Unmasked

“The makeup’s all off
Who am I?
If the magic’s in the makeup
Then who am I?”
-No Doubt, “Magic’s in the Makeup”

One of the first things you learn as you cross into adulthood as a female is you’re never pretty enough. The message is reinforced through movies and television and glossy magazine covers. Airbrushed images of tanned and toned perfection are dangled before you, giving the impression that if you could just find the right mascara and the perfect pair of jeans and drop five more pounds you too could attain such beauty.

And let’s face it ladies; Beauty is power. Nothing makes men stupid like a beautiful woman. It wins the possessor of those charmed physical attributes everything from free beers at the bar to a better chance at getting a job to an easier time making friends. Doors are opened both figuratively and literally. Society seeks and rewards beauty.

But it’s never enough.

I was never the pretty girl in, well, anything. Not in school, not at jobs, not in general. Mercifully, there were only a few times though where I was the ugly girl-- mostly I was little miss mediocre-- but those few instances of being the uggo in the group sent a clear message: As much is beauty is rewarded, ugliness is punished. Fat is treated with scorn and an assumption of laziness. A big nose is grounds for ridicule. Pimples mean you’re dirty. All mean you are unworthy of basic decency.

Maybe it’s the fear of how bad ugly can feel that drives the need to always wears masks made of makeup and mascara. Maybe it’s the barrage of commercials telling us we need can never smell good enough, never have teeth white enough, never be thin enough, never have hair that’s shiny enough and never find heels high enough to be worthy of the happiness promised to us if we could just be better. Or maybe as a gender we’ve just allowed ourselves to be bamboozled.

Most of my adult life I’ve been terrified to go as far as the mailbox without makeup. And it’s not because I think I’m so hot that I need to diva it up for the passing motorist who might briefly glimpse me as they drive by. It’s because I bought the hype. The person I am, the natural me with pale eyelashes and glasses, with blotchy skin and dark under eye circles-- that person is unfit for society.
But somehow, somewhere along the way, that all changed. I wish I had some epiphany- provoking incident to relay to you. Maybe the birth of my daughter or the death of respected, if not traditionally beautiful woman. But the truth is, it’s none of those things. I just got tired of wearing masks.

That’s not to say I’m chucking my Cover Girl or my stilettos-- those things are fun when you want to play the role. They are, at their best, a means of expressing aspects of your personality that would otherwise remain invisible. But that other person, the one with unpolished fingernails and grubby running shoes and teeth tinted by coffee sipped during meaningful conversations-- that person’s okay too. Not beautiful in the traditional sense, but not someone only to be seen through a veil of artificial attempts at an unattainable perfection.

Lipstick’s fun. I’m just made up of more than that.