A couple of weeks ago, on a whim, I got a free contouring makeover at a cosmetics counter. Without going too deep into detail, it looked awful. It’s not that the makeup artist had done a bad job – she had followed her training perfectly, and I thought she was very professional and meticulous. I thanked her and told her I loved it, but when I looked in the mirror, I kept thinking to myself, Why do I look like a dead clown?
Then I realized what it was…
Contouring is designed to bring all the light to the center of the face and create contrasting shadows on the edges. It is designed to make the face look thinner, the nose look smaller, the jaw look slimmer, and the brow look softer.
In short, it is designed to emphasize European features.
It is designed to exalt white features.
And so on my Middle Eastern face, contouring looked like a surrealist painting. It made my face look flat, it made my features look spread out like they had been hit by a car and scattered across the highway. I looked terrible.
Then I had a thought: if contouring made me look this terrible, this pattern of highlights and shadows just doesn’t work on faces that look like mine. Let me try it in reverse.
So I went home, washed that shit off, and started again. I took the basic tenets of contouring and reversed them. So instead of darkening my jaw and hairline and drawing a hideous strip of white down the bridge of my nose, I did the opposite: I put on my regular foundation and powder, and then did a strip of bronzer down my nose and a light dusting of it on my cheeks. I shaded the center of my face and highlighted the outer frame – the exact opposite of what contouring is. Because I don’t want my face to look thinner or my nose to look smaller. I want to look like the person I actually am. I have a big, strong jawline and a prominent nose. Those are features I got from my family – my family of extremely admirable people: self-starting entrepreneurs, loving mothers, accomplished surgeons, genocide survivors. I don’t want to hide any of that in exchange for a flattened pancake face or conformity with western beauty standards.
When I looked in the mirror after emphasizing all of my “ethnic” features, I was amazed at what I saw: I looked beautiful. Every curve and arch and “undesirable” feature stood out and declared its presence proudly on my face. I looked nothing like the hum-drum wax figure that had walked out of the mall two hours earlier. I looked like me – a shinier, badass version of me.
I’m sick of these whitewashed European features dominating the media. Constantly, women of color are being pressured to look more European – it is painfully obvious, with their white-striped noses and heavily darkened jawlines. So I’m proposing a counter movement: shade in your most prominent, “ethnic-looking” features. Make them stand out. Accentuate your wide nose, draw light to your strong jaw, show the world your indelicate brow bone. Makeup is such a great tool for self-expression. So let’s start actually expressing ourselves instead of the image the media wants us to express.
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