, there very much IS a culture around beauty. It’s a pretty narrow set of qualifications that dictates what is deemed beautiful in society. These standards aren’t just plucked from thin air; they’re meticulously crafted and sold to us through every conceivable medium – from film to social media, from literature to advertising.

The message is clear and consistent: to be beautiful is to be worthy. Psychologists have argued that it’s pretty much impossible to separate what we inherently and individually find beautiful from what society tells us is beautiful.

Because you’re worth it

It’s starting to bother me how the pursuit of beauty is now being glorified as a noble quest for self-improvement. Beauty culture has begun to co-opt the language of empowerment. Brands bombard us with messages that scream “Be the best version of yourself! Do it for YOU! You’re worth it!”

While beauty culture offers us tools for self-expression and confidence, it paradoxically perpetuates the very insecurities it claims to address. This contradiction lies at the heart of the problem: the idea that empowerment can be bought, applied, or worn.

Now I’m not saying that personal grooming or makeup are inherently disempowering. We can, and should, enjoy our makeup routines for what they are – a fun form of self-expression, a creative outlet, a little bit of everyday magic, and, to a large extent, acts of societal compliance. This isn’t a crusade against beauty; it’s a call for diversification.

We aren’t more empowered because we can ‘take care of ourselves’ via makeup and beauty routines. We’re just trying to look good in a world that rewards good looks. I enjoy the benefits that come with pretty privilege too much to forgo it. I enjoy the activity of wearing makeup or dressing up well as a form of self-expression.

But I don’t consider any of this empowering or liberating. Honestly, I don’t even consider them good. I’m in a tricky spot here, because I feel stuck. Unable to face the world without all these crutches.

That why I’m trying to start a conversation about beauty standards, to help understand them for what they are – a part of the social fabric we live in. I don’t think I’ll have the courage to abandon my makeup routine, but I’m no longer deluded about what it represents. It’s a deflection, not a solution.

And so everyday, as I don my deflection, I know that makeup and beauty are just tools that (for now) benefit me – but don’t add to my worth or confer real empowerment. Because when the makeup comes off, I’m finally learning to accept that the person staring back at me was worth it all along.