Facing It

Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I don’t recognise myself.

Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I don’t recognise myself.

You’d think it difficult. I’m fairly conspicuous at 5'11" with lurid pink hair. But what is probably one of my most defining features is my ever-present eyeliner. I’ve become adept at drawing on those little black wings over the years. Around ten years, to be more specific.

That’s half my life.

It’s a nice feeling, to have jumped the hurdle of perfectly applied makeup. I struggle with lipstick, I’ve never really been one for eyeshadow, but more than once have I been pointed out as ‘the girl with the eyeliner’ in a crowd, praised for my talent.

Of course, the self-affirmation is as easily wiped away as the wings.

At my all girls school I was apparently unrecognisable without rings of kohl, if we’re going by the reactions of my friends on the rare and terrifying occasion I would go to class bare-faced.

The comments would range from the genuinely concerned to the outright insulting. I still can’t say which hurts more.

“Are you sick?”

“Have you been crying?”

“You look high.”

You learn to laugh it off, as a young girl. You get used to it. But the realisation that nobody knows what you actually look like is unsettling. So often have I swallowed it down, the confession “This is just me.”

It only made me want to wear it more.

The process of forgetting my own face probably started the first time somebody my own age called me ugly. It started with my reaction: Wondering what I could change about myself to change their mind.

Misogyny works in mysterious ways. Sometimes it’s found in the voice of the eleven year old girl sat next to me in school assembly, whispering behind her hand “You really should shave your legs, you know. It’s disgusting, leaving them hairy.”

Sometimes it’s in the sneer of the sixteen year old boy who raped me, telling me afterwards to go reapply my eyeliner, to make myself beautiful again. He must have had real trouble looking me in the eye without it.

Bizarrely enough, what often cuts more deeply is the compliments. Stepping out with eyeliner carefully applied after a week of no makeup to be met with the verbal endorsement of how pretty I look that day does nothing good for my self-esteem. It’s no small wonder why they choose that day to say it.

It’s a tangled web of self-worth with no clean escape. The cycle, for me, continues to this day: A liar with makeup, ugly without.

Makeup makes me feel good about myself. It would have to, I’ve been relying on it as a source of self-esteem for a decade now. It can be a useful artistic tool, a mode of self-expression. I don’t question its creative uses, but I question the primary purpose of its existence.

It deserves to be questioned, when makeup has made it so that one of the bravest things I can do as a cisgender woman is show the world my face.

There are many days when I just don’t feel brave enough.

So carry on telling me I can crush the patriarchy with one glance of my sharply lined eyes, but finding personal empowerment in the makeup industry doesn’t stop it from reeling in another generation of young girls with the savage little hook: “Your face isn’t good enough.”

I can try and take control. I can wear makeup for myself, knowing that I started wearing it initially to please other people. I can feel proud when those little wings are evenly drawn on. But I can never escape the fact that for the best part of my youth I agreed with ‘other people’. It’s tough to shake the convictions of a ten year old who believes it’s her who needs to change.

Now I can’t change the fact that sometimes, first thing in the morning, I don’t recognise myself.