I have been wanting to write this post for so long, but it has also taken me that long to summarize my feelings and get to a point of closure. I have within the last couple years become obsessed and not as much with makeup. There have been a variety of reasons for this and I thought I would delve into it here.
I went through the move to Germany and my life overhauled. Everything changed and so did I. I became this lump who knew, or felt like they knew, absolutely nothing about anything. Part of finding who I was went into makeup. Again, this is for a variety of reasons.
- Being completely alone here made me retreat into this community on the internet where people had passion. Enveloping myself into this community felt like I had an outlet for my new found time and a sense of community. I never felt like I had friends there, since they were just internet presences, but it never the less gave me somewhere to fit in.
- It was cool to delve into something I never had given much thought and it was a huge learning curve. It also could occupy my time, something I had more and more of every day.
- I felt like a lump. Not a physical lump nor even like a hit of self confidence, but in order to define myself, I chose this. And it gave me a huge boost of self confidence and happiness to spend time doing something that made me feel great. It made me feel beautiful and I felt like I could define and express myself so much more and experimentally. I could incorporate color, bold looks, and strong lips. I could enhance and focus on what I loved.
- It is also time that I carve out for myself, my process of getting ready, exquisite joy that is just for me. Time to pamper.
So the sense of community, self-definition and expression coalesced to form this new hobby that I fell into the rabbit hole. Now having gotten out of the rabbit hole, I feel a sense of clarity when I think about my journey into makeup. When I originally thought of this post, I felt more negative about it, thinking it was more about needing this self definition in my life and positive self esteem boost. These were definitely factors. I needed to find something to get me back on my feet. I wanted to experiment, grow up, move on, change. And this coincided with a huge change in my life. I feel pretty confident that these are the mile markers down my journey.
Now there are a lot of things that are contentious about makeup: consumerism and patriarchy. I have various feelings about these which I’ll detail below.
So, consumerism and capitalism I assume go together. There is way too much makeup than you need and there is always a push to get more and buy more. I got totally caught up on this pull, the tide, and the high for a bit. There’s a heavy stream of innovation, collaborations, and newness. There is a huge and high turnover, limited editions and what not. So there is a lot of consumerism involved. I have greatly diminished on this because I’ve hit to where I have the things I enjoy and are trying them out, all with the goal of finding the best ingredients and the things that work for me. It’s a constant try out process to do this, as some things have not worked in either regards. But I full out accept that critique about makeup. What can I say against it? It’s up to each individual how they much they involve themselves. It is important to go into something with eyes wide open and knowing the difference between need and want.
Patriarchy. You rear your head everywhere don’t you? I can’t deny that people have used their patriarchy and made comments about makeup. I also can’t deny that there is a standard of beauty that employers, the media, and maybe also life have. Beauty standards can be heavily influenced by social media and culture. This in and of itself could warrant it’s own post about makeup and patriarchy, but I want to briefly discuss it here. [Maybe if you’re interested in my thoughts about it, comment below!] I don’t want to deny the fact that patriarchy has stuck its head in this post. What am I supposed to do about it? I enjoy makeup for me. Clearly, since not many people comment on it, and some people even comment that they prefer no makeup on me. So makeup is a hobby for myself in so many ways. Writing this post has given me some clarity. I don’t put on make up in order to fulfill an image of beauty that society has laid out for me. Mostly because I don’t even know what that would be for me as an Asian American woman. Who would I even emulate? My celebrity fashion idol is Lucy Liu (but specifically from Elementary), but even there there are things I don’t want and what not. So can I be accused of fulfilling it? Well if you know what it is, I would be interested in knowing, truly. Do I deny that wearing makeup could smooth doors and grease pathways? Do I deny that it could make me seem like a more acceptable woman in society? It could grease doors, in that case, sure. Am I supposed to make them stick more? And yeah it probably does make me seem more ‘acceptable’ if that’s all you’re looking at in that narrow focus.
So I’ve said a lot about the formation of this hobby and in the next post I’ll talk about it’s dissolution.