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elyse hughes

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    elyse hughes
    Jul 21
    Edited: Jul 21

    The Makeup Test

    in Micro Blogs

    Jun 11, 2017



    In this mini pocket of time, my days are simple. I wake up without an alarm. Meditate. Journal. Make my own food throughout the day. I write on my MacBook Pro - social media posts, inspirations, this micro blog, my first book, and other practice writings that'll find their way into short story collections or my main blog. I make an effort to move my body every day, whether it's walking to the store, or Starbucks when I want to create in an environment with a little bit a' bustle. I practice fun ways to keep my mind fresh and my body circulating joy - yoga, YouTube workouts, stretching - whatever feels good and makes me stronger.

    My days are filled with beauty, but very rarely does the application of makeup occur. Every once in a while, if we go out to eat or I just feel like glamming up, I'll brush up my cheeks with bronzer and spend a few extra minutes thickening my eyelashes with mascara. I love the drama of colored eye shadows and liquid foundation that smooths all my skin tones into one. For me, a little bit of makeup goes a long way, and it's not a daily habit. I never want to feel like I have to make my face look different to go out in public. I don't want to operate under the assumption that people will only take me seriously if I lengthen my eyelashes. I also don't feel like that's radical.

    At least in American culture, women wear makeup and men don't. And of course, there are many exceptions. Generally, for anyone on camera, makeup is par for the course. Different expressions of gender playfully blur the lines of certain sexes wearing makeup. But, by and large, it's an unspoken societal expectation that women wear makeup. An expectation so deeply ingrained to the point where, we as women, feel like we not only don't look pretty without makeup, we don't look normal or even acceptable. It seems backwards that we primarily acknowledge physical beauty that's created, applied, manipulated, or made to present a certain image, instead of honoring what's already there.


    I love makeup and there's not a thing wrong about it. I just wonder, how many women feel they have to wear it in order to feel pretty, leave the house or be seen out in the world? How many women feel un-pretty, un-presentable and sloppy if they ditch the foundation? What if we wore makeup because we wanted to instead of feeling like we have to? I can imagine if I worked in a corporate environment and showed up sans face paint, I'd worry people might think I'm depressed or not taking care of myself. Even within my holistic hippie writer's world, I always don makeup before getting on a Facebook Live or filming a video. I assume that people will think I'm insane if I look like I normally do in everyday life. And yet I watch videos of some of my favorite inspirational thought leaders - Matt Kahn, Kyle Cease - and they just show up as themselves, and everyone meets them where they are, with wonder and interest in what they have to share. Is it just a fabrication of my mind - the idea that I have to wear makeup to appear legitimate in the public eye?

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