LovelyWeekend

This weekend I decided to do something completely unreasonable, stupid - from a financial perspective - and fuck the fact that I've a debt on my credit card I should be working on (as in paying out), and decided - in a rather impromptu manner - to spend the weekend in a rather expensive hotel just because my friend Carrie had a work related activity there, so we could spend her free time together doing what we do best when we are together: watch movies and talk our heads off. It was indeed a wonderful weekend, and though not as full of movies and videos as we would normally have, we do tapped a new source of online videos that gave us lots of material to giggle and to play with for future fics. ^_^

Picture found on google.

In the moments where Carrie had to go to her work stuff, I was simply chilling, taking bubble baths, reading, and goofing around youtube.com. It was in one of these goofing sessions, while jumping from video to video - you know the drill, you start with something quite inoffensive, like "filofax planners" and somehow end up in the channel about 100 ways to braid your hair - I suddenly found myself on the channel of a young Mexican girl who calls herself Miumiku Miau. She?s so lovely and so funny that I immediatelly got hooked on her channel. She talks mainly about make up and wigs - which she's a fan of - and also shows how to do different types of Asian inspired looks.

The search that landed me on her channel was one where I started to jump from video to video about Korean girls either taking off their make up, or putting it on. The thing about both Miumiku and these girls, is that their actual face is completely different from the one they  paint on.

Googled picture.

Videos of women putting on tons of make up to beautify themselves, going from "ugly" to "gorgeous" are quite a thing, and these videos of Korean girls and their radical transformations are something that teases that morbid little bone in you. I mean, really, you actually see in a video, someone become someone completely else. Some videos are even about how these girls' boyfriends react the frst time they see them without make up, which, yes I don't find it so funny.

This whole thing got me thinking about the image we have of ourselves. Back in my days, make up was already invented - hehehehe - and us girls were quite on it. Some of us didn't wear make up because our parents didn't consider it good for us to start wearing make up so early on - though we all sneaked into our mom's make up stash and played with it, practiced - and so though the thing was there, we had a much more conservative use of it. We learned tips and styles from our mothers, sisters, girlfriends, and tried to copy styles from what we saw on magazines and TV. Today's youth has endless online resources to educate themselves in the art of make up, as well as enough material to convince themselves they need it.

In my time, make up was supposed to be a tool to highlight your best features: bring out the color of your eyes, the shape of our mouth, your cheekbones... Yes, it was also a tool to conceal perceived imperfections, but it was more about your actual face and what could you do to bring out your natural features. What goes on today, is nearly a surgical procedure with no scalpel, but al smeared on with coats after coats of make up. Though the videos are entertaining, what are they saying to our girls? Is it true that they are ugly without make up? Is it true that they are born ugly and must cover ther faces with a new one? One you can't possibly be born with? Are we also telling our girls that prolonged use  of make up damages the skin, thus their natural beauty will wilt and die young under the weight of the imposed, artificial face? Are we conscious that we are condemning our girls to a life of always hiding their true faces, made believe that who they truly are is a thing of shame?

Though the videos are funny to watch, and I'm hooked, I think we should tell our girls that their faces are nothing to be ashamed of. Anyone judging them for it, anyone picking them for their make up, rejecting them for their real faces, are as supeficial as make up itself. It's ok to be you, so be you, not your beauty products. After all, you are the one taking you to where you want to be, not your foundaion.