Let me share with you an excerpt from my journal from 5th grade….
“A boy in my class didn’t want me to sign his yearbook today because he said I was too ugly.” Jump to a year later during Christmas time, and I was writing about another boy who said he hated that he got stuck with me for Secret Santa because “why do the good guys always get stuck with the ugly girls“.
This was over 16 years ago and I can still remember exactly how 11 year old me felt when I wrote it.
So when I read that Sephora was launching Classes for Confidence to help instill confidence in people through specialized beauty training, it made me reflect on what confidence and makeup has meant to me personally. You can read about these classes here!
When I first started wearing makeup, I had this vision that it would transform me into some super confident person and I would never have to feel the way that I did all those times someone called me ugly. Here was my makeup plan I came up with, my first #faceoftheday if you will, for what I was going to start wearing in 6th grade. Apparently at 11 years old, I thought my solution involved vanilla bean lipstick, shiny lip gloss, silver lipstick, mascara, eyeliner and maybe eye shadow- haha!
From my journal, July 16th 2000
When I was younger, I thought that one of the most hurtful and self-confidence crushing things a person could hear is that they were ugly. And as I grew up, I learned there were many other ways people could crush your confidence- physical appearances being just the tip of the iceberg. So please keep in mind with this post that I’m writing, that I fully understand all the painful struggles and different aspects of dealing with self-confidence and self-worth, and for this article, I’m only focusing on confidence and how it relates to makeup and the makeup industry.
I find it ironic that even though makeup is a tool that can help us feel more confident about ourselves, that confidence can easily be torn down by the cruelty we see in the makeup community. Whether it be mean comments on beauty blogs, Youtube videos, Instagram posts criticizing the way someone’s makeup looks or even meme’s like these ones below that are meant to be funny. Trust me, I’m a huge fan of silly hilarious memes, but seeing ones like these give me an uncomfy feeling in my belly and make my heart ache a little bit. I know personally when I memes like these, I immediately think about all the times that my eyes shadow isn’t perfectly blended or all of the different shapes & sizes my eyebrows have been over the years that probably placed me in someone’s perspective of the “bad brows”.
- Tell someone that they look beautiful/pretty/nice today!
- Compliment how someone’s lipstick, eye shadow, etc looks on them!
- Leave a positive comment on someone’s Instagram or FB post!
- Compliment more than just physical appearance- appreciate each other’s intelligence, talents, kindness, friendliness, points of view, etc!
- This includes being nice to yourself too! You are beautiful, don’t ever forget it!
