Cultivate Your Garden

For 18 years, I never wore makeup. This year, though, I started wearing mascara and eyebrow gel. I started wearing it at important events, like weddings and family gatherings. Then I started wearing it to concerts. And then I started putting it on if I wanted someone in my class to notice me. But then, one day, I started putting it on for myself. I started liking the way I looked with mascara on better than I liked how I looked without it. My eyes look empty without makeup. Dull. I used to love my eyelashes. Now, I can hardly stand to see them without makeup covering their natural beauty.

Girls often say that they "wear makeup for themselves." They use this as a defense for makeup. They say this when guys imply that girls only wear makeup to impress them. Girls will retort with, "no, I do not wear it to impress you. I wear it for myself." We have clung to this saying as if it expresses power. I think it is inherently flawed. On face value, it is great; you wear makeup because you like how it makes you look. I wear makeup because it enhances my eyes. I love how I look in mascara. I wear it to make myself feel good and empowered and sexy. This confidence in my physical appearance translates into my actions. I talk more when I wear makeup. When I wear makeup, I assume that everyone looking at me in public is looking at me because I look good, not because I look horrible. I love that feeling. It is intoxicating to believe that you are worthy of attention just at first glance. To not have to work for attention with your words or wit.

However, underneath this superficial response (pun intended) is the harrowing truth: Makeup and confidence have a direct negative relationship -- the more confident you are with makeup on, the less confident you are without makeup on. It is like an addictive drug. Once you take it off, you need it back on to feel that rush of dopamine with your appearance. Makeup is the drug, self-love the placebo. Why take a drug with side effects when you can just placebo yourself, without any harm being inflicted?

Wearing makeup for other people is easy. They didn't notice you with makeup on? No problem, not the right person, there are plenty of fish in the sea who will notice you. But wearing makeup for yourself is scary. You didn't like yourself without makeup? That's a problem, you are the only version of yourself, this vessel for your soul is the only encapsulation you get to wear.

I remember one time this boy I liked in middle school asked me, "why don't you wear makeup?" and I just said, "I don't know. Don't care to." He told me, "you could at least throw on some chapstick for christ's sake." I just stopped talking to him and thought he was a jerk. 

But, the first day I woke up and hated the makeup-less face I saw in the mirror, I cried. It went beyond my face -- things that were not flaws on my body were suddenly horrendous. I wanted them gone. I wanted them all to disappear. The acne I have been living with since second grade suddenly became so incredibly repulsive that I wanted to paint over it. The cellulite on my legs suddenly looked like moon craters and I wanted to excommunicate the stretch marks on my knees, hips, and boobs from the territory of my body. I regretted every piece of sugar that ever entered my body. I became my own enemy. I had kept the middle school boy at bay, but I could not fight myself. This was a civil war.

Not liking other people is inevitable. If you do not like someone, you just do not spend time with them. But how can you avoid yourself? How can you hate yourself when you live within yourself? Time with yourself is the only eternal thing guaranteed. 

I used to hate people who did not participate in gym class. I always thought to myself, "if they force you to change clothes for this, you might as well play dodgeball for forty minutes. Make the best of it." I have always believed that things in your life will be forced upon you; from changing for gym class, to having to deal with the loss of a loved one, you will have to deal with circumstances that you do not enjoy. A quote from Candide that I really love furthers this concept:

"'after all ... if you hadn't lost all your sheep from the good land of Eldorado, you wouldn't be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios.'
-- 'that is very well put,' said Candide, 'but we must cultivate our garden.'"

We are all given a garden. Will you abandon this garden, or cultivate it? Or, will you allow the weeds to take over? Will you handle what life has given you, actively participating in your one chance at life, or will you go into auto pilot and allow life to do with you as it will? Will you tame fate, or allow it to trample you? Either way, you are given the garden, so you might as well take care of it so that you have something to eat.

Despite the crappy series of events life gave Candide, he was able to eat pistachios and be content. The reason he was able to do this is because he cultivated his garden; he put work into his life. Life made him change his clothes, but he decided to participate. Life is a series of inevitable hardships, and it is our job to find the joy in them. It is our job to find the good.

This is what life gave you. This is the body you were granted. Find the good in it. Find the good on and within yourself. Once you find this internal love for your natural being, you will develop a sense of confidence that will shine upon your face, creating a look more beautiful than any makeup could muster.