The Best Defense Is A Good Offense

We use creams and powders to even out our skin tone and then, realizing we look washed out, attempt to add back color using bronzers and blushes. We use colored powders and pencils and pens to decorate our eyes; crayons and waxes and sticky gloss to accentuate our lips. We coat our eyelashes with black goo. We smother our skin with potions to make it softer, smoother, darker, lighter, aromatic, youthful. We use creams and waxes, tweezers and razors to rid our bodies of hair. Except for the hair on our heads, which we wash and condition and blow dry and brush, curl or straighten, lighten or darken, tease high or tame. We paint colored enamel on our fingers and toes. We get boob jobs and butt jobs, face lifts and tummy tucks. Botox and collagen and makeup tattooed. We starve ourselves. We gorge ourselves. We make ourselves throw up. We obsess about our weight, our skin, and what we're going to wear. We pick ourselves apart and, far too often, we tear each other down.

Why?

This is me. I'm 17 years old. I'm the one on the right, with the halfway grown out home dye job, black. (Next to me is one of my favorite people in the whole wide world, my younger sister, Maggie.) We're standing in the doorway of my bedroom at the time. As you can see, the walls were plastered with photos clipped from magazines, mostly models, mostly women. (Except for my closet doors, which were reserved for the likes of Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Kurt Cobain, and Chris Cornell.) I was obsessed with fashion magazines: TEEN, Seventeen, YM, Vogue, Marie Claire, Mademoiselle, I read them all, and more. I pored over their glossy pages, imitating the poses and postures and facial expressions of the models, gleaning inspiration from the clothing they wore. I spent hours painstakingly cutting my favorite photos to make collages on paper, or my walls, hundreds of beautiful models staring down at me. Surrounded by beauty. I felt it was a hobby. I loved fashion! Fashion was self-expression! Fashion was art! But I was not happy. I was terribly insecure. I picked myself apart and never felt good enough. I was lonely, despite my close network of friends and family. I was depressed. I hid behind clothes. I focused on being pretty in public and wrote angst-ridden poetry in private. I craved attention, and was scared of it at the same time.

I would be foolish to believe that popular culture and my own self-loathing had nothing to do with one another.

And this was in the 90s! Sure, there were fashion magazines and MTV, but come on, the raciest thing on TV was 90210! The internet didn't exist, at least not in the way that it does today, and nobody had cell phones, let alone smart phones. It terrifies and saddens me to think of what teenagers have to contend with today. They are assaulted by the media constantly -- we all are, but our children's brains are still developing in the midst of this. Whether we like it or not, the media plays an enormous role in the raising of our children, and I don't agree one bit with the majority of the messages they're sending. Both men and women are portrayed in severely limiting ways and, through advertising, we are all told that we are inadequate as we are and that we require a seemingly endless number of products to improve ourselves.

The thought of raising my children in this cultural environment quite frankly scares the shit out of me. My children are still young; Evan is five and Elinor only 3. But children have a way of growing up too quickly and before I know it, they'll be out in the world, spending far more time at school, asleep, or with their friends than they do with their father and me. If I want to help my children become confident, secure adults, capable of navigating this crazy ass world, I need to lay the groundwork now. Stephen and I are very judicious about the media we expose our children to, but it's impossible to shelter children forever. As we get older, we spend less and less time with our parents, it's only natural. I won't always have a say in what TV shows my children watch, which games they play, the music that they listen to, certainly not in the way I do now. 

And I don't WANT to! I WANT my children to grow up! I WANT them to become independent! I just want them to know how to do it wisely. I especially want them to know how to do it more wisely than I did.

Will I be able to accomplish this goal? I have no idea. But I'm sure as hell gonna try.

I read a great article recently about a conversation between the author and her 13-year-old daughter regarding whether the daughter would be allowed to wear makeup. (I just read it again and, gosh, it's so great, I really recommend checking it out.) I could just picture myself there, having the same conversation with Elinor, a short ten years from now. (Who am I kidding? Probably sooner.) Except, the author of that article seems to have a fairly healthy adult relationship with makeup. "When I wear makeup, I am choosing to go along with the general idea of how women should present themselves," she says. Sometimes she wears it, sometimes she doesn't. It's always a choice, she doesn't feel bound to it. 

Not every woman feels that way.

It's not that I think makeup in and of itself is harmful and destructive. What CAN be harmful and destructive is our relationship with makeup. How many women out there wear makeup every single day? How many women feel that they are "ugly" without it (or, at the very least, more attractive with it)? How many women feel embarrassed and anxious leaving the house without it? How many women would we barely recognize with a bare face?

I was that woman who couldn't leave the house without makeup. Even for a simple errand, going to the grocery store, or picking my son up from preschool, I had to at least have a little. Some concealer or powder to even my skin, some blush to perk me up. Brush the brows, mascara the lashes, touch o' color on the lips. It made me feel that I was presentable. It made me feel like I would be considered acceptable in the eyes of the world. 

As if my own natural attributes were not enough to even be considered 'acceptable.' What a sad, sad frame of mind to live in.

I finally decided that I had to change. I knew my relationship with makeup was unhealthy. I did not like what I was modeling to my daughter, the idea that a woman cannot leave the house without her "face" on. I was completely uncomfortable with the prospect of her questioning the inconsistencies between my words and my actions; I didn't want to have to make excuses to her. I decided that a much better option was to work on changing my own behaviors so that they are more in line with my values. 

I am happy to say that I am making progress! I no longer wear makeup every day and I even leave the house without it on a regular basis. The first couple of times, I actually had to force myself. Like, Okay, Self, you can do this! You NEED to do this. Consider it a challenge! You love challenges! DO IT. But now I am at the point that it feels pretty normal. I am now downright used to seeing my bare face in the rear view mirror; it no longer startles me. Sometimes, I even think it looks pretty.

(I have also decided to no longer color my hair. I'm liking my natural color these days, even with the grays that are popping up with greater frequency. And I am exploring my relationship with fashion and my over-consumption of the industry's products through my used clothing challenge. So far, I'm learning a lot.)

I don't know that I'll ever get to the point of foregoing makeup altogether. There are some days, the really tired/stressed out/PMS days, where a little bit of makeup (and some coffee) are all I need to feel like I can face the world. And I can't see myself dressing up for date night, or even book club, without some makeup on my face any time soon. But it is important to me to get to a place where I no longer rely on makeup. It is important to me to get to a place where I genuinely believe about myself what I believe about my children: that they are exquisitely beautiful and positively perfect, just the way they are. Because I am. We all are.

I'm not there yet. I still have a looooong way to go. But my hope is that, as she grows older, my daughter will see that I am trying, and respect me for it. I hope that she will see the value of the journey I'm on. I hope that through my actions, as well as my words, I can inspire her to question the status quo and to value herself as a whole person, rather than just a pretty face. As I see it, that is the best defense I have against a world that is doing all it can to make her believe otherwise.