Make-up was a dead end

Who knew beauty could be so complicated? For my birthday last year I decided to make my first serious foray into the world of makeup. I didn't know what I was getting into. In a naive way, I thought I would be able to show up at a makeup counter at a department store, buy an entire line of products, and be good to go. Looking back, I can't believe how absurd and laughable a notion that was.

The makeup artist at Nordstrom rattled off an overwhelming, large amount of steps meant to "prep, correct and conceal." I could barely keep up: face base, under eye cream, eye base, layering three eye shadows, gel eyeliner, mascara, foundation, sheer powder, bronzer, blush. When she was done, I looked in the mirror and felt conflicted. While I knew I now looked more conventionally "beautiful" I questioned if this was a step in the right direction.

My justification to wear makeup was tenuous at best. I was bored, I had recently gotten a new job with higher pay and I thought, "Why not?" Some irrational part of me believed that makeup was the one missing piece I needed to manage to attract a boyfriend. According to my then-logic, if cultivating my intellectual prowess and spiritual depth wasn't enough, if it hadn't managed to end the seven-year drought since my last romantic relationship, then maybe outer beauty paired with inner beauty would do the trick.

Well, it's almost a year later and I've spent a bunch of money, wrecked my skin and still don't have a boyfriend. What a bust.

T r a i t o r s (chronological use L to R)

Correctors, concealers, BB creams, foundations, cream and oil primers--brand after brand left me with dry, tight skin and pimples galore. Did I look great in pictures? Even glamorous? Sure! But at night, alone and makeup-less in front of the mirror with my own thoughts, I was unhappy, disappointed and doubting myself.

I know that for others, makeup isn't such an agonizing ordeal. Good on them. They are hashtag blessed.

My skin just won't abide make-up, but it's taken a while for me to finally give in to defeat. Each time a product wouldn't work for me, I'd return to Sephora, deflated, and an enthusiastic employee would suggest some new wonder product: a cleanser with a four star review, a serum, a foundation that's completely weightless and "totally buildable." I'd go home wanting badly for it to work for me; none of them did.

All this to say, I'm throwing in the towel when it comes to makeup. It's created more problems in my life than benefits.

On a deeper level, this is all about adequacy. It's about trust in God. I've spent so much time wondering why some women my age are dating, married and having kids, and I'm not. I know that God is not doling out rewards or punishments to women based on whether they "deserve" a boyfriend/husband/kids. On a bad day, though, I crumple in on myself in prayer or ignore God altogether in a passive-aggressive attempt to rebel against how he wants to order my life. Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret.

Look, no amount of navel-gazing or hand-wringing will get me a boyfriend any sooner. Makeup, new clothes, a better body, fancy haircut; it really doesn't make any difference. Perhaps this sounds bitter, but it's been my experience. Okay, okay, being single is not the end of the world; this much I know. It's painful, though.

I'm doing my level best to make the most of it. I'm reading a lot of books, joining rec leagues, going on fun outings with my other single friends. I have a lot of time to pray for others. I write short stories three paragraphs at a time. I talk to God about the things I'm thankful for. If I focus on other things maybe I won't feel so sad.

Until next time...

I'd like to make a dedication to all the single ladies..

Do you know what really sucks? The constant pressure to be in a relationship. If you're a woman over the age of 22 and haven't got a fella on the brink of proposal, it's like there's something wrong with you. Okay, first of all, WHAT THE HELL. At social gatherings I feel my stomach knot up because I know that my aunt whom I haven't seen in four years--the one that's walking right toward me--is going to ask, "Is there anyone special in your life?"

I rue the day that all of humanity decided to reduce women to being babymakers and nothing else--like that's our only major contribution and accomplishment in all of history. There is nothing wrong with me if I don't manage to ensnare a man with my sexual wiles and then cling to him for dear life, never to let go.

Let's talk about the term "spinster." I'm sure it immediately conjures an image of a little old lady crocheting her own blankets in a decrepit old house, rocking chair and all. Again, the implicit assumption here is that if you don't get married THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU. i.e. no one would deign to love you for the rest of their lives because you are that. fucked. up.

All I can say to that is "no." Okay, if you're a woman over 50 and never married, I don't want you to be moping around feeling shitty about yourself like you're "not good enough." We need to change this paradigm, and we need to change it now.

I understand that not too long ago, getting married was, like, physically necessary. Women hadn't property or income so they were totally at the mercy of men, be they fathers, husbands or sons. I get that. Praise the Lord that we're in the 21st century and a woman can be economically self-sufficient.

So now marriage is a choice for women rather than an inevitability. Great. I am all for this. So why are so many women chasing after marriage as if their lives still depended on it?

Some look to marriage as a means of salvation. "Oh, if I just got married, everything would be better." It's the draught of fairytale happy endings that keep these women in drunken, delusional bliss. Getting married solves everything. You gain a purpose (being a good wife and mother), someone who will love you forever (validation and affirmation--YAY!) and you're ready to rock this gig out until the day you die. Yep. I get it. It's a template for your life. It's a track to lose yourself in and have satisfaction and meaning.

Some think of marriage as a status/prestige thing. It's like you belong to an elite club where you have bitchin' dinner parties with other well-to-do couples and drink your fancy dessert wine beneath a crystal chandelier. Especially among twenty somethings, getting married is, like, the "thing," so you'd better not miss out because you'll get left out. Harsh but tru.

Some people want to get married because they're pretty lonely and insecure. Now, I'm not judging peeps for feeling insecure or lonely. Not at all. I get needy lots of the time! But marriage to some supposedly guarantees that you'll never feel alone again. This is somewhat problematic because in marriage you can actually become even lonelier if your spouse is neglectful, self-absorbed, absent-minded or worse--emotionally abusive. Marriage is simply NOT the cure for loneliness!

So okay, I've made a lot of generalizations and now it's time for the postmodern pluralistic stuff. Every person is a stupid, unbearably unique snowflake and in marriage it all depends on individual personalities and motivation and character. Not all women are getting married for the wrong reasons. I've actually seen a few people get married for the RIGHT reasons. And I'm really happy for them (this statement is irony free). They deserve congratulations (really). The purpose of this post was NOT to shame married people!

I suppose the purpose of these unfocused meandering paragraphs is to say to women, It's OKAY if you're single. Nothing is wrong with you; on the contrary, EVERYTHING IS RIGHT WITH YOU. Don't let your relationship status dictate whether you're "satisfied" with yourself or confident in yourself or if you're "worthy." There are just way too many women out there feeling bad about themselves for being single and frankly it is unacceptable.

If you're reading this, whomever you are, I just want you to know:

You're gorgeous.

You have so much going for you.

You have so much to offer the world.

Don't let shitty passive-aggressive comments about the bareness of your left ring-finger get to you. Mrs. or Mr. Right, whether they exist or not, whether or not they're "coming for you"--just...You know what? Damn them. Damn it all to hell because you are fucking amazing and you don't have time to sit around thinking about inexistent hypothetical future scenarios. You've got too much life to live.

YOU JUST DO YOU and I guarantee you that someone will be impressed.

Love you all and thanks for reading.

Using Celebrity for Good

I'm always inspired when I read about actresses who have the guts to speak out against the sick, image-obsessed industry they work in. See Raven Symone, Margaret Cho and Gabourey Sidibe.

Let's now add Ms. Jennifer Lawrence. She's been criticized for being "too fat" to play a "starving" impoverished Katniss.

GLAMOUR: You must be in amazing shape.

JL: I hate saying, “I like exercising.” I want to punch people who say that in the face.

Ha! Further reading:
-The ‘fatness’ of Katniss? Jennifer Lawrence laughs off insults
-Jennifer Lawrence Calls Out Bad Body Image Role Models For Girls In Hollywood

FAT.

So I've been tossing and turning, trying to fall asleep tonight. My brain cannot shut down and be quiet; I think "processing" through a blog post might help. I've been wanting to post on this topic for a long while now, but it seems that every time I begin, there's simply too much to write about and I give up. Well, we'll see how much rambling I can fit--just don't expect this to be particularly concise or coherent.

In the past five years or so my interest in body image has skyrocketed. Recently it's been constantly on my mind. In high school I read Can't Buy My Love by Jean Kilbourne as an assignment for rhetoric class. She writes about the power of media (specifically advertising) to shape the way women see themselves. It raised my consciousness to realize that beauty ads were meant to make me feel dissatisfied with the way I looked (so that I would buy the marketed product to "fix" my "flaws"), food ads were meant to make me crave unhealthy junk while punishing/berating myself for "indulging" in them and clothing/fashion ads were meant to make me idolize thinness, youth and whiteness. (Sidenote: I'm starting to realize more and more that women are seriously oppressed--this whole "thin" beauty ideal is just the tip of the iceberg. It's awful.)

THEN last year I'm so glad that my roomie Hillary did an internship with NEDA, the National Eating Disorders Association, which provided many opportunities to dialogue about how pervasive body-hatred is among women. (Another sidenote: However widespread body dissatisfaction may be, Hillary & Faith really opened my eyes to see what women WITHOUT it can look like. I noticed right away from living with them that they hadn't internalized all the pressures to be super thin--I never heard negative-self talk from them about their bodies! E.g. "I need to lose five pounds." "I think I'm getting fat." "Ugh, my thighs are HUGE!" Talk about a breath of fresh air.) I read The Religion of Thinness by Michelle Lelwica, which articulated well the way women perpetuate the need to be thin. She compared it to a religion with rules (be self-controlled, disciplined, avoid "bad" foods) and rituals (overexercising, binging, purging, starvation). She was also really into the mindfulness practice of "listening to your body" for hunger/satiety signals and stuff, but I'd leave that by the wayside if I were you.

And THEN this past summer I read this book called Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters by Courtney E. Martin which I really enjoyed...mostly because I share all social identities with the author except for race (young adult, female, middle class, college-educated). She shares a lot of stories from her own life and the stories of friends. What struck me most was that any woman, really, can potentially develop an eating disorder. Like, seriously. We're all just hanging by a thread. As Hillary wisely told me, all women lie somewhere on a spectrum between "I love my body and am impervious to pressures to conform to a socially constructed beauty norm" & compulsive, disordered thoughts and behavior around food.

I think about where personally I fall on that spectrum today, and I would say I'm somewhere in the middle, probably more towards the compulsive/disordered side to be completely honest. I struggle with comparing my body (especially my legs) to other womens'. Sometimes I feel like food is my enemy, trying to get me fat. Sometimes I exercise for an hour at a time to desperately avoid being fat.

Now that I've hit 21 years, my metabolism has started to slow down. The overeating, rich desserts and fatty snacks actually catch up to me instead of magically metabolizing overnight. I feel a loss of control sometimes when I see that I have gained ten pounds since beginning college.

A lot of the time I feel foolish for being a victim to my own vanity. I get down on myself for being vulnerable to societal norms and pressures to conform. I think, "I should be above this! This is all bullsh1t and I know it!" But I think this is something that I'll battle for my whole life. I pray for God's grace and for his help because I'd really like to be thinking about bigger and better/more useful things than my caloric intake and the way I can make my thighs look thinner by wearing the right pair of jeans.

In the meantime, I've found some helpful tools for fighting against the pressure without and within to be really, really thin!
1. Limit my media consumption: TV just reinforces the paradigm that thin is best. Fat people are invisible (not represented) or the butt of jokes. (I could do an entire additional post about the normalization of frighteningly skinny women in TV, movies and magazines!)
2. adiosbarbie.com This website inspires me! The women who post here are smart, savvy and amazingly counter-cultural. Extra plus: They talk about intersections with race!
3. Talk to other women about it: Every woman I know is affected by the pressure to be thin, though we rarely bring it up. Whenever I do mention it and open up about my struggle with it, I find my friends and family opening right back up to me, too. You'd be surprised with the solidarity you can encounter out there, especially from friends who are vulnerable like you but keep trying to FIGHT THE POWER (I mean you, Rachel!)!
4. Lift my eyes up: Spending time in prayer and reading the Bible really help me to gain a bigger perspective on life. Life is not just about what you can see with your eyes or being seen by others. Being thin/attractive may grant status and power in the world, but that's not really what I want, anyway. Though they are tempting (status & power). ;)

Okay, that was a lot. Glad to get it outta my system. Stay strong, my fellow women.

Let's go!!!!