My Journey With Makeup (and Myself!)

During the fifth grade, I sat at a desk across from my very first crush. I don’t even remember his name now, but I do remember being so mad at my stupid Asian eyelashes for being too short, too straight, and too invisible because the girls he did talk to all had the prettiest, fluttery eyelashes while I had practically nothing. So I broke into the closet that my mom always told me was off limits to steal a tube of Estée Lauder mascara from her stash of free-with-purchase gift bags.

Today I recognize that I was really stealing the gateway drug that would send me spiraling into the world of makeup- never to be the same again. I wore it to school every day for the rest of the fifth grade, feeling oh-so-fabulous even though I had a serious case of spider-lash going on. On top of that, my crush still didn’t talk to me. And this is how our story begins. 

Can you see my eyelashes? Exactly. 

By middle school, what began as just a lil touch of mascara evolved into black eyeliner, glittery lipgloss, and the sorriest excuse for a smokey eye the world has ever seen. 

I would like to take a second to apologize to anyone who had the misfortune of knowing me during this sad, sad time. 

Stupidly, I thought it was believable when I claimed that no- I was not wearing makeup. Why? I was scared that people would see me wearing makeup as a sign of me being a deeply insecure person. This was true of course, but I thought that if I just denied it I could hold onto my pride. Only now do I realize how silly I must have looked and sounded to my friends when they asked me if I was wearing eyeshadow only to be met with a hard “of course not!”

In high school, I stopped denying the fact that I wore makeup. It was pretty hard to hide. From experimenting with new colors to buying lots of new products to finally, finally learning the importance of filling in my eyebrows, makeup had become a part of my identity. I’ll bet if you ask some of my high school classmates they’ll only remember me for my mad winged eyeliner skills and absolutely nothing else. 

This was taken on an iPhone 4S, but as you can see my eyebrow game was seriously lacking and nobody told me color-blocked hair was not the move

If only I could go back and tell myself to stop trying to work makeup styles not meant for people with my features. It’s really hard to do a cut-crease when you don’t have a crease because your face is so freaking flat.

Yet, even though I seemingly embraced makeup as a part of me (to the point I even wrote my Common App Essay about it!), I was grappling with a lot of self doubt regarding where I should’ve been putting my time and effort.

You see, makeup had always been a point of contention between my parents and I. In the earlier days of my ~makeup journey~ they used to ask me endlessly why I wasted my time on such a frivolous pursuit when I could be reading, practicing piano, or really doing anything else. By high school, they asked me why I couldn’t apply the same dedication to my studies, preparing for college, or finding a way to stand out in the sea of my brilliant, competitive peers.

But as many of us know, it’s one thing to hear something from your parents and another to hear it from someone else. It was probably only said casually, but it got back to me that one of my classmates questioned why I wore makeup at all.

“Who is she trying to look good for?”

As far as shit-talk goes, that was a pretty weak burn. Nowadays this is something I wouldn’t even bat an eye at, because after the fifth grade I’ve always only worn makeup for me. But back then it really stung - partly because this person pinpointed the exact place where I already housed insecurities of my own. 

For many other reasons, my last year of high school was a pretty rough time. There’s just something about being super lost in life that really dampens the mood. But in hindsight, I think I went through a lot of self growth and reflection, learning to understand myself more. So it’s a time that I wouldn’t change even if I could. 

Graduation!

OKAY SOMBER, SERIOUS TIME OVER!

You can only imagine how much I was itching to graduate and move away from the bubble that I had grown up in. Of course, I suppose you could argue that college is also a bit of a bubble, but despite the fact I only moved 40 minutes away from home, it was the fresh start that I needed. 

I think that college can be a place where people really grow into themselves and stop worrying so much about what other people think. This might have to do with the crippling stress and near-impossible workload that we must manage, but on the bright side, it’s kind of nice to be so preoccupied with ourselves and our own lives that we can’t even entertain the thought that others might be judging us in some way.

(They probably aren’t, by the way.)

I didn’t notice it for a long time, but by wearing makeup every day I had begun to condition my brain to regard my face with it on as my “normal face”. As a result, I eventually was no longer comfortable with going out in public without it. But in college, I live on North Campus, am constantly running late, and have a nasty habit of oversleeping. So it’s become a regular occurrence for me to wake up, panic, and run out the door in my pajamas just to be the acceptable amount of late to class. While this is something I never would have been able to comfortably do just a year or two ago, forcing myself to be okay showing my bare face to both strangers and friends has helped me realize that it’s not as scary or as earth-shattering as I thought it’d be. It’s also led me to reevaluate my relationship with makeup and my purpose for wearing it. 

It began as a mechanism to cover my physical insecurities. When I was young and barely understood the concept of identity itself - much less the importance of discovering my own - the greatest fears I had in life were whether or not I looked “pretty” in the most skin-deep sense. But as I grew up and was faced with the uncertainty and inner turmoil that often accompanies young adulthood, makeup then evolved into something of a defense mechanism against self-doubt, fear of the future, and difficulty figuring out my identity. It’s hard for me to understand why I latched onto makeup and was so vehement about assigning it such a big role in who I was. But now I realize it was because it had been such a constant in my life that I needed it to keep myself grounded and stable when it seemed like nothing else was.

If I’m going to be honest, it was difficult for me to write this. Partially because I’m somewhat airing out a bit of my dirty laundry, but mostly because I’m not sure what I want the “moral” or the “lesson learned” to be. When I conceptualized what I wanted this piece to be prior to writing it, I envisioned tour-guiding my journey with makeup in a more humorous manner, recalling all of the makeup fails I’ve dealt with. Instead, you just read about 1,300 words of me going on and on about ~self discovery~. This is because as I was writing this, retracing the years leading up to now from the perspective of who I am today has led me to reconsider a lot of my past experiences and make connections that I didn’t notice before. 

So I guess what I want you to take from this - if anything - is that life is an eternal work in progress. Everyone’s journey has to start somewhere. My makeup journey started with spider lashes and a schoolgirl crush. Along the way it’s hit many, many pitfalls: unblended eyeshadow, cakey foundation, and an unfortunate absence of eyebrows. But at the same time, I’ve collected tidbits of knowledge and made numerous small improvements, and while still not perfect, I’m proud to see how far I’ve come. 

Life for many of us is like this too. Surely you’ve encountered more roadblocks and setbacks than you can count. But if you were to zero in on a specific point in your past, and compare that person to the person you are now, I’m certain that you’ll see a world of a difference as well as all of the little things you’ve overcome that have made this possible. Small ripples make big waves, as they say. 

Makeup is still something that I love dearly. It’s one of my passions, and I feel much more self-assured and confident when I have it on. The time I spend doing it in the morning is a brief hour of my day where I can simply exist and not have to worry about anything except which warm-toned-nude lipstick I should pick even if they all kinda look the same. But I don’t really need it anymore. I just use it to make the eternal path to becoming the me of tomorrow just a bit more sparkly.

:)