makeup, mental health, and nonbinary expression
When I was growing up, makeup felt off-limits to me. In elementary school, I slowly started moving away from anything that was associated with being “girly,” because for some reason that concept prickled me. That meant no more pink comforter. No Barbie lunch box. No more dresses or skirts (except for our fourth grade folklórico performance, because those colorful, swishy garments are so much fun.) The girls at school were starting to gossip about crushes on boys and male pop stars and I started feeling further alienated from the boxes society put me into. That feeling continued to linger well into high school, which meant that the era my mom was excited for me to experience was just another source of tense anxiety for me.
Nobody in my family either prevented or encouraged me to wear makeup. My mom had her own story about practicing putting on makeup and then being mocked by her older brother for looking like a clown. Even though she kept a makeup bag in the bathroom, she mostly wore a little bit of blush and a frosty lipstick. There wasn’t a rite of passage moment where she taught me what or how to wear, but there also wasn’t a moment where I was told that it would be inappropriate for me to experiment.
At school, however, the messaging was a bit more overtly negative. Few people at my high school wore anything more than a subtle flick of liner, mascara, and lip balm—except for emo band kids (regardless of gender) and rockabilly girls with their fantastic dramatic cat eye wings and red lipstick. Some of the guys in my classes would call girls “slutty” if they were wearing so much as a semi-pigmented lipgloss. It wouldn’t a welcoming environment for me to feel compelled to experiment with my appearance even if I wasn’t having an internal struggle with the changing shape of my body and how it was being interpreted by others. In college, I flip-flopped from this aversion to all things femme to beauty spaces online becoming a secret special interest. I read so many fashion and makeup blogs well before the YouTube scene took over. I waited for Temptalia to drop swatches of the latest MAC release or Nouveau Cheap to share the latest drugstore release, made lists of all the nail polishes that caught my attention from swatchers like Scrangie and All Lacquered Up, and I still follow Keiko Lynn’s blog and social media content to this day because her fashion back then was such a huge inspiration to me.
At some point in undergrad, I pivoted to wearing tights and dresses regularly instead of the t-shirts and slacks I wore in high school, but I was still sort of embarrassed to admit to my secret online obsession lurking makeup forums, blogs, and, eventually, YouTube channels (especially What’s In My Bag? style content.). When I finally did start buying makeup, I kept them in a shoe box and was too afraid to actually wear anything noticeable because I didn’t want anyone to make comments about me. My mom had already referred to me as a “late bloomer” for wearing dresses and it soured the experience for me a little. If I started wearing sparkly eyeshadow, shiny nail lacquer, and lipstick would people start talking about and treating me differently? Because that’s not what I wanted at all. I just wanted to have fun with my appearance and enjoy the visual stimulation of pretty colors and textures.
In the summer before my last year of undergrad, I was browsing an online forum when I stumbled on the word genderqueer and, later, nonbinary. Although I knew about transgender people already, this was a completely new concept to me. The more I read about it, the more appealing that language felt. Online, I had always permitted my gender to be slippery anyway, never correcting people who referred to me as different pronouns. They/them felt right and something in me shifted—a permission to be whoever I wanted.
After graduating and moving into my own apartment for the first time, I started creatively expressing myself through makeup in earnest starting with more subtle neutral eyeshadows and a touch of blush or lip product. As I continued to overcome the mental block holding me back creatively, makeup itself began to feel more neutral. Face adornment is a practice all kinds of cultures have used regardless of gender for thousands of years. I craved something more dramatic, colorful, fantastic. To feel like a canvas I could play with every day.
This journey accelerated during the pandemic lockdown because I was working from home and if my students could attend class in pajamas then I could wear all the sparkles I wanted. Makeup artistry was the first creative endeavor aside from writing (which I still have a shaky history with at this point) that I felt confident in and enjoyed especially as my skills improved and I experimented more with placement, application, and color theory. I also started making friends with people who were also LGBTQ+ and loved makeup. It felt as though I was finally finding community with a hobby that I was passionate about and that helped me get through a lot of loneliness that I felt through COVID-19 as well as the general isolation of grad school.
There have been lulls in my connection with the craft since then—stretches of depression in which I put my tools away and let myself disappear into the background. Days in which my self-esteem was so low that the less I had to look at my face in the mirror, the better. It doesn’t help that at work, very few people wear any makeup so I know that I am going to stand out and there have been a lot of days when that’s the last thing I wanted to do.
Thankfully, I have had more days lately where I am reconnecting with this passion. It’s far less about covering things up than it is about transforming myself. I’ve been told my eyes look like galaxies or fairy wings and those are the compliments that feel contagious. To feel otherworldly, ethereal, alien—that’s what I crave when I pick out my eyeshadow in the morning before the sun has even risen knowing that I will probably nod off on the bus but it will be worth it to feel like I can shine a little brighter.
While I used to document photos on Instagram, I have become increasingly soured with most social media. I don’t have plans to delete my account because I want to continue to support my friends whose small businesses or freelance work is tied to the platform. At heart, I am more of a writer than photographer so I hope that I can get back into exploring this part of my artistry on the blog in a way that feels more suited to me.
Thank you for reading! ʕᵔᴥᵔʔ