My grandmother taught me that you could take a mess and turn it into creativity and beauty. She was a painter and also a housewife with six kids. I remember when I was young, I wore this pink dress that I was very proud of, and then I dropped a chocolate doughnut in my lap. I was crying and just devastated. My grandmother took me down to the basement, where she kept her paints, and began to paint around the chocolate stain, turning it into this elaborate floral design. Something about that hit me: I thought, Oh, you can turn imperfection and a mistake into the most beautiful thing.
I ended up loving the dress more because of the mistake. I still think of beauty that way; what’s usually considered the flaw is often the loveliest part. I was at the dentist recently, and one of the people there was like, “Oh, you have a pretty crooked tooth; do you want to fix that with Invisalign?” I was like, “What I love most about my face is that crooked tooth. So, no. I don’t.”
I try to be comfortable in my own skin on any given day, and to not let language and images become a prison. When I noticed that #nomakeup started trending, I thought that was cool. But it’s funny how the moment something becomes a trend, it in and of itself can become oppressive: Oh, now this is the new way to be beautiful. Before it was this one extreme, and now it’s this other extreme. And language matters: I was in the store the other day looking for lotions, and one of them said “age corrective.” And I thought, Does age need to be corrected? Couldn’t we just call this “dope moisturizer”?
As a woman, I feel as if the language system is looking to shame you into buying more stuff to make yourself feel better. I’m always trying to unplug from that and get to that place where you’re at a nightclub, it’s three in the morning, and you’re dancing, and you feel alive, and you are sure you are the most beautiful being, and there are no mirrors. That confirmation comes from inside.
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