Makeup Your Mind-Part One

This post is one in a short series of personal narratives about makeup, femininity, and feminism. 

I still remember the day I decided to start wearing makeup. I was in 10th grade, and I looked around my English class and realized that I was the only girl in class without mascara, eyeliner, and foundation on. I watched as a girl I considered beautiful (and well-liked by the boys at our school) spoke about something. Her eyelashes were so long from mascara, they hit her brow bone as she spoke.

At that age, I still put a lot of stock in my appearance, and thought that a lot of my value and beauty came from what the boys who surrounded me thought of my appearance. I wanted to be liked, and just like any other 15-year-old girl, I didn’t want to be different. I was already the girl with the dead mom. I didn’t want to stick out anymore.

Up until then, I had only really worn makeup for special occasions. I remembered how special it was for my mom to put on my makeup for me as I got ready for my very first high school dance. Occasionally, if I had a big zit, I would sneak into my mom’s room and steal her concealer, dabbing it on my face (probably not well) in attempts to hide the blight on my appearance. But other than that, I didn’t see a need for makeup in my daily life. Makeup was still a taboo to me, even though no one had ever told me I couldn’t wear it.

The day I realized I was the only one in my class with a naked face was about a year after my mom died from colon cancer. There were some topics of femininity that I still could not figure out how to discuss with my dad. When my grandma visited, she would buy me boxes and boxes of tampons and pads, so I wouldn’t have to face the embarrassment of asking my father to get them for me. But this time, my grandma wasn’t there, and the need was urgent. I didn’t want to be different any longer. In the kitchen, I blurted out,

“Dad, I want to start wearing makeup.”

He was taken aback by my request. Neither of us really knew what to do with this information. It hung in the air between us like radio static.

“Okay, well, I guess you can ask Jill to take you to get stuff this weekend,” he said, awkwardly. Jill was a family friend who had basically adopted me and my brother. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask her.

That weekend, Jill took me to the Clinique counter at the Dillards in the mall. It was strange, having a stranger put makeup on my face and explain to me what I should do. I had input coming from so many different places-from Jill, from the Clinique lady, from my friends at school. I had no idea what to do, and it took months of trial and error to figure out how to make my face look okay.

As the lady from Clinique made up my face, I felt the beautiful anonymity that comes with fitting in. My chest felt empty, though. There was someone missing.

 

I Am (Not) A Narwhal

Last week, my friend sent me this. I replied,

That’s so me. Except I prefer to think of myself as a narwhal.

I, too, enjoy swimming in freezing cold water, and, if given the chance, would gladly eat nothing but fish tacos for the rest of my life. I am also thought to be mythical by most of society, except for the few who actually do their research into the topic at a young age.

Being asexual is, pardon my French, fucking hard. I find myself frequently having to explain what asexuality is (less annoying), and what my personal level of attraction is to everyone I meet (more annoying).

 

Everyone seems to think that being asexual means I want to tell them exactly what my sex life is like all the time. In truth, I find that quite disgusting because why the hell would I want to divulge very personal information about myself to a complete stranger. Did I ask you how frequently you have sex? Did I ask you if you still like to masturbate? No. I fucking didn’t. Because I am a normal person who knows that there are boundaries that you just don’t cross until you’re reeeeeeeaaaaaalllllllly comfortable with someone.

Also, lots of ace people, myself included, are pretty repulsed by sex. Yes, I do eventually want to be a sex ed teacher, but there is a very big difference between talking about sex theoretically, and having someone detail their sex life for you. One is gross in the way that you still kind of want to poke at it, like worms, or a tadpole. One is gross in the “please, for the love of god, GET THAT THING OUT OF MY FACE” kind of way.

Once, my friend told me that her husband wanted to meet me because, “he doesn’t think asexual people exist.”

Honey. I’M RIGHT HERE.

If there are any narwhals out there looking to pull a Little Mermaid and trade spots with me, I’d be happy to oblige. Because narwhals don’t ask other narwhals weird, pointed questions about their sex lives.

Also, narwhals aren’t allergic to shellfish, so that would be nice, too.

An Open Letter to the Guy Who Talked To Me At Take Back The Night

Dear Guy Who Talked To Me At Take Back The Night,

You may remember me as the woman in the white blouse, whom you spoke with during the march portion of the University of Alabama’s Take Back The Night event. You told me a lot of things that night, but one anecdote stuck out to me as particularly…problematic. I tried to address it as best as I could at the time, but you didn’t seem too interested in listening to what I had to say, preferring instead to continue speaking to someone else saying the exact same things you had just said to me. So I’ll address this further here.

At first, you told me that you were new to feminism and were a bit uncomfortable with the open discussion of sexual assault at the rally. This is understandable, as everyone’s got to start somewhere, and the organizers and speakers at the event did point out that yes, this topic is uncomfortable-but protest should make people uncomfortable. You then told me that your ex-girlfriend broke up with you because you said some sexist things to her, and that you were at Take Back The Night for “redemption.”

Kid, this is the first thing you should learn about feminism: it is not here for you to “redeem” yourself in the eyes of your ex-girlfriend. Males don’t get to become feminists to have an in with women. You don’t get brownie points for showing up at a rally against sexual assault and rape. Thousands of feminists have said it before me, and have said it better than me: you don’t get a reward for showing basic human decency.

Furthermore, the fact that you’re using feminism as a way to get back with your ex-girlfriend, or whatever it seems your end game is, is revolting. It shows that you don’t actually care about the cause at all. You’re not supporting sexual assault survivors when you use a call to their aid for your own personal gain.

I can be patient with you to a certain extent, since you did say you’re new to feminism. But if you’re not going to listen to people who’ve been around the movement longer than you-particularly women, the very people who created the movement-then you’re doing something very wrong. You say you’ve been around Black Lives Matter protests (and that you “yelled really loud” there, though I’m not actually sure what you’re trying to say about Take Back The Night with that comment), and if you have, you should have learned to listen to the marginalized group in question.

I’m going to direct you towards Marina Watanabe, aka MarinaShutUp, a kickass feminist youtuber who talks all about feminism and other social justice issues in her video series Feminist Fridays. Here’s her Feminism 101 video as a starting spot.

I beg you to think about why you’re talking about feminism the next time you decide to bring it up/participate in an event/write a youtube comment/etc. If your motivation is not solely towards advancing women’s rights, then take a step back and think about why that is, and what you can do to refocus on the issue itself, rather than what you can get out of it.

Sincerely,

Liz

P.S. For the readers unfamiliar with Take Back The Night-it’s an event aimed at ending sexual violence. You can find out more at takebackthenight.org