Make Up

This is a post about make-up and my relationship with it. Growing up I was into wearing combat trousers and having short hair and trading Pokémon cards. I didn't care about being feminine at all and I still don't for the most part. I guess I kinda accidentally started to like dresses and stuff. It wasn't a conscious switch or something that I particularly cared about, but in my late teens I tried it out and thought it was okay. Make-up is a little bit like that for me too.
Mostly what I like are lipsticks. Most days I don't wear any make-up, but on the odd day when I do, it's usually just a lipstick. They are fun colour tubes! I only enjoy a bit of make-up sometimes these days because I literally do not care at all if it smudges or if it's not applied perfectly. I hated wearing make-up when I first tried it out as a teenager, because it HAD to be perfect. It made me a million times more self-conscious of my face than I was previously, because I could feel it. There's no way I'd wear make-up now if I felt the slightest bit self-conscious about it. I don't have any obligation to wear any at all, ever, and I don't have have any obligation to look a certain way. Besides which, my face might look different with make-up, but it's always gonna look like my face, ultimately.

I thought I would do a little comparison, so here's some close ups of my face without any make-up:

And here's a full shot of my face without make-up:

So that's my face, which enables me to make all manner of goofy expressions. I like my face bare most of all, because it will always be my face. My natural face, with it's particular colouring and moles and freckles and dark spots and dimples and lines and all that good stuff. Make-up gets to be a fun novelty for me because I am used to seeing my own face as it naturally is most of the time. Make up is fun for me precisely because I have learned that what I look like isn't of huge importance.

And here's my face with make-up (lipstick, 2 eyeshadows, mascara, and blush):

So I guess I look more bright and colourful and a little shiny. I have a bit of glitter on the old eyelids because I'm so jazzy. I never use foundation because in my experience I can feel it way too much and it makes me uncomfortable. After years of not using an eyeliner I dread to think how bad I'd be at it. I'd be interested to try concealer though, because I never have. Obviously I've not gone for a hugely different look, but to me it just solidifies how much I like the sort of meadowy, faded, colourlessness of my bare face. I like all the gentle hues and marks of a face, the starkness of a face, the eyelashes like a whisper.

Make-up is weird. It's fun, sometimes and in the right context, but it's weird. I like a dark, plum lip colour (I coloured my lips in with a purple felt tip once - it was a good look), I like a post box red, and I like a warm peachy orange at times, but most of all I like the colouring provided by my own cardiovascular system. Thanks, cardiovascular system.

my lipstick collection: Natural Collection - Raspberry, Seventeen - Make An Entrance, Kate Moss - 01, Barry M - 160/319