so when I was 19 I worked at one of the worst jobs I’ve had in my life, which was as a evening/weekend secretary for a real estate firm, and the vibe of that job was So Bad And Weird For My Brain, like, there’s a specific brand of anxiety that comes with office politics
anyway, at 19 I was already feeling pretty self conscious all the time, and the girls at this job were all tall, skinny, and well-off, and they had a habit of saying these passive-aggressive things to me completely unprompted, like “oh I hate it when I do my eyebrows and they don’t turn out right” or “I know somewhere you can go to get your teeth whitened” or “ooh, don’t worry, red lipstick is really hard to pull off”
It got to the point that every time I was getting ready to go to work, I would have an anxiety attack and I would change my outfit or my makeup six or seven times, until one day one of the girls said to me, “there’s a really good concealer that would cover up… y’know” and I lost it
the next day that I went in for work I decided to wear absolutely no makeup at all, and that was the event that divorced me from makeup altogether; I had spent a few hundred dollars on things like primers, concealer, lipstick, eyeshadow, I would spend an hour on my face every day
and now I still take the time to wash and moisturize my face, and to wear sunscreen, but the last time I wore an actual full-face of makeup was five months ago for a friend’s wedding, and then it was just for fun, and I wore way less than I ever had in the past
like, I know, I know, some folks on here will take issue with my saying this, but makeup is just so fucking shitty, folks, the makeup industry literally is built on the idea that you should look at a bare face in the mirror and hate yourself, or feel embarrassed for having completely normal skin conditions, and this contributes so massively to social mentalities like, “men age better than women,” or the entire “anti-aging” subculture of the beauty industry
I know how hard it is to go from wearing a full face of makeup to wearing absolutely nothing at all, and believe me, I felt so vulnerable and naked those first two weeks but eventually I realized I liked how I looked without makeup because I felt more like me, as opposed to some window-dressing version of myself
tl;dr the makeup industry sucks and profits off of people’s self-loathing regardless of all the cool things people can do with makeup
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