We Need to Talk About Makeup and Empowerment

The sky was still dark, but my alarm was buzzing relentlessly. I rolled over, grumbling in protest, and opened one eye to check the time. 5:30 a.m.

Better get started.

In my early years of high school, each day began with a ritual-a ritual that will probably be familiar to many women. I reached into my bag of tricks and transformed my face from sleepy 15-year-old to hallway-ready. Foundation, powder, blush, eye shadow, eyeliner, mascara, and a touch of lip-gloss to top it all off. While I was finishing up my makeup routine, I would heat up my straightener, ready to flatten out my natural waves and destroy my ends in the name of a little extra shine. By the time I walked out the door, I was not the same girl who hid her face in the pillow at the sound of her alarm.

Fast forward a few years, and my makeup routine consists of a basic cleanser for sensitive skin and a couple minutes spent exfoliating every few days. Maybe a little chapstick if my lips are extra dry. My makeup collection, which used to take up three drawers, now fits in a small plastic case that barely takes up any room on my desk. I no longer own a straightener, and as long as I run a brush through my hair every couple of days, it barely tangles. Sure, if I’m going out for drinks, I’ll dab on some concealer, dust a little gold shadow on my eyelids and add a touch of mascara, but my days of spending every morning in front of the mirror and applying a full face of makeup are long over.

I initially started wearing makeup because I had “problem skin.”

In elementary school, my chin began breaking out with nasty zits every few weeks. I begged my mom to help me cover it up, and she let me wear a little concealer. As the years went on, a few pimples turned into cystic acne all over my face. And although society has never been kind to women with a few extra pounds, there was plenty of room in the body positivity movement for girls of all body types. But I personally found no one to represent the girls who spent hours crying at their bare faces in the mirror, wondering what magical cure would clear up their skin. There were no women with acne in the pages of magazines or on TV screens. Every time I sought out information on acne, I only learned how to cover it up or make it go away. Even the models in skin care ads didn’t have acne.

The message came through loud and clear: I looked disgusting. I should hide my face. I should be ashamed. There was Something Wrong With Me.

All I wanted was someone to tell me to love myself anyway, to stop feeling so much guilt over something I could not control. But those words never came.

Those feelings of low self-esteem didn’t stay confined to my skin. Soon, I was frustrated with my entire body. My teeth were too crooked, my eyes were too small, my nose was too big, my body was too hairy, my eyebrows were too thick. Everything was wrong. But luckily, I had something that could help me fix that: makeup.

Makeup felt like my shield against criticism, my guard against a world that I knew was looking down on me. Instead of trying to love myself for who I was, I tried to hide behind creams and powders and glitter. I waged a war in front of my mirror, and my makeup collection was my arsenal.

The only times I saw myself without makeup was after I first woke up and right before I went to bed. Even that felt like torture.

I was disgusted by my reflection. I wished I could see someone else looking back at me.

Now, I can wake up, look in the mirror, and grin. This is not easy.

Some days, this still feels like an act of rebellion. My skin has finally cleared up-a new birth control and a vegan diet did the trick-but the damage was done, and loving myself in a world that taught me to hate myself is an ongoing process, something I will practice each day until it feels natural. But walking out the door without makeup, even on the rare occasions that I do break out, feels freeing. I am allowed to exist, to show off, to smile, no matter what you think of my skin.

Giving up makeup and learning to love myself was a process that took many years. Over the course of those years, it seemed like the beauty industry took a cue from the growing feminist movement and began marketing makeup as a tool of empowerment. Women began echoing this sentiment, stating that if makeup made them feel more confident and they chose to wear it, then certainly, it was empowering. If you look better, you’ll feel better about yourself, right?

Let me make one thing clear: this is not meant to criticize women who do choose to wear makeup. Your body, your choice. You are free to express yourself in any way that you like, and as a feminist, I fully support your right to do so. But as a feminist, I also feel that it is our responsibility to analyze WHY we make certain choices, because we do not make these choices in a vacuum.

The beauty industry has repackaged makeup as empowering in order to capitalize off the growing popularity of feminism. But for years, the beauty industry has taught women that we are not pretty enough, not sexy enough, not thin enough, not tall enough, not curvy enough, never enough. This is an industry that aims to exploit women, not empower us. And in turn, they profit off our insecurities-insecurities that they have helped foster. For the beauty industry, operating under the guise of feminism is a strategy to boost sales. Because if we could wake up, look in the mirror and say, “Nah, actually, I look fab,” they wouldn’t be making a dime off of us. I spent hundreds of dollars on fancy products in order to “fix” myself, but now that I can embrace my flaws, they’ve lost a customer.

Many women will say that makeup is empowering because wearing it makes them feel better about themselves. I completely understand how wearing makeup for a fancy occasion can make you feel special and spruced up-I still do this! But when we wear makeup on a daily basis in order to feel better about ourselves, we should ask ourselves why.

When I wore makeup, I only felt better about myself with it on because I was taught to hate what I looked like when I wiped it off.

Why don’t we ever hear of men who wear makeup each day to “feel better about themselves?” Why don’t men ever freely choose to wear makeup in the name of empowerment? Perhaps because this is not as much about choice as it is about coercion-women may not be forced to wear makeup, but we are certainly strongly encouraged to.

Now, it seems to me that we’re being told that spending money on products that we don’t need in order to “enhance” our natural features is actually empowering. When even the feminist movement is embracing the idea that makeup is empowering, who is there to tell us that we don’t need to “enhance” anything, that you’re already perfect the way that you are, with your scars and the gap between your teeth and your frizzy hair? You don’t need to highlight or contour or conceal. Men certainly don’t, so why should we? Why is existing as we are never enough?

If you want to wear makeup, go right ahead. There is not a doubt in my mind that women who wear makeup can be feminists. There is room for every woman in this movement, regardless of whether or not you wear makeup or go bare faced.

But there is no room for an industry that teaches women that we must invest time, money, and energy in order to change our appearance, that our bare faces must be augmented and altered, that our “flaws” are something that should erased instead of embraced.

I do not presume to speak for every woman when I say this, but for me, true empowerment was not something that could be bought in the beauty aisles of the drugstores. Empowerment came from saying to the world, zits and all, that I was already whole, that I was already enough, that I no longer cared about being pretty-that I was finally ready to be myself.