Makeup and Me
My first experience with an item of makeup went like this - My mum applied eyeliner on me with loving words and a doting expression, and then I giggled, spat up and proceeded to chew on my foot. Yes, I was a baby. To be perfectly clear, this was not an eyeliner bought off the shelves, this was a homemade product with natural ingredients, referred to as மை (pronounced my) or கண் மை (pronounced kan, as in Arkansas, my). This product is applied to babies, regardless of whether it's a boy or a girl, traditionally in the form of a singular dot on the forehead and on the cheek. The reason why Tamil people do this is to ward off "evil eyes". Now when you're a newborn baby, you catch the eyes of so many different people. People ooh and aah over you, people insist on carrying you, people call for other people to look at you. And you don't always know where it's coming from; not everyone means well. This practice of applying black dots, is to create an "imperfection" on the baby's face (Although if you ask me, raised in a Tamil culture, I think it adds to a baby's charm). It's to imply that nobody, or no baby, is perfect, and to act as a "shield" from people's ill intentions and jealousy about how perfect it looks. If you're asking what's so perfect about a baby, have you seen one asleep? How perfectly peaceful and calm do they look?
This eyeliner product is an integral aspect of Tamil culture, and not just because of it's pervasive use among babies, but also because it is emphasised as the go to product for women. Tamil women's eyes are constant marks of beauty and adding eyeliner is said to enhance this feature. We even have songs about it! The application of eyeliner for women is as natural as the application of a bindi. To the extent that a Tamil bride who doesn't have eyeliner on her wedding day has the potential to cause panic and alarm among her guests. Therefore it's only natural that the first makeup item I ever owned and wore at the age of 15, to my conscious knowledge and apart from silly makeup for school events, was an eyeliner. It then evolved into a powder product (not foundation, mind you, powder) and by the age of 18, I had a liquid foundation, lip gloss and blush (I got into the mascara game rather late because the thought of a poke-y brush so close to my eyeball used to terrify me). I'm not going to tell you how much makeup I have now, so let's just leave it at I have 15 lipsticks. And 3 kinds of mascara.
Now I'm not here for all the makeup is better for you from the whole evolution and survival of the fittest point-of-view B.S. Why on earth would I wear a red lipstick to suggest my reproductive capabilities to a guy who can't tell if I'm wearing Ruby Woo or Russian Red? I'm obviously wearing it to brighten up my complexion and to look like a boss. Duh.
I am here for the power of makeup. Makeup defines the passage from girlhood to your teenage years to your adulthood. Makeup for me, is the first time I tried to apply eyeliner, shyly looked at myself in the mirror and thought "Oh, I look nice". Makeup for me, is the sticky lip glosses I considered so glamorous in my teenage years. Makeup for me, is the Make Up For Ever foundation I bought with my own salary as an adult after years of struggling to be perfectly matched with drugstore foundations.
The 15 minutes I spent in the morning applying my makeup before I used to go to work was almost like meditation for me. The 15 minutes was all for me, by me, of pure indulgence before I got sucked into a vortex of demands forgetting about pretty much everything (except food) for the next 8 hours. The 15 minutes I spent in the morning was the bolster I needed for impromptu meetings - makeup is the modern day war paint guys, don't let anyone tell you any different.
Makeup has ebbed and flowed with me over the years, from my oily skin years to my dry skin years, from my makeup on every feature of my face the first time I could wear it to my current I-just-want-to-look-natural-and-like-I-have-glowing-skin years. And I have full faith that it will continue to stay in the years to come. Makeup has its interesting cameos in the defining moments of some of my friendships. The first time I walked into a Sephora was with a friend. It was a moment straight out of Confessions of a Shopaholic, complete with Accessory by Jordyn Taylor playing in the background (My friend had been to one before so she hung back shaking her head at me). All the colours! The lights! The multitude of options for every item you could think of! The first time I interacted with another friend, she asked me about the perfume I was wearing. Makeup, skincare and cosmetics is an important aspect of our friendship now. The MAC lipsticks yet another friend and I bought together, a friend who had never worn makeup before. The first time I brought my sister to an Urban Decay outlet to get her own arsenal of makeup, I had tears in my eyes. It was very Circle of Life guys.
You see makeup allows me to express myself - a dark and intense eye look if I want to seem intimidating, a pink lipstick if I want to seem young and playful, some mascara, simple contouring and bronzing if I want to seem natural. My self esteem is pretty bad and somehow wearing makeup has improved it. Not because I think I look shitty on days without makeup and amazeballs on days with. That used to be me in my initial years of wearing makeup. But because makeup forces me to look at myself in a mirror. The time I spend doing my makeup points out things about myself to me. My forehead gets darker when I'm stressed, I'm talking like my-foundation-doesn't-match-my-forehead-and-I-need-a-colour-corrector-or-concealer kind of darker. I got it from my dad and his side of the family. And as someone who's kind of ambitious and always looking to push herself, I can't really tell that I'm stressed until my forehead is darker and I get hives! The usual amount of concealer I use under my eyes is not enough? Time to look into more quality sleep sessions! My skin isn't bouncy as usual? Load up on water and intensive moisturiser! Makeup makes me pay attention to myself and to be proactive in my self-care, things I would have neglected otherwise. And all these consistent moisturising and exfoliating have given me good skin, and a confidence that it is okay to be in public even without makeup.
That said, I believe anyone and everyone should be able to wear or not wear makeup without any questions and for whatever reason they please. I remember how I read in a HR policy that said "female employees are encouraged to wear light, natural makeup" and I thought to myself "How DARE you?" even though I was still hiding behind makeup. I don't understand the fuss over celebrities pictured without makeup, or how "approachable" and "real" someone appears without makeup. Makeup is an individual experience. It's a choice where I, and only I get to decide what looks best for me. Despite being deemed as an indulgence, makeup empowered me because of it's purely indulgent nature, to be the sole arbitrator of my perception of my beauty, with or without it.
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