Today I read a blog post by a mother who has one son and one daughter. The daughter is four and takes dance. During the photo session, the little girl was dismayed to see that the other little girls were each wearing a face full of makeup. Her own sweet little face was wearing very minimal makeup, including glittery pink lipgloss. Looking at the other girls, she told her mother, "I'm not beautiful."
Of course, her mother immediately told her that she is beautiful. But the little girl was doubtful. To her, the made-up faces of those other little girls had become the standard of beauty for that photo shoot. It wasn't that she felt less beautiful, she felt she wasn't beautiful at all. This is the cost of comparison.
Grown women do it too, except we can buy makeup and use Pinterest to learn how to apply it. We have beauty procedures as minor as facials or extreme as cosmetic surgery. Many of us look at Kim Kardashian's face full of makeup and wish we could look so beautiful all the time. But we also look at pictures of celebrities or we see women we know who don't wear makeup, and they look beautiful! Yet the media likes to print pictures of celebrities sans makeup just to show the contrast and convey the shock that a woman would go out in public without first performing her full beauty routine.
There's a three-fold problem here. First, we compare ourselves to other women and think "That woman is beautiful, so I'm not, because I don't look like her." Second, we look in the mirror or at photos of ourselves and see our face with makeup and without makeup, and we prefer the made up face. Third, society teaches women and girls that our value lies within our external beauty, so we owe it to society to be beautiful.
I used to fall for that first trap. I looked at pictures of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Rachel Weisz and their dark brown hair was much silkier than my blonde frizzy curls. Their dark eyes appeared soulful and mysterious, while my blue eyes appeared plain. They had smooth skin and lovely complexions but I sported acne and peach fuzz. Society says that long hair is always superior to short hair, so I felt ugly when my hair was above my shoulders. Most men prefer long hair on women, according to polls, but I've also noticed that the longer my hair, the more often I am sexually harassed.
The thing is, we need to teach everyone that another person's beauty isn't dependent on someone else's ugliness. We just had the winter Olympics, and obviously the athletes who left the Games without a gold medal do not automatically suck at their sport and life in general.
I admit it, I prefer my face with makeup. It evens out my uneven skin tone, hides blemishes, accentuates my eyes, and gives my lips healthy brilliance. It's a pain that I have to haul all my makeup on overnight trips and to the gym though, as well as makeup remover. I could be ready a little sooner if I didn't apply makeup. I used to have longer, thicker eyelashes, but sleeping in mascara every once in a while has damaged them!
How ridiculous is it that the the things we do to make ourselves look better make us look worse?!
The whole point of makeup is to accentuate what we already have but it can become an addiction. I like to think I'm not addicted to makeup. I once gave it up for Lent! I don't like the way I look with a 'smokey eye' or lipstick that's more than two shades off my natural lipcolor, but I still wear it to go out. Sometimes I pick up my son from school without makeup on, but that's because I'm just outside with sunglasses on for only two minutes. We start with lipgloss in 6th grade, and every year we add another type of makeup to our routine until it takes us a long time to get ready and we browse Pinterest for ways to organize our beauty hoard.
We do NOT owe it to society to look like a Victoria's Secret model. We have value that lies largely unnoticed because we are busy wishing we looked like Miranda Kerr. I hear high school boys say things like "jeez, those girls are ugly! Where are the hot girls today?" When a beautiful woman speaks we want to silence her. Honestly, I think Megan Fox is gorgeous but man she can't act. She has value beyond her looks but she really hasn't found it yet. She has a soul and a brain and she's capable of great kindness, speaking up for the downtrodden, and promoting good will.
But society isn't always kind to women who don't doll up either. We make fun of women like Hillary Clinton, saying she must have balls. I can't stand the pagan, pantheistic nonsense that the Rev'd Katherine Jefferts Schori spouts, but more often than not she is attacked by conservatives for 'looking like a dude'. Oh my gosh, seriously???
I read about a youth group activity this past week that's about inner beauty. Frankly, that subject is another blog. But I will say this to close: inner beauty shows up on the outside. I know several gorgeous women who don't wear much makeup or any at all. They have kind eyes, genuine smiles, they laugh cheerfully. They speak kind words of truth, they support other people, and they are wonderful at communicating. These women pray, read, write, encourage, exhort, and they have known and faced and come through brokenness. They are better than cut diamonds, polished and set with other beautiful, precious stones.
