This is a public discussion thread for anyone on The Unpublishable mailing list — free subscribers, paid subscribers, everyone!
A couple months ago, I wrote this in a newsletter and lost ~40 subscribers:
So many of the beauty standards society foists upon on us are products of patriarchy (and white supremacy, and colonialism, and capitalism). As a coping mechanism, we learn to adopt them as our own, and we perform them well, and it feels good to perform them well, because we’ve been conditioned to see beauty as a moral imperative, and because performing it is a form of productivity, and so we confuse this feeling of a duty fulfilled for pleasure or joy or love.
The following week, I posted this tweet and gained ~50.
Clearly, we’re conflicted about coping mechanisms!
Listen, I get that we sometimes need cosmetic coping mechanisms to deal with the pain and pressure of beauty culture. I get the need for controlled routines and rituals. These things can be helpful and necessary! But I also think we need to release the idea that the aesthetic manipulation of our physical features fits into the category of “healthy coping mechanism.” Besides the adverse physical effects — like skincare’s disruption of the skin microbiome and skin barrier, which can cause more skin issues down the road and trigger the increased policing of our faces and the buying and applying of even more products — there are the psychological effects to consider. An outsize focus on the physical form can actually amplify the out-of-control feelings that prompt “stress-relieving” beauty routines in the first place: anxiety, depression, dysmorphia, obsessive thoughts about appearance. The cycle continues. The skin suffers. The psyche suffers. The industry thrives.
The challenge is recognizing which of our beauty behaviors are coping mechanisms (obviously, not all of them are), understanding the underlying issues you’re coping with, and addressing those issues in order to heal and ultimately release any unhealthy coping behaviors (beauty-related or otherwise).
My question to you: How have you used beauty as a coping mechanism?
I’ll go first! I was painfully shy in college — later I realized I was dealing with extreme social anxiety — and I wore a full face of makeup every day to create an external “character.” My look was ‘50s pinup, 24/7: foundation, concealer, bronzer, blush, eyeshadow, cat-eye liner, mascara, a fake Marilyn Monroe mole, and long-wear red lipstick. Being her seemed easier than being me. It allowed me to feel “seen” without having to talk or interact with anyone. (“Seen” in quotations because, of course, this facade was not actually me.) Once, a guy I’d sat next to in class all semester said hi in the elevator. I said hi back, and he was shocked — he assumed I’d have a Russian accent for some reason. He’d never heard me speak before, he said. “Everyone just knows you as the girl with the red lipstick.”
When my dermatitis was at its worst, I spent so much money on serums, moisturizers, masks, peels, spritzes, oils, everything. None of it helped. What my skin needed was time off from products, time to calm down and re-regulate. But waiting for my skin to heal, just sitting with the pain of feeling ugly and awful and worthless and doing nothing about it, was so unbearable that I continued to buy and apply product after product after product. It made me feel like I was doing something — like I was in control, even though I very much was not. (All those products made things worse.)
I still regularly get my eyebrows microbladed to cope with my trichotillomania (a mental disorder marked by the all-consuming urge to pull one’s hair out). When I go out, I still wear concealer to temporarily alleviate appearance anxiety about my acne scars. I mean, I started shaving to cope with my fellow middle-schoolers making fun of my hairy Italian legs! Almost all of my beauty behaviors can be traced back to some sort of formative shame.
What about you?
Let it all out in the thread below! This is a public discussion area where we can comment and respond to each other — like a big, virtual vent sesh. (Here’s the last open thread if you wanna check out what it’s like.) And please don’t be shy! Getting honest with ourselves and each other about beauty culture is how we start changing beauty culture.
On my 50th birthday, I sank into hopeless depression wondering how the hell I would deal with being perceived as old looking. I felt really shallow and aimless for the better half of the day until I forced myself to lay down and stop all attachment to racing thoughts of acting out in any way that would resist these ‘old’ feelings. Then something clicked, and the aha moment I called “Fuck You Fifty” came and hasn’t gone away since. There is so much joy in this ‘who cares’ attitude that I wish I’d had it starting in my teens BUT… I still put butt firming cream on my face and front, back, and sides of my neck whenever I have a special event😆. Oh well…
Count me as another person with a mother who suffered from depression, an eating disorder, and rejected everything to do with performing conventional femininity. What was learning about makeup and skincare but a way to fit in while growing up in a small town with a mother who was considered strange?
One of the last conversations I had with my grandmother, she expressed her concern about how "fat" my mom is. And how proud she was that I "take care of myself". So my mother managing to grow a blue-collar salary into a nice bit of wealth through teaching herself about trading stocks, ensuring that none of my grandparents died without the best care, was great but wow, did you notice how greasy her skin is? How much she's let herself go? Could she just shave her legs already?!?!
I swear, we're made to internalize this crap in the womb. And it's all total crap.
Trigger warning : diet/EDs/EDNOS . For me it’s my body. For any problem, any stressor it goes right to: “I will reshape my body/get skinny”. Even for things that make no sense. Or it’s clothes…if I dress the part..etc. etc.
It’s armor protecting me from any assaults from life.
Apr 28, 2022·edited Apr 28, 2022Liked by Jessica DeFino
Wow, these comments break my heart - but I have to be the iconoclast here and say that for all my adult life and more so now that I am middle-aged, I have used beauty rituals (i.e. massaging the skin, drinking a lot of water, using moisturizer to prevent drying up like a prune) to cope with grief, illness and other dark times; they are first and foremost for me and nobody else. I spend tons of time alone and have learned to stay away from any eye make-up during those times, even though I LURVE the ritual of slowly applying some kohl or mascara, but beauty rituals in the broader sense (including 'eating the rainbow') are essential to my wellbeing and my ability to cope - with work, surgeries, family, funerals and much more. Oh, and I shave my armpits too. Otherwise, I would faint from my sharp post-deadline-smells. :D
In the Philippines, where I grew up, whitening products and hair rebond was all the rage for young women. I remember asking my mom to pay for a costly hair rebond for my 13th birthday. I had natural, unruly curls growing up. I was happy for a while but the hair rebond caused longterm damage for my hair. I regretted this. I resorted to cutting all my hair off so it will grow better. Another thing that always bothered me growing up was the lack of actual Filipino-looking people in media, everything was white and eurocentric. I rarely saw people who actually looked like me in my screens, as our local showbiz scene is obsessed with half-white, clearly more good-looking actors. If I do find someone who looked Filipino, they are cast aside as supporting characters or comic relief characters teased for their tan skin or anything related to their appearance. I wish I can go back in time and tell my younger self that it's going to be fine and you'll learn to love how you look eventually. I still have times when I feel like caving in to the standards and moments I don't feel my beautiful because of what I see on social media. But I remind myself that this is not my fault nor it is wrong, because the blame lies on the system that perpetuates these unrealistic standards and lack of representation, which pushes us to anxiety, or even depression.
"But I remind myself that this is not my fault nor it is wrong, because the blame lies on the system that perpetuates these unrealistic standards and lack of representation." This is such a powerful and beautiful thing to do for yourself!
I’m half black and half Italian, and when I was 11 we moved to Italy. Middle school is brutal for everyone and add racism to it (especially when I had never experienced it before) and it was a total disaster. All of the sudden my hair (which is awesome btw 😉) sucked, my nose sucked, my face was too round and the list goes on. So I started straightening my hair to try and fit in more. Straightening it with a flat iron wasn’t good enough so I begged my mom to let me get a chemical relaxer. And she agreed probably because she saw how in pain I was (but she only allowed it twice). Luckily middle school ended and I went to an awesome high school, but by that point straightening my hair had become like an armor and a coping mechanism. When I moved to the US at 24 I continued to do it, along with some super light and lazy contouring (def not Kardashian approved) of my nose, because I wanted to pass as white. The trauma of the light racism I faced as a kid was still there and it wasn’t until I was 30 or even 32 that I stopped wanting to pass as white and accepted my hair. I still occasionally straighten it, but the intention and feeling is that of wanting to do something different and not modify myself to fit into a standard.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I love what you said at the end — acting out the same behavior, with a different intention. It's such a great point!!
I've noticed that when I feel incompetent or inadequate or powerless at work, or when I feel "not productive enough" or "not accomplished enough" in that shitty capitalist meritocratic-ish way, or when I know I'm going to be around someone who is unkind to me (these situations overlap a lot), I feel a huge pull to wear more makeup/do my hair/etc. I know makeup and hair products are often portrayed as armor, and it definitely is that, but I think it's something more, too. When I make myself look "prettier," I'm not just shielding myself--I've internalized the idea that I am more valuable, or providing more value, when I perform beauty, and somewhere deep down I think that if I'm a failure intellectually, I can at least try to compensate by performing physical beauty, right? I think in my heart of hearts, I am kind of afraid that if I rely on my mind/internal self as my sole source of "value," I won't have much value at all.
I’m a Singaporean Indian and when I was growing up, I was so conscious of my skin colour, weight and how ‘hairy’ I was. And only as I got older and moved to Australia did I realize that I was not much hairier that the average person or European because it was just that my black hair was visible against my brown skin. When I was in secondary school, I used to bleach the hair on my arm and my face so it wouldn’t be noticeable.
But as I grew older, I became more proud of my brown skin and my identity. Realizing that it was great to be unique and not the other way around.
I still wax my upper lip but I feel fine to have a furry back and arms :)
When I am stressed (most of the time, because corporate America and girl boss culture), I cope by either spending money (mostly perfume/candles/clothes, for some reason never something that would add to my life in non-material ways), or I go on a diet and pay for a calorie-tracking app, or I scroll through hundreds of Instagram pages of local med spas, “because l think I am finally ready for a lip filler” (I am 24, have been overlining my lips since I was able to use makeup). I was able to reduce my skincare routine to a minimum thanks to your newsletter, which is a win, but I’m still very much into other ideals of western beauty, diet and wealth culture, unfortunately.
I relate to this deeply. I quit Instagram but for a while I replaced it with yelping medspas and microblade studios. The conditioned habits run so deep!
Oh gosh, I didn't even THINK about candles. So many candles for coping...that's like beauty coping your lived space. Which definitely has value (being in a clean, pleasant space IS helpful when stress is high), but is still costs $$, and you literally just light it on fire! :) I hear you on the money spending when stress is high... <3
My mom's old eating disorder was re-triggered by me hitting puberty; it's something she's never really forgiven me for (she was disappeared for treatment while I was in high school, and improved markedly once I moved out of the house).
She was so desperate to avoid me growing up that she never showed me how to use makeup, do my hair, shave, moisturize -- nothing. I have a lot of sympathy for her, and I think in her own fucked-up way, she was trying to protect me from my initiation into womanhood, which she saw as a distinctly negative life transition.
Because of this, I don't associate beauty routines with comfort or control. My goal is to be invisible, but I mostly do that with modest clothes and staying pretty quiet, even at work. But I DO watch beauty videos, because I'm fascinated by the skill and self-confidence it takes to apply makeup, or style an outfit. I think it's cool to see people who inhabit such a different self-concept.
Wow, thank you for sharing that. I think it says so much about how beauty culture is passed down between generations, and how our personal relationships to each other (family, friends) often end up having the largest impact on how we engage with beauty (vs. media, celebrities, etc). It's all so much closer to home than we've been led to believe.
100%, and I think that's why Insta can be so insidious too; filters on friends interspersed with insanely retouched celebrity photos only amplifies the message that EVERYONE MUST BE BEAUTIFUL 24/7!
Apr 27, 2022·edited Apr 27, 2022Liked by Jessica DeFino
Ohhh, where to even start?? I started shaving my legs in 7th grade because a "cool" girl made a comment about how my barely visible blond strands made me look baby-ish (which is interesting, because hair removal is all about youth, isn't it??). I was pretty anti-makeup for most of high school (1) because my mom impressed upon me that it was performative, sexualizing, and that I didn't "need" it (in retrospect, there's probably something to unpack there with the word "need"), and (2) because if I had wanted to wear it, I would have had to spend my own money.
That changed when I graduated from college and entered the workforce. Struggling with imposter syndrome, I wore makeup like armor--to manifest the "girl boss" I felt like I had to be in the office, to align with the women I looked up to, and to also just...hide. While I might have put on makeup in college for an event (and it always felt like play), it became something I felt vulnerable without. This escalated when I got a cute pixie cut and suddenly I had my sexuality and identity questioned all the time. Which is so culturally fascinating and also so intresting to me that it's something I felt motivated to compensate for. As a straight/cis woman, I felt like there was pressure to wear even more makeup to be immediately recognizable as a straight/cis woman--to appear as what others would expect and avoid their confusion. There is probably a small library's worth of things to say about that!
I eventually grew that haircut out, and settled into "minimalist" makeup and using "beauty" in more of a playtime capacity again as stress levels were relatively stable, and face masks, foot soaks, and mani/pedis became something "fun" to do with friends, or when my then-fiance was out of town. "Me time." Whatever that means.
Fast-forward to working in a management role in healthcare during the past 2+ years, and makeup went right back to being my armor again. Youthifying serums, creams, and cleansers started to stack up in my bathroom cabinets as lack of sleep and high stress levels also elevated my blood pressure and re-triggered an old back injury. Not only was I starting to "look old," I was starting to feel it as well. Sometime during the omicron surge at our hospital, my skin decided it had HAD IT with stress and over-treatment, and perioral dermatitis erupted on my face, spreading from around my lips and up into my nose. My eyes were watering all the time due to what I would later find out was stress-induced swelling of my eyelids that closed up the oil ducts that keep my eyes moist and healthy. I had just made a big makeup purchase, including my first ever liquid concealer (I made it to 35 without doing this, so that's a win??), when I found your blog. Needless to say, I'm on a minimalist/skin-rest routine now and am on alert for compensatory behaviors so I can seek to correct the source of my stress instead.
I have since given notice at my job (for multiple reasons, not just stress), am working on spending more time with friends and family, and am seeking "compensation" that's imbued with more meaning than eye-liner and covering the bumps around my mouth/nose (like actually f***ing resting!). When my face heals, I'll probably keep using makeup as a form of self-expression and play, but I'd like to think I have a better understanding of how easy it is to pursue youth, beauty, or capitalism participation masquerading as "self-care" instead of making sure my sleep is sound and my heart happy. I definitely won't be reaching for the concealer the next time my body gives me feedback that I've taken on too much...
I have always struggled to accept my nose, and sort of toyed with the idea of getting a nose job. Thinking back, I had a couple formative shaming experiences which probably contributed to that. I remember as a twelve year old sitting on the bathroom sink, using a little mirror to look at my profile and putting my finger along the bridge of my nose to imagine what it would look like if I had a cuter nose. My mom had told me I had an "aquiline nose", and once I realized what that meant I was so self-conscious about it. I have two sisters and between them, myself and my mom, I am naturally pretty thin where they are not. I think this led to them saying hurtful things towards me about my face/appearance, as a way to deal with their own insecurities about their weight. At a similar age, a girl at school blurted out to me in a hallway interaction that my nose was too big. She came out years later and I am fairly certain she was trying to cope with/reject her own feelings for me (I know that sounds obnoxious but I genuinely believe it based on other ways she acted towards me as well). But it really messed with my head.
I have a very round face, with wide cheeks/jaw, where my forehead is thinner than my cheeks at least when I'm smiling. When I was 14, this boy I had a total unrequited crush on thought it would be hilarious to point out the way my face was shaped and he drew on the board a shape like a short butternut squash and laughed about it. To this day I can't stand in front of a mirror or see a photo of myself without thinking about how much I hate it, and how I hate my hairline and hair texture because I feel like wearing my hair down (which I perceive as more feminine) accentuates it.
In middle school I was the only girl in my friend group of the "nerdy" kids. The same boy from the example above would talk at length and in explicit detail about the body of another girl in our class (she had big boobs, I definitely do not). Flash forward to years and years of me spending tons of money on pushup bras, padding inserts, and daydreaming about boob jobs (of course I don't exclusively blame this one boy making stupid comments, but it really reinforced that I wasn't measuring up versus all the Victoria's Secret angel BS we had to deal with in the 2000s). Interestingly, motherhood made me feel more comfortable with my boobs as they are, I think because their functionality outweighed their appearance, haha. I still don't have the confidence to go bra-less, but I don't wear pushup bras anymore (mom life! comfort first!). Part of me longs to have another baby so I can have big boobs again at least while I'm breastfeeding (I mean, I am fully aware of how ridiculous that sounds. A whole ass baby, just for an extra cup size for a year or two??). I felt so feminine and confident in that time, and then when I was done, boom back to unfeminine old me. It's so true that there IS a degree of comfort/confidence/satisfaction that comes from conforming to beauty norms, and it's SO HARD to live with the discomfort of making a conscious choice not to do so.
When I was 16, I wanted to get on birth control and had to persuade my mom in a way that didn't look like I wanted it because I wanted to have sex, so I based it on the fact that I had irregular periods. I was on the cross country team and had some eating disorder type behaviors, so looking back I'm like, surely it was amenorrhea? But at any rate, she took me to the doctor, who diagnosed me with PCOS because I had irregular periods and "hirsutism" - folks I swear to you, I do not have hirsutism, I am just Latina. The diagnosis got me the prescription I wanted but I went most of my life believing there was something wrong with my body which (again) made me unfeminine and gross. My mom would buy me Jolen cream bleach which I would use on basically my entire freaking body - my face, my arms, my lower back. Later in my twenties, I spent thousands of dollars on full body laser hair removal treatments. Nowadays I can barely be bothered to shave, haha (although that probably has more to do with being an exhausted working mom than anything).
Looking back at all of these examples, EVERY SINGLE ONE can be traced to some misogynistic/patriarchal/white supremacist bullshit in the culture.
Damn, thank you for sharing all of this. I relate to so many points. Especially Jolen bleach!! I did my mustache with that for years and it ALWAYS broke me out.. like why did I even bother??
Yessss like the first (and only) time I waxed my moustache. I was like how is trading upper lip hair for instead a full coverage red zit moustache an improvement?
Are you me? Haha. We share a lot of experiences, from the name, to the nose, to the breast insecurities (assuming you're also approximately my age, because I distinctly remember the hold VS had on teen girls in the early 00s). I also have an aquiline nose, and I *hated* it for so long. I couldn't stand my face in profile. I remember going to one of those caricature artists as a 12-year-old at a theme park, and (not unexpectedly) they made my nose and braces ENORMOUS. It was like a confirmation that not only did *I* think my nose was unsightly, but everyone else noticed it was, too. I also remember putting tissue paper in my training bra in middle school, as it seemed like all the other girls were filling out while I was left behind.
Oh man, I want to give tween you a hug and tell her that there is nothing wrong with her! :( Truly, everyone needs to learn to leave adolescent girls TF alone. It was painful enough growing up then, I can only imagine how horrid it has to be for the current generation. There's so much lip service being paid to breaking down beauty standards, but without those standards, how would anyone ever sell anything? So they peddle the same shit but just in ever more creative ways. It reminds me of all the "girl power!" stuff our generation saw growing up, and yet society was just as misogynistic and horrible as ever, just in less obvious ways.
Aw, thank you :) Same! Also, I totally agree--it's all lip service and no action. In many ways, I feel like beauty standards are *worse.* At least when we were adolescents, the people we emulated were still human! Now it's all filters and freaky AI models and literally impossible-to-achieve standards like having no pores. It reminds me of this quote I read about racism--sorry I don't remember the origin--about how racism doesn't die out, it morphs to fit the norms of the new generation. I feel like that's true about the patriarchy and beauty standards as well. It makes me really concerned about my nieces and what they're going to have to go through. My sister won't let either of them have social media yet (the oldest is 13), fortunately!
Also, it goes without saying that navigating beauty standards as an adolescent was hard enough as a white passing Latina, I can only imagine how much it must suck for more marginalized groups.
I've been lucky to have had pretty good skin growing up. What I find hard in my 30s is the fear/rise of agism and beauty products. What are the things I should do to help my skin? What is fear of aging being marketed at me?
The other polarizing issue for me is body hair. haven't shaved my legs/armpits for about a decade (and part of it is privilege of having light body hair). My mom judges me pretty heavily about it and will push that I look a certain way for important events like weddings.
I had an ex that literally broke up with me over my body hair a year into our relationship (reader, I hadn't shaved for years before he met me). Sexual desirability and being seen as wanted gets wrapped up in it. But at the same time... bending for someone else when it comes to my hair makes me feel even worse. It's like: I get afraid of being sexually intimate at the same time as the thought of trimming/changing body hair brings up too much about pleasing someone else.
Tl;Dr I'm not sure I use beauty. I feel like my inability or desire to use it makes me feel strange and unwanted by potential sexual partners. Like I 'see' the game but don't know how to fully opt out of it.
Botox is my coping mechanism. I've always been the "baby," society dictates that as an Asian woman I am to be ageless until I hit menopause, and my industry (beauty) values youth (but not too young). Looking 29 seems to be the right mark--you're experienced enough to have some authority, but not so old that you're "out of touch." Thus I Botox. Two times a year for the past 2 years. It makes me feel in control of something, especially when it feels like there are so much out of my control. But I can "relax" my lines into submission with bacteria toxin. The same toxin I learned about in my college course on bacterial pathogenesis.
I'm working on it. I'm in therapy. I'm trying to break free. But for now, I'm not ready.
Thank you for sharing this Gloria!! The control/submission point is SO good. Honestly, just acknowledging the emotional truths that guide our beauty decisions is HUGE. You don't have to break free or let go on any particular timeline.
This. I feel like my face fell down overnight and I couldn't cope. I hated my face so much I went and did the absolute extreme (in my "all natural lifestyle") opposite of what I value. I'm still not at the bottom of why I hated my face so much in the first place. Work in progress.
1. Thank you for raising this. I have never even thought about it before, much less talked about it, and didn’t realize how much I needed to!
2. If I read this when I was in college I would have gotten SO defensive! I remember so many people commenting on my thick winged eyeliner (one guy even said he didn’t recognize me when I didn’t have all that “black shit” on my eyes, lol) and I was so insistent that it was “FOR MYSELF, NOT FOR OTHER PEOPLE!” as if that even meant anything. Ultimately it was the only way I liked how I looked. If I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror without makeup, I felt horrible. I took it as an insult when people referred to me “hiding” behind my makeup, and in some cases those comments really were just an excuse to shame me for “wasting” time on something they thought looked weird, but in some cases I think people who actually cared about me were seeing that I was using it to cope with all the internalized misogyny and the rigid beauty standards I had set for myself.
3. This very much ties in with fatphobia for me. The more negatively I feel about my body, the more I focus on “beauty” when it comes to makeup. I walk that very unsustainable and uncomfortable line between awareness that these standards and expectations (both beauty and thinness) are tools of oppression and they’re ultimately bad for me, and still feeling like if I don’t comply, my life will only be harder, and I have to find a way to survive in the environment and culture that I’m a part of whether I like it or not. So I’m here mentally and emotionally saying “YES! We should not “have to” do any of this!,” and in the same breath, won’t go into an office setting without mascara and concealer, and always try to wear the most “flattering” clothes around my mother because it’s easier than broaching the topic of weight every time I see her.
YESSSSS. Especially point number 3. This hits on the fact that the standard of beauty is a range, a paradigm — e.g., we're allowed to gain a little weight as long as we have "a pretty face." Thank you for sharing all this <3
I relate to this sooooo hard. I keep thinking about when I choose to wear foundation/concealer (since I WFH 100% now, I only wear it for holidays or special occasions). It's usually when I know pictures might be taken, honestly, because I'm self-conscious about how I look. what am I going to do when I run out of foundation? Am I going to keep giving my money to this product or this industry?
I'm trying to kick some of my beauty habits but it's hard. It's hard to tell what I actually want and what I've been programmed to want / feel ashamed about (should I stop shaving my legs? Do I really like smooth legs or do I just feel embarrassed when I have hairy ones? why do hairy armpits feel OK to me but hairy legs don't? am I sending a bad message to my nephews when I wear makeup, am I contributing to how they view women?). I feel like I've been grappling this for so long but haven't made any real progress at eliminating those ideas from my head.
I recently quit smoking after smoking for 8+ years, and the main reason why WAS NOT concerns for my health (although that definitely factored in) - you can probably guess what it was, though: I felt like it was starting to age my skin and make me uglier. Yikes.
Asking yourself those questions IS real progress! That's huge. So many people never get there. And I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing to worry about how smoking affects your skin. It's important to remember that the skin exists as a communication tool — it changes color, texture, and reactions to alert us to potential health issues. In this case, smoking does affect the skin's ability to function and stay healthy. Your skin was telling you that and you listened! I know it's really hard, ongoing work to disentangle those two things — caring about your skin as a visual organ vs. caring about your skin's appearance alone — but to me, it sounds like you're getting there.
I'm just exhausted. It's hard to reconcile the intellectual and spiritual understanding of my innate femininity and worthiness outside of the western beauty paradigm with my severe body dysmorphia. I've recently had to face this head on after I was prescribed tretinoin for mild acne, which ended up thinning and damaging my skin and somehow causing a bunch of little veins to show up on my face. It's been literal hell trying to fast-track my emotional and spiritual healing process in order to cope with the daily anxiety of a changed face. My derm gaslighted the shit out of me and told me it was merely a coincidence (HOW???), and now I'm off all skincare products in an effort to at least calm my skin moving forward.
Just like you, I've worn makeup all my life as a mask. And now I feel as though I will always have the urge to wear makeup in order to cover up the damage tret caused. Breaking free from beauty culture feels so much harder with a mental illness that is entirely appearance-based, obsessive/compulsive, and debilitating. Sometimes it feels impossible. But I'm going to continue to try because I know that a soulful, peaceful life will never be attainable for me if I continue to base my entire mood, sense of self, and locus of control upon futile and unattainable appearance ideals.
I'm so sorry to hear about your tretinoin experience. I had a similar reaction to topical steroids and know how emotionally devastating it can be. And it totally feels impossible to divest from beauty culture sometimes. I like to remind myself that it's *completely* impossible to live up to beauty standards too though.
Thanks, queen. I do have a question for you! So I know that early in your healing process you weren't using any products at all (which is what I'm doing currently), and I was wondering what that timeline was like for you watching your skin react to not having products on it. Like does it take some time for skin to learn how to moisturize and take care of itself again? I've been trying to power through and let my skin reset, but I'm dealing with the skincare-culture-induced fears that I'm making things worse by not "treating" my dry skin and breakouts. When logically I'm fairly certain all of my problems are caused by my damaged skin barrier + internal issues that no amount of products can actually solve. Just looking for some hope that things will balance out eventually!! <3
But also, the point of taking time off from skincare is to pinpoint which skin symptoms are a result of your skincare, and which actually require your attention. If your skin is still dry and breaking out after one or two skin cycles, that's a sign that that the "issues" are stemming from some internal source (diet, stress, hormones, etc).
first off, super generative to read this whole thread. I’m a hairstylist but I really don’t do grey coverage for people very often (I think that service is the most environmentally toxic to our bodies and the planet). I have thought long and hard about what is a necessary service that people can be creative about (I think haircuts are totally cool and would exist outside of capitalism) and what is feeding into our insecurities and beauty culture (and capitalism). I don’t think I have all the answers but it really helps to hear from all of you.
I think about this a lot. I work primarily with people experiencing homelessness. Have also worked with incarcerated folks. I'm often in awe at the fashion + self expression of appearance that people cultivate in spaces of scarcity - appearance deeply tied to survival. As the person employed in the field, I find my way to survive emotionally around the secondhand trauma is linking my outward appearance to my inward purpose.
Haircuts ARE cool and have totally existed outside of capitalism!! So many ancient, spiritual beliefs and rituals center around the hair. It's a huuuge part of identity and expression... the trick, I guess, is figuring out which behaviors are self-expression and which are self-rejection masquerading as expression
"Almost all of my beauty behaviors can be traced back to some sort of formative shame" - yes, absolutely, me too. There's a scene in "Legally Blonde" (one of my problematic faves) where Elle gets bad news (her ex is engaged to someone else quickly after their breakup) and to cope, she runs to a nail salon. Elle performs beauty instead of dealing with her feelings of rejection, betrayal and rage. This scene encapsulates how I've operated for most of my life. I have a bad day at work, I feel unappreciated and incompetent? I do a face mask instead of advocating for myself. I feel too fatigued and depressed to go after the thing I really want? I buy a new bold lipstick instead of facing the root of the depression. A dude friend points out my hairy Italian arms to me at age 14? I shave my arm hair AND leg hair AND buy a new mini skirt that will make him think again, rather than say to him "that's not cool, friend."
I deeply value all of Jessica's writing, and I get so much out of it. Something I've rubbed up against when discussing beauty performance pressure is gender performance, and I was wondering if anyone (Jessica?) has any thoughts on how to navigate these conversations. I was discussing how my BDD, my eating disorder, etc can be traced to the pressure to perform beauty with a group of friends recently. A queer friend noted that she deeply values beauty behaviors as they allow her to perform femininity when she wants to, like putting on a glamour or a costume. This same "costume" that helps her feel free and affirmed, has for me, a cis het woman, been an unrelenting pressure, exhausting, expensive, and harmful to me physically and mentally. Obviously different individuals have different experiences, but does anyone have any thoughts on discussing the systemic harms of how harmful the beauty industrial complex is to women while being mindful and respectful of gender performance?
Thank you for sharing all of this! I've written a bit about gender-affirming beauty behaviors before and it's definitely something I want to dive into more. But my general thought is this: When cis women perform gender by adhering to these impossible, made-up ideals that signal womanhood, we actually enforce the beauty gender binary and make it harder for trans and non-binary people to break out of it. The fact that beauty ideals ARE so gendered — thanks to beauty culture/cis peoples' perpetuation of beauty culture through beauty performance — increases feelings of dysphoria and dysmorphia for trans & non-binary people. It's on cis people to dismantle these ideals in pursuit of collective liberation from gendered beauty standards. But it's like anything else; what feels freeing to someone can feel oppressive to someone else. For trans folks, there is a LOT of freedom that comes from performing gender via beauty. But so much of that comes from the fact that our culture's aesthetic gender ideals are so oppressively narrow. There's also a big difference between a cis person performing standardized "beauty" (trying to adhere to an EXTERNAL ideal prescribed by an outside force) and a trans person communicating their gender (wanting to align with an INTERNAL knowledge of one's actual gender, coming from one's own instinct, intuition, and emotional/mental understanding of the self).
Thank you for this comprehensive reply! "It's on cis people to dismantle these ideals in pursuit of collective liberation from gendered beauty standards" - absolutely, yes, and I think places like this that encourage all of us to investigate our relationship to gendered beauty standards is a great jumping off point for collective liberation action. I'll look into the archives for more on gender-affirming beauty behaviors!
Apr 27, 2022·edited Apr 27, 2022Liked by Jessica DeFino
I think the difference between you and your queer friend is about expression. Your friend modifies their appearance as an act of self-expression (an external expression of an authentic part of their inner self), whereas you and other women 🙋🏼♀️ who perform beauty aren't expressing themselves but expressing a standard imposed by others.
Shaving, waxing, makeup, so much money on hair dying, anxiety about the right clothes, anxiety about not having enough money to buy the right clothes, irresponsible debt to buy clothes and shoes. I should’ve bought a condo when I was in my 20s but wasn’t really in the right head space for it. I’m not against beauty and believe you feel better when you look good, but we need to check the standards bc they are not realistic or attainable
Apr 27, 2022·edited Apr 27, 2022Liked by Jessica DeFino
You know this one time I actually added up the annual hours of unpaid overtime and total out-of-pocket expenses that only women have to expend for work on a spreadsheet.
Guess what! It's terrible! Daily makeup alone is around 125 hrs unpaid overtime per year. (30 mins per day for a standard full-time employee, including application of compensatory skincare and cleanser).
Or you could say simply applying professional makeup daily devalues female labor by 7.5%.
And property ownership is such a huge part of generational wealth - you give such a good example of how this seemingly minute stuff can snowball into genuine social disadvantages.
You TOTALLY feel better when you look good. But like you said... when "looking good" = adhering to unattainable standards, it's a dangerous path to "feeling better." Also "irresponsible debt" in service to beauty standards... so relatable!!
Allllll of my investment into my appearance (makeup, highlights, skincare, injectables) is in reaction to fear that others will see me as incompetent and worth less than my peers. My earliest memory of coping with the shame of being perceived as “less than” began with straightening my very curly hair and begging my mom for the “Rachel” haircut that all of the popular/athletic/straight A girls were getting. At its most difficult, my beauty as coping manifested as an eating disorder that spanned decades. I cultivated the belief that if I look like I “have my shit together” I can convince myself and others that I actually have my shit together. Looking “perfect” protected me from the shame of being less than perfect. I still struggle under these beliefs, but it’s getting easier as I near 40. I’m so grateful for this resource as I continue to divest from the systems that diminish our spirits. Thank you for this work Jessica!
Thank you so much for sharing all this. "I cultivated the belief that if I look like I 'have my shit together' I can convince myself and others that I actually have my shit together"... THIS is truly the heart of beauty for so many of us!!
So I quit skincare and makeup two and a half years ago. It was a combo of reasons (mostly because I was a new mother and had zero time, energy, or inclination for it all), but somehow I went from being someone who spent thousands a year on beauty, hadn't felt comfortable leaving the house without makeup since she was pubescent, and had chronic skin problems, to being someone who wears makeup maaaaybe once every couple of weeks and considers running a warm washcloth over her face at night "a routine". I've learnt so much about myself and beauty over the last few years, but this post has got me reflecting on what little things I'm still hung up on.
1. Facial hair. I used to shave my entire face every week. I have pretty heavy peach fuzz on my cheeks and forehead, and grow a blonde moustache that glints golden in sunlight. I don't do the full shave anymore (and my skin is so much healthier for it), but still get rid of the moustache. I have a strong memory of a male friend of mine in high school pointing it out to all his other friends and laughing at it. I even told him about it when we caught up a couple of years ago, and he was horrified, but that shame runs deep. So the golden moustache still gets the chop every week.
2. Leg hair. I recently experimented with letting my leg hair grow out AND baring my legs in public. Kept them at full growth for about two months. Gotta say, that's still a tricky one for me-- I'm back to shaving semi-regularly. I just can't wear a dress, look down at my hairy legs, and feel okay about it. The only thing time I felt good, interestingly enough, was in a bikini at the beach. The closer I was to being nude (and the tanner my skin), the more I felt comfortable in my natural state. When I finally shaved them again, it did take me about a week to not look at my legs and think, "Weird, I'm bald," so I think my perspective is shifting on this one. I'm going longer stretches between shaves.
3. Eyebrows. I went through a bout of trichotillomania postpartum with my first child. I had experienced it as a side effect of anxiety in the past, but fortunately my brows had always grown back with time. This time, not so much. Due to the depleted state my body was in after giving birth, plus the hormonal changes that occured with motherhood, my eyebrows barely grew back in, and what did grow back was a barely visible shade of wiry white. I've been waiting for them to change back, but two years in and it seems like this is just their new colour. It ages me so much, and makes me look sickly. I struggle to look at my odd, bi-coloured brows (I only pulled out the outer half, so the inner half of my brows are still more-or-less the same as ever) and not feel some shame. I generally enjoy the ageing process, I like getting older, and I like how my emerging wrinkles make me look, but when I see my eyebrows I can't help but think, "Yep, I hit The Wall and there's no going back." So, yeah, brow product is the only thing I put on when I'm trying to make myself look casually "presentable'.
4. Wearing a bra. Not sure if this is what you're talking about, but I definitely only wear a bra these days for beauty standard-related reasons. I much prefer being braless, but am way too self-conscious about my lopsided, saggy milkers (lol, yay motherhood) to forgo a bra. It's not even my boobs that bother me, as I don't mind them when I'm naked, it's just under clothing I still expect them to appear a certain way. The word 'presentable' pops up in my head again. I don't feel presentable without a bra. (Presentable to whom? Am I a present?)
I'm sure there are other things. In general, I'm proud of how far I've come with my self-image and how I view beauty these days. I am so glad to have mostly quit skincare and makeup. I'm now at a place where beauty for me is the same as health and happiness. When I feel healthy and happy, I feel beautiful. This is how I see beauty in others too. But there are still a couple of niggling things that I haven't been able to let go of yet. A lot of it comes down to how I look in clothing. I can accept and love my naked body, but as soon as I get dressed, I start expecting myself to look a certain way. It will be interesting to see where I'm at in another two and half years.
Loved your points on wearing a bra and looking "presentable." I will go braless when my dress or top is loose-fitting, so you can't really see the outline of my breasts. But wearing a fitted top? Even with nipple covers, I can't do it. It's like I expect my breasts to look like cut-in-half cantaloupes perched jauntily below my collarbones. (ETA: And I don't feel the same naked! Naked, I'm totally fine with my breasts.)
I relate to all of these as a first time mother of a toddler but #4 is SO REAL. I can't even walk the dog without a bra on but bras as SO uncomfortable, especially as a nursing mom. I just can't bring myself to be seen by anyone other than my husband or child with uneven boobs and i'm constantly trying to figure out why not?
Thank you so much for sharing all of this!! I relate to a lot of your points... facial hair, shaving, and eyebrows are big ones for me. And omg, I could write an essay on "presentable."
I so resonate with the bra point. I don’t have kids, but for pretty much as long as I’ve had boobs, they’ve always been big, downward-pointing, and saggy. When I was a teenager I felt so self-conscious for having “grandma boobs” and I still find it hard to go braless in public unless I have something baggy on. I did read an article a while back (maybe on the lingerie addict? I can’t remember now) about how our current, very round, perky version of how boobs are supposed to look is just as much of a “trend” as the pointy, bullet bra styles of the 1950s and that blew my mind. Still working on the confidence to go braless more often, but just knowing these standards are made up and arbitrary helps a little. Maybe we’ll look back on this time and think that we looked just as strange as the pointy-nippled sweater gals of the 1950s.
Ooh the bullet bra thing is such a good point. I have giant, saggy boobs and haven't worn a bra in ~4 years. It's definitely weird at first but after a couple months of pushing through, it stopped feeling so strange/aggressive and now it just feels natural
So all these answers are going to go real deep real fast. Here's something wild that happened to me. Last year my Mom was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and pretty quickly lost her hair during chemo. As a Filipino woman, it was a huge shift for her not to have her glossy thick black hair - grappling with cancer and impending death also included the mortality of her self image. In my agony of anticipatory grief and not wanting her to go through this alone, I shaved off my long black hair too. Didn't think twice. But after the fact YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE the shit I got. All of a sudden I encountered strange ass unsolicited comments and questions about my appearance - and about my sexuality! The utter hostility and microaggression from men!! Mom and I got wigs and other fun cranium accessories. When I was at work or out and about, I put on much more makeup and jewelry and felt some internalized pressure to look more stylish or feminine. With her, the only beauty that mattered was our love and her comfort. During hospice, my Mom had the sweetest soft baby hair growing back, and in her last days, she showed me true beauty and strength. <3
So much more beauty, joy, and awareness is found in the letting go. Letting go of beauty definitions, habits, and comments from others takes some reminding. Thank you for sharing this💕
Ashley, I LOVE that you did this with your mama, and also relate so hard to unsolicited and just straight-up WEIRD comments about sexuality directed at women with shorter hair. My experience was bizarre--like, suddenly just being at a bar, men would come up to and make comments that basically amounted to, "I'm attracted to you, but your haircut is signaling to me that you might not like men, can you please clarify?" Obviously not that direct, but certainly more direct than when they were assuming I was hetero/cis and would have probably just said, "hi." Not to mention the other blatant micro-homophobias that weren't inquiries so much as statements. It opened my eyes to just one of the many we inject coded meaning into appearance in the most messed up ways.
Your love for your mama is true beauty and strength, too. Thank you for sharing!
thank you for commenting all this too <3 yup, totally relate to this. so it's wild it's 2022 and stereotypes (?) persist about women or people read as women, who have short hair. My mother's and my experience opened my eyes to the various conditions and disabilities and other reasons leading to hair loss. There are some amazing forums and writings by people with alopecia, especially recently by Ayanna Presley, about image, identity, and hair that I've learned from too. Bottom line on all this, Patriarchy is ableist AF!!!
Wow. So I am def aware that nearly all of my beauty routines are coping mechanisms. And, honestly I’m ok being called out on it too. But these days the big one is foundation/redness reducing on my face. I went through a very gnarly separation and divorce (lying, gaslighting, cheating with a woman who worked for him and was in our lives for 10 years.) Anyway…during that state of constant stress for 2 years I developed rosacea that has never gone away. I can’t bring myself to NOT cover it up. It’s like a reminder, a sign of my unworthiness, a glaring red light (pun) to any other suitors that screams, “stay away, she’s too much (according to my ex), she’s unlovable.” Anyway, I cover it…for all kinds of oppressive patriarchal reasons. Sigh. Oh…and also…FUCK HIM. 😏
This is so relatable! I went through a similarly nasty divorce several years ago and suddenly I developed acne, which I had never had before, even as a teenager. I bought SO MANY PRODUCTS to try to fix it (nothing helped), tried out all different types of hormonal birth control (meh), and started using prescription retinoids. Horrible. It did go away after about five years. But that experience made me 100% believe in the idea that our skin is an outward manifestation of our inner life.
So very true…and you give me hope! Maybe this will go away on its own in time. Ive actually stopped using a lot of products and now only use mild soap and jojoba/rosehip oil. I mean other than the coverup. I’m very hesitant to go to the Derm and get “stuff” for it. Maybe I’ll just wait it out and keep taking care of the rest of me.
I get that!!! I relate so hard. I'm convinced my chronic dermatitis was stress-induced around my (now ex) husband and whenever it flares up, it's a like a reminder of all the stress and heartbreak of that relationship. (But yes... fuck him!)
Ugh, I am soo sorry that you, or anyone else, has to deal with this particular kind of stress. I swear those years triggered some autoimmune issues in my body. In fact, I know they did because of some lab work, etc…I could write a whole blog myself about how infidelity and gaslighting are abuse, especially because of the very real physical toll it takes on a partner. Our poor skin picking up the slack from bad (putting it mildly) partners. Big hug to you.
Oh no I feel this so much. My situation is very like this. I think some coping mechanisms we really do need, at least for a period of time. At least if we're watching our motivation for doing this or that beauty thing, we may eventually get to a point where we can re-evaluate, and might not need it anymore.
Totally agree that some coping mechanisms are necessary! I think the point I hope to get across is that so many people (women especially) aren't aware that they're using beauty as a coping mechanism and perpetuating this idea of "I do it for me! I love this!" and it's like... the REASON you love it is much, much deeper and deserves to be addressed as its own separate thing.
I had been working on trying to deconstruct my attachment to alll the beauty things, and then my husband of 11 years suddenly left me. My mind is spinning out with all the things I need to do so I can find love again; lose 15 pounds, straighten my teeth, do something prettier with my hair etc. I know intellectually that's not how you find love, but it's wild how ingrained in my mind these mechanisms are for seeking validation. I know it won't help me through the grief of being rejected by the one person who knew my whole heart and still left, but it kind of feels like at least trying will help me convince myself that I'm working on moving past this. Waiting for time to heal me, and therapy, and reading, and walking really don't feel like enough; like I'll only win if I come out of this with a divorce glow up! It's so stupid.
I'm so, so sorry to hear that. I went through a divorce fairly recently too and can relate to a lot of what you're saying. It's also like... let's not gaslight ourselves here! Men are just as brainwashed by beauty standards as we are. The pressure to embody the beauty ideal is REAL because the pressure is applied... by media, by celebs, by men. So what you're feeling isn't just in your head. I think the real "win" is doing exactly what you're doing — mindfully examining your feelings and your choices and being gentle with yourself, whatever comes up.
Starting somewhere around middle school I started to notice and care and feel bad about my appearance. "ew your legs are hairy" etc.
My neighbors joked around a lot with me, and one day they jokingly said I have a 'white mans nose'. (I am Russian Jewish). I laughed it off, but I was mortified. I looked and noticed it was "true." I did not look like Brittany Spears or J.Lo or any of the girls I saw put on pedestals for their conventional beauty. decades long insecurities. I started to notice my curly hair and its frizz. I thought I looked horrendous. Social anxiety was starting to build inside me, and looking 'hot' can help you in a lot of awkward situations. Or playing dumb.
I wore lots of coverup to help blend my nose into my face with dark eyeliner. I avoided rain, all water, beaches (I live in Florida), and sweating from jogging and heavy exercise so that my straighten hair wouldn't be ruined. Part of my hair was burned off from a poorly done relaxing job. Worst of all, I spent hours on hours obsessing about my looks in negative ways, which, even at all, should be a minimal thought! Later, going to therapy to deal with real issues, made a lot of the fabricated ones smaller.
I learned how to cope with my anxiety, face and reframe my thoughts, be mindful. Also that I had actual beliefs that "my worth was vastly lower because of my looks."
In my 30s I have started to embrace curls and my nose and my natural state. Almost wearing no makeup (but... still a little something), & almost fully convincing myself ... IT DOESN'T MATTER THAT MUCH. Still trying to fully grasp that. This blog is so helpful for maintaining those loving positive beliefs
Thank you so much for sharing all of this!! It makes me so happy to hear that you've been able to contextualize all of that as "conditioned beliefs" vs. "beauty truths" and address the underlying anxiety... it's a leap that so many people never make. But yeah... the work is ongoing!! Maintenance required lol.
I'm naturally a redhead, but for part of my teens and early 20s, I dyed my hair black because I just wanted to be left alone. It's wild the number of strangers who think it is appropriate to just grab/touch you when you have an unusual natural hair color. Also, in stereotypical beauty as a coping mechanism fashion, I used to give myself what might be best described as "at-home depression haircuts."
Lmao, at-home depression haircuts. I have had so many of those. It's been a few years since my last one. I recently started cutting my own hair again. This time, though, I'm not doing it from a place of self-hatred and desperation, I'm doing it from a place of creativity. The mindset shift is huge. I have fun cutting my hair now and can laugh at the sometimes uneven results. It's a very expressive thing, no longer about making myself look hot.
It's so sad (but also empowering) when you're finally able to realize that you're just trying to control something (your hair, the way your face looks) when the rest of your life feels so out of control.
I've realized a LOT, if not most, of my beauty routines came from coping mechanisms to alleviate my feelings of ugliness, awkwardness, not-fitting-in-ness. I started shaving in the fifth grade, after a mean girl made fun of my leg hair (and my hair is blonde and barely noticeable!). I wore mascara because my eyelashes are lighter in color and I felt they were "too short" and "not visible enough." I wore concealer because of dark circles (what dark circles? I was 20!) and acne. I never felt like my bare face or my natural body was pretty enough or good enough. I've spent a lot of time in the past few years reflecting and trying to root that stuff out. I think I'm somewhat lucky in the sense that I never *really* enjoyed a lot of it or got good at it--especially makeup--and so it was easier to see it as a bad coping mechanism instead of something "I totally do for me!!" So I've stopped wearing makeup and winnowed down my skincare routine to the very basics. That said, I still use my prescriptions for my adult cystic acne, because it's hormonal, it won't go away, and on top of my cultural conditioning to view it as unsightly, it's also really freaking painful. I'm not really sure how to "be okay" with cysts on my face that are agonizing when I touch them, or if I'll ever get there, or if I even need to? This is also my first spring/summer going out with all my body hair, and so far I still feel nervous about how other people will perceive/judge me--oddly, a lot more so than when I started going without makeup.
I was just commenting about this to Val Monroe yesterday. She linked to an essay she'd written last March about looking at one's self with loving awareness as a salve for the impulse to "have work done." I have to say, I am amazed by the way I've considered procedures (Botox & a boob job) as a means of side-stepping the GRIEF that would come from looking at myself with deep truth and vulnerability and saying I LOVE YOU, YOU ARE GOOD AND YOU ARE DETERIORATING. (Because... you're alive.)
What the beauty industry sells us is a side-step around the existential pangs of our own humanity. It's so truly American. Just go DO something rather than passively let something be done TO you (like, say, gravity). It's manifest destiny on the body. But truly a shocking realization for me yesterday to see that I--a deep-thinking, sane person--might rather be cut open than have to look hard at my vulnerability and the grief that comes with it.
Wow you put this so perfectly. This explains my "divorce glow up" instinct. I feel like I need to be doing something! Like the healing can't just be internal, other people have to be able to see it. Haha how wrong.
Apr 27, 2022·edited Apr 27, 2022Liked by Jessica DeFino
Ah yes, I remember my younger self thinking "once I can get my skin perfectly smooth, poreless and blemish-free, THEN I'll stop anxiously picking at it, obviously"
This is probably not the answer you are looking for, but the other day, when I was feeling frustrated about something outside of my control, I took a pair of scissors to my head and sheared off three inches and gave myself what might very generously be described as a "shag." I thought it would make me feel all better, somehow. It did not! And now I need to go get it cleaned up by my hairdresser.
I feel like this 'transformation' topic is just like when you go on vacation or extended travel thinking that you are going to somehow be a magically changed person, and you come back from your trip realising you are still the same! Either way, I feel like how we are marketed to plays into this mindset on a whole host of levels.
Omg, what a horrible 6th grade activity. Just proves to me that so much of beauty culture conditioning comes from our peers rather than media/celebs/etc. It's so much closer to home than we think.
Thank you so much for sharing all of this!! What incredible insights, especially this line: "The solutions I kept trying were the problem." YES!!! I'm so happy to hear the jojoba is working out for you.
On my 50th birthday, I sank into hopeless depression wondering how the hell I would deal with being perceived as old looking. I felt really shallow and aimless for the better half of the day until I forced myself to lay down and stop all attachment to racing thoughts of acting out in any way that would resist these ‘old’ feelings. Then something clicked, and the aha moment I called “Fuck You Fifty” came and hasn’t gone away since. There is so much joy in this ‘who cares’ attitude that I wish I’d had it starting in my teens BUT… I still put butt firming cream on my face and front, back, and sides of my neck whenever I have a special event😆. Oh well…
Count me as another person with a mother who suffered from depression, an eating disorder, and rejected everything to do with performing conventional femininity. What was learning about makeup and skincare but a way to fit in while growing up in a small town with a mother who was considered strange?
One of the last conversations I had with my grandmother, she expressed her concern about how "fat" my mom is. And how proud she was that I "take care of myself". So my mother managing to grow a blue-collar salary into a nice bit of wealth through teaching herself about trading stocks, ensuring that none of my grandparents died without the best care, was great but wow, did you notice how greasy her skin is? How much she's let herself go? Could she just shave her legs already?!?!
I swear, we're made to internalize this crap in the womb. And it's all total crap.
Seriously. SINCE THE WOMB! Thanks for sharing <3
Trigger warning : diet/EDs/EDNOS . For me it’s my body. For any problem, any stressor it goes right to: “I will reshape my body/get skinny”. Even for things that make no sense. Or it’s clothes…if I dress the part..etc. etc.
It’s armor protecting me from any assaults from life.
Definitely an attempt at protection! Now, whether beauty/diet culture *actually* protects us or just harms us in a different way...
Wow, these comments break my heart - but I have to be the iconoclast here and say that for all my adult life and more so now that I am middle-aged, I have used beauty rituals (i.e. massaging the skin, drinking a lot of water, using moisturizer to prevent drying up like a prune) to cope with grief, illness and other dark times; they are first and foremost for me and nobody else. I spend tons of time alone and have learned to stay away from any eye make-up during those times, even though I LURVE the ritual of slowly applying some kohl or mascara, but beauty rituals in the broader sense (including 'eating the rainbow') are essential to my wellbeing and my ability to cope - with work, surgeries, family, funerals and much more. Oh, and I shave my armpits too. Otherwise, I would faint from my sharp post-deadline-smells. :D
I think we should beat ourselves up a bit less.
We should definitely beat ourselves up a lot less. And get beauty culture to stop beating us up, too.
In the Philippines, where I grew up, whitening products and hair rebond was all the rage for young women. I remember asking my mom to pay for a costly hair rebond for my 13th birthday. I had natural, unruly curls growing up. I was happy for a while but the hair rebond caused longterm damage for my hair. I regretted this. I resorted to cutting all my hair off so it will grow better. Another thing that always bothered me growing up was the lack of actual Filipino-looking people in media, everything was white and eurocentric. I rarely saw people who actually looked like me in my screens, as our local showbiz scene is obsessed with half-white, clearly more good-looking actors. If I do find someone who looked Filipino, they are cast aside as supporting characters or comic relief characters teased for their tan skin or anything related to their appearance. I wish I can go back in time and tell my younger self that it's going to be fine and you'll learn to love how you look eventually. I still have times when I feel like caving in to the standards and moments I don't feel my beautiful because of what I see on social media. But I remind myself that this is not my fault nor it is wrong, because the blame lies on the system that perpetuates these unrealistic standards and lack of representation, which pushes us to anxiety, or even depression.
"But I remind myself that this is not my fault nor it is wrong, because the blame lies on the system that perpetuates these unrealistic standards and lack of representation." This is such a powerful and beautiful thing to do for yourself!
I’m half black and half Italian, and when I was 11 we moved to Italy. Middle school is brutal for everyone and add racism to it (especially when I had never experienced it before) and it was a total disaster. All of the sudden my hair (which is awesome btw 😉) sucked, my nose sucked, my face was too round and the list goes on. So I started straightening my hair to try and fit in more. Straightening it with a flat iron wasn’t good enough so I begged my mom to let me get a chemical relaxer. And she agreed probably because she saw how in pain I was (but she only allowed it twice). Luckily middle school ended and I went to an awesome high school, but by that point straightening my hair had become like an armor and a coping mechanism. When I moved to the US at 24 I continued to do it, along with some super light and lazy contouring (def not Kardashian approved) of my nose, because I wanted to pass as white. The trauma of the light racism I faced as a kid was still there and it wasn’t until I was 30 or even 32 that I stopped wanting to pass as white and accepted my hair. I still occasionally straighten it, but the intention and feeling is that of wanting to do something different and not modify myself to fit into a standard.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I love what you said at the end — acting out the same behavior, with a different intention. It's such a great point!!
I've noticed that when I feel incompetent or inadequate or powerless at work, or when I feel "not productive enough" or "not accomplished enough" in that shitty capitalist meritocratic-ish way, or when I know I'm going to be around someone who is unkind to me (these situations overlap a lot), I feel a huge pull to wear more makeup/do my hair/etc. I know makeup and hair products are often portrayed as armor, and it definitely is that, but I think it's something more, too. When I make myself look "prettier," I'm not just shielding myself--I've internalized the idea that I am more valuable, or providing more value, when I perform beauty, and somewhere deep down I think that if I'm a failure intellectually, I can at least try to compensate by performing physical beauty, right? I think in my heart of hearts, I am kind of afraid that if I rely on my mind/internal self as my sole source of "value," I won't have much value at all.
I totally get this!! I always say, performing beauty *is* a form of productivity. Beauty culture and hustle culture have a ton of overlap.
I’m a Singaporean Indian and when I was growing up, I was so conscious of my skin colour, weight and how ‘hairy’ I was. And only as I got older and moved to Australia did I realize that I was not much hairier that the average person or European because it was just that my black hair was visible against my brown skin. When I was in secondary school, I used to bleach the hair on my arm and my face so it wouldn’t be noticeable.
But as I grew older, I became more proud of my brown skin and my identity. Realizing that it was great to be unique and not the other way around.
I still wax my upper lip but I feel fine to have a furry back and arms :)
Thank you for sharing this! <3
When I am stressed (most of the time, because corporate America and girl boss culture), I cope by either spending money (mostly perfume/candles/clothes, for some reason never something that would add to my life in non-material ways), or I go on a diet and pay for a calorie-tracking app, or I scroll through hundreds of Instagram pages of local med spas, “because l think I am finally ready for a lip filler” (I am 24, have been overlining my lips since I was able to use makeup). I was able to reduce my skincare routine to a minimum thanks to your newsletter, which is a win, but I’m still very much into other ideals of western beauty, diet and wealth culture, unfortunately.
It's a long, long process and it sounds like you've made some big strides already. Be gentle with yourself <3
I relate to this deeply. I quit Instagram but for a while I replaced it with yelping medspas and microblade studios. The conditioned habits run so deep!
Oh gosh, I didn't even THINK about candles. So many candles for coping...that's like beauty coping your lived space. Which definitely has value (being in a clean, pleasant space IS helpful when stress is high), but is still costs $$, and you literally just light it on fire! :) I hear you on the money spending when stress is high... <3
My mom's old eating disorder was re-triggered by me hitting puberty; it's something she's never really forgiven me for (she was disappeared for treatment while I was in high school, and improved markedly once I moved out of the house).
She was so desperate to avoid me growing up that she never showed me how to use makeup, do my hair, shave, moisturize -- nothing. I have a lot of sympathy for her, and I think in her own fucked-up way, she was trying to protect me from my initiation into womanhood, which she saw as a distinctly negative life transition.
Because of this, I don't associate beauty routines with comfort or control. My goal is to be invisible, but I mostly do that with modest clothes and staying pretty quiet, even at work. But I DO watch beauty videos, because I'm fascinated by the skill and self-confidence it takes to apply makeup, or style an outfit. I think it's cool to see people who inhabit such a different self-concept.
Wow, thank you for sharing that. I think it says so much about how beauty culture is passed down between generations, and how our personal relationships to each other (family, friends) often end up having the largest impact on how we engage with beauty (vs. media, celebrities, etc). It's all so much closer to home than we've been led to believe.
100%, and I think that's why Insta can be so insidious too; filters on friends interspersed with insanely retouched celebrity photos only amplifies the message that EVERYONE MUST BE BEAUTIFUL 24/7!
I love your newsletter, thanks for reading!
Ohhh, where to even start?? I started shaving my legs in 7th grade because a "cool" girl made a comment about how my barely visible blond strands made me look baby-ish (which is interesting, because hair removal is all about youth, isn't it??). I was pretty anti-makeup for most of high school (1) because my mom impressed upon me that it was performative, sexualizing, and that I didn't "need" it (in retrospect, there's probably something to unpack there with the word "need"), and (2) because if I had wanted to wear it, I would have had to spend my own money.
That changed when I graduated from college and entered the workforce. Struggling with imposter syndrome, I wore makeup like armor--to manifest the "girl boss" I felt like I had to be in the office, to align with the women I looked up to, and to also just...hide. While I might have put on makeup in college for an event (and it always felt like play), it became something I felt vulnerable without. This escalated when I got a cute pixie cut and suddenly I had my sexuality and identity questioned all the time. Which is so culturally fascinating and also so intresting to me that it's something I felt motivated to compensate for. As a straight/cis woman, I felt like there was pressure to wear even more makeup to be immediately recognizable as a straight/cis woman--to appear as what others would expect and avoid their confusion. There is probably a small library's worth of things to say about that!
I eventually grew that haircut out, and settled into "minimalist" makeup and using "beauty" in more of a playtime capacity again as stress levels were relatively stable, and face masks, foot soaks, and mani/pedis became something "fun" to do with friends, or when my then-fiance was out of town. "Me time." Whatever that means.
Fast-forward to working in a management role in healthcare during the past 2+ years, and makeup went right back to being my armor again. Youthifying serums, creams, and cleansers started to stack up in my bathroom cabinets as lack of sleep and high stress levels also elevated my blood pressure and re-triggered an old back injury. Not only was I starting to "look old," I was starting to feel it as well. Sometime during the omicron surge at our hospital, my skin decided it had HAD IT with stress and over-treatment, and perioral dermatitis erupted on my face, spreading from around my lips and up into my nose. My eyes were watering all the time due to what I would later find out was stress-induced swelling of my eyelids that closed up the oil ducts that keep my eyes moist and healthy. I had just made a big makeup purchase, including my first ever liquid concealer (I made it to 35 without doing this, so that's a win??), when I found your blog. Needless to say, I'm on a minimalist/skin-rest routine now and am on alert for compensatory behaviors so I can seek to correct the source of my stress instead.
I have since given notice at my job (for multiple reasons, not just stress), am working on spending more time with friends and family, and am seeking "compensation" that's imbued with more meaning than eye-liner and covering the bumps around my mouth/nose (like actually f***ing resting!). When my face heals, I'll probably keep using makeup as a form of self-expression and play, but I'd like to think I have a better understanding of how easy it is to pursue youth, beauty, or capitalism participation masquerading as "self-care" instead of making sure my sleep is sound and my heart happy. I definitely won't be reaching for the concealer the next time my body gives me feedback that I've taken on too much...
Wow, thank you for sharing all of this!! Hearing where you're at now makes me SO HAPPY.
I have always struggled to accept my nose, and sort of toyed with the idea of getting a nose job. Thinking back, I had a couple formative shaming experiences which probably contributed to that. I remember as a twelve year old sitting on the bathroom sink, using a little mirror to look at my profile and putting my finger along the bridge of my nose to imagine what it would look like if I had a cuter nose. My mom had told me I had an "aquiline nose", and once I realized what that meant I was so self-conscious about it. I have two sisters and between them, myself and my mom, I am naturally pretty thin where they are not. I think this led to them saying hurtful things towards me about my face/appearance, as a way to deal with their own insecurities about their weight. At a similar age, a girl at school blurted out to me in a hallway interaction that my nose was too big. She came out years later and I am fairly certain she was trying to cope with/reject her own feelings for me (I know that sounds obnoxious but I genuinely believe it based on other ways she acted towards me as well). But it really messed with my head.
I have a very round face, with wide cheeks/jaw, where my forehead is thinner than my cheeks at least when I'm smiling. When I was 14, this boy I had a total unrequited crush on thought it would be hilarious to point out the way my face was shaped and he drew on the board a shape like a short butternut squash and laughed about it. To this day I can't stand in front of a mirror or see a photo of myself without thinking about how much I hate it, and how I hate my hairline and hair texture because I feel like wearing my hair down (which I perceive as more feminine) accentuates it.
In middle school I was the only girl in my friend group of the "nerdy" kids. The same boy from the example above would talk at length and in explicit detail about the body of another girl in our class (she had big boobs, I definitely do not). Flash forward to years and years of me spending tons of money on pushup bras, padding inserts, and daydreaming about boob jobs (of course I don't exclusively blame this one boy making stupid comments, but it really reinforced that I wasn't measuring up versus all the Victoria's Secret angel BS we had to deal with in the 2000s). Interestingly, motherhood made me feel more comfortable with my boobs as they are, I think because their functionality outweighed their appearance, haha. I still don't have the confidence to go bra-less, but I don't wear pushup bras anymore (mom life! comfort first!). Part of me longs to have another baby so I can have big boobs again at least while I'm breastfeeding (I mean, I am fully aware of how ridiculous that sounds. A whole ass baby, just for an extra cup size for a year or two??). I felt so feminine and confident in that time, and then when I was done, boom back to unfeminine old me. It's so true that there IS a degree of comfort/confidence/satisfaction that comes from conforming to beauty norms, and it's SO HARD to live with the discomfort of making a conscious choice not to do so.
When I was 16, I wanted to get on birth control and had to persuade my mom in a way that didn't look like I wanted it because I wanted to have sex, so I based it on the fact that I had irregular periods. I was on the cross country team and had some eating disorder type behaviors, so looking back I'm like, surely it was amenorrhea? But at any rate, she took me to the doctor, who diagnosed me with PCOS because I had irregular periods and "hirsutism" - folks I swear to you, I do not have hirsutism, I am just Latina. The diagnosis got me the prescription I wanted but I went most of my life believing there was something wrong with my body which (again) made me unfeminine and gross. My mom would buy me Jolen cream bleach which I would use on basically my entire freaking body - my face, my arms, my lower back. Later in my twenties, I spent thousands of dollars on full body laser hair removal treatments. Nowadays I can barely be bothered to shave, haha (although that probably has more to do with being an exhausted working mom than anything).
Looking back at all of these examples, EVERY SINGLE ONE can be traced to some misogynistic/patriarchal/white supremacist bullshit in the culture.
Damn, thank you for sharing all of this. I relate to so many points. Especially Jolen bleach!! I did my mustache with that for years and it ALWAYS broke me out.. like why did I even bother??
Yessss like the first (and only) time I waxed my moustache. I was like how is trading upper lip hair for instead a full coverage red zit moustache an improvement?
Jolen bleach omg you just brought back repressed memories 😉 you are not alone baby!! 💜
Are you me? Haha. We share a lot of experiences, from the name, to the nose, to the breast insecurities (assuming you're also approximately my age, because I distinctly remember the hold VS had on teen girls in the early 00s). I also have an aquiline nose, and I *hated* it for so long. I couldn't stand my face in profile. I remember going to one of those caricature artists as a 12-year-old at a theme park, and (not unexpectedly) they made my nose and braces ENORMOUS. It was like a confirmation that not only did *I* think my nose was unsightly, but everyone else noticed it was, too. I also remember putting tissue paper in my training bra in middle school, as it seemed like all the other girls were filling out while I was left behind.
Oh man, I want to give tween you a hug and tell her that there is nothing wrong with her! :( Truly, everyone needs to learn to leave adolescent girls TF alone. It was painful enough growing up then, I can only imagine how horrid it has to be for the current generation. There's so much lip service being paid to breaking down beauty standards, but without those standards, how would anyone ever sell anything? So they peddle the same shit but just in ever more creative ways. It reminds me of all the "girl power!" stuff our generation saw growing up, and yet society was just as misogynistic and horrible as ever, just in less obvious ways.
Aw, thank you :) Same! Also, I totally agree--it's all lip service and no action. In many ways, I feel like beauty standards are *worse.* At least when we were adolescents, the people we emulated were still human! Now it's all filters and freaky AI models and literally impossible-to-achieve standards like having no pores. It reminds me of this quote I read about racism--sorry I don't remember the origin--about how racism doesn't die out, it morphs to fit the norms of the new generation. I feel like that's true about the patriarchy and beauty standards as well. It makes me really concerned about my nieces and what they're going to have to go through. My sister won't let either of them have social media yet (the oldest is 13), fortunately!
Also, it goes without saying that navigating beauty standards as an adolescent was hard enough as a white passing Latina, I can only imagine how much it must suck for more marginalized groups.
I've been lucky to have had pretty good skin growing up. What I find hard in my 30s is the fear/rise of agism and beauty products. What are the things I should do to help my skin? What is fear of aging being marketed at me?
The other polarizing issue for me is body hair. haven't shaved my legs/armpits for about a decade (and part of it is privilege of having light body hair). My mom judges me pretty heavily about it and will push that I look a certain way for important events like weddings.
I had an ex that literally broke up with me over my body hair a year into our relationship (reader, I hadn't shaved for years before he met me). Sexual desirability and being seen as wanted gets wrapped up in it. But at the same time... bending for someone else when it comes to my hair makes me feel even worse. It's like: I get afraid of being sexually intimate at the same time as the thought of trimming/changing body hair brings up too much about pleasing someone else.
Tl;Dr I'm not sure I use beauty. I feel like my inability or desire to use it makes me feel strange and unwanted by potential sexual partners. Like I 'see' the game but don't know how to fully opt out of it.
"bending for someone else when it comes to my hair makes me feel even worse"... WOW. That captures how I feel about so much of beauty culture.
Botox is my coping mechanism. I've always been the "baby," society dictates that as an Asian woman I am to be ageless until I hit menopause, and my industry (beauty) values youth (but not too young). Looking 29 seems to be the right mark--you're experienced enough to have some authority, but not so old that you're "out of touch." Thus I Botox. Two times a year for the past 2 years. It makes me feel in control of something, especially when it feels like there are so much out of my control. But I can "relax" my lines into submission with bacteria toxin. The same toxin I learned about in my college course on bacterial pathogenesis.
I'm working on it. I'm in therapy. I'm trying to break free. But for now, I'm not ready.
Thank you for sharing this Gloria!! The control/submission point is SO good. Honestly, just acknowledging the emotional truths that guide our beauty decisions is HUGE. You don't have to break free or let go on any particular timeline.
This. I feel like my face fell down overnight and I couldn't cope. I hated my face so much I went and did the absolute extreme (in my "all natural lifestyle") opposite of what I value. I'm still not at the bottom of why I hated my face so much in the first place. Work in progress.
Getting to the bottom is a damn lifelong journey!
Random long-winded thoughts in reaction to this:
1. Thank you for raising this. I have never even thought about it before, much less talked about it, and didn’t realize how much I needed to!
2. If I read this when I was in college I would have gotten SO defensive! I remember so many people commenting on my thick winged eyeliner (one guy even said he didn’t recognize me when I didn’t have all that “black shit” on my eyes, lol) and I was so insistent that it was “FOR MYSELF, NOT FOR OTHER PEOPLE!” as if that even meant anything. Ultimately it was the only way I liked how I looked. If I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror without makeup, I felt horrible. I took it as an insult when people referred to me “hiding” behind my makeup, and in some cases those comments really were just an excuse to shame me for “wasting” time on something they thought looked weird, but in some cases I think people who actually cared about me were seeing that I was using it to cope with all the internalized misogyny and the rigid beauty standards I had set for myself.
3. This very much ties in with fatphobia for me. The more negatively I feel about my body, the more I focus on “beauty” when it comes to makeup. I walk that very unsustainable and uncomfortable line between awareness that these standards and expectations (both beauty and thinness) are tools of oppression and they’re ultimately bad for me, and still feeling like if I don’t comply, my life will only be harder, and I have to find a way to survive in the environment and culture that I’m a part of whether I like it or not. So I’m here mentally and emotionally saying “YES! We should not “have to” do any of this!,” and in the same breath, won’t go into an office setting without mascara and concealer, and always try to wear the most “flattering” clothes around my mother because it’s easier than broaching the topic of weight every time I see her.
YESSSSS. Especially point number 3. This hits on the fact that the standard of beauty is a range, a paradigm — e.g., we're allowed to gain a little weight as long as we have "a pretty face." Thank you for sharing all this <3
I relate to this sooooo hard. I keep thinking about when I choose to wear foundation/concealer (since I WFH 100% now, I only wear it for holidays or special occasions). It's usually when I know pictures might be taken, honestly, because I'm self-conscious about how I look. what am I going to do when I run out of foundation? Am I going to keep giving my money to this product or this industry?
I'm trying to kick some of my beauty habits but it's hard. It's hard to tell what I actually want and what I've been programmed to want / feel ashamed about (should I stop shaving my legs? Do I really like smooth legs or do I just feel embarrassed when I have hairy ones? why do hairy armpits feel OK to me but hairy legs don't? am I sending a bad message to my nephews when I wear makeup, am I contributing to how they view women?). I feel like I've been grappling this for so long but haven't made any real progress at eliminating those ideas from my head.
I recently quit smoking after smoking for 8+ years, and the main reason why WAS NOT concerns for my health (although that definitely factored in) - you can probably guess what it was, though: I felt like it was starting to age my skin and make me uglier. Yikes.
Asking yourself those questions IS real progress! That's huge. So many people never get there. And I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing to worry about how smoking affects your skin. It's important to remember that the skin exists as a communication tool — it changes color, texture, and reactions to alert us to potential health issues. In this case, smoking does affect the skin's ability to function and stay healthy. Your skin was telling you that and you listened! I know it's really hard, ongoing work to disentangle those two things — caring about your skin as a visual organ vs. caring about your skin's appearance alone — but to me, it sounds like you're getting there.
I'm just exhausted. It's hard to reconcile the intellectual and spiritual understanding of my innate femininity and worthiness outside of the western beauty paradigm with my severe body dysmorphia. I've recently had to face this head on after I was prescribed tretinoin for mild acne, which ended up thinning and damaging my skin and somehow causing a bunch of little veins to show up on my face. It's been literal hell trying to fast-track my emotional and spiritual healing process in order to cope with the daily anxiety of a changed face. My derm gaslighted the shit out of me and told me it was merely a coincidence (HOW???), and now I'm off all skincare products in an effort to at least calm my skin moving forward.
Just like you, I've worn makeup all my life as a mask. And now I feel as though I will always have the urge to wear makeup in order to cover up the damage tret caused. Breaking free from beauty culture feels so much harder with a mental illness that is entirely appearance-based, obsessive/compulsive, and debilitating. Sometimes it feels impossible. But I'm going to continue to try because I know that a soulful, peaceful life will never be attainable for me if I continue to base my entire mood, sense of self, and locus of control upon futile and unattainable appearance ideals.
I'm so sorry to hear about your tretinoin experience. I had a similar reaction to topical steroids and know how emotionally devastating it can be. And it totally feels impossible to divest from beauty culture sometimes. I like to remind myself that it's *completely* impossible to live up to beauty standards too though.
Thanks, queen. I do have a question for you! So I know that early in your healing process you weren't using any products at all (which is what I'm doing currently), and I was wondering what that timeline was like for you watching your skin react to not having products on it. Like does it take some time for skin to learn how to moisturize and take care of itself again? I've been trying to power through and let my skin reset, but I'm dealing with the skincare-culture-induced fears that I'm making things worse by not "treating" my dry skin and breakouts. When logically I'm fairly certain all of my problems are caused by my damaged skin barrier + internal issues that no amount of products can actually solve. Just looking for some hope that things will balance out eventually!! <3
I usually recommend at least a 28-day skin cycle for skin to adjust. I've written more about it here:
https://www.thezoereport.com/p/how-skin-fasting-helped-clear-my-complexion-in-just-one-week-18754339
And here:
https://fashionista.com/2019/08/how-to-know-if-skin-care-products-are-working
But also, the point of taking time off from skincare is to pinpoint which skin symptoms are a result of your skincare, and which actually require your attention. If your skin is still dry and breaking out after one or two skin cycles, that's a sign that that the "issues" are stemming from some internal source (diet, stress, hormones, etc).
first off, super generative to read this whole thread. I’m a hairstylist but I really don’t do grey coverage for people very often (I think that service is the most environmentally toxic to our bodies and the planet). I have thought long and hard about what is a necessary service that people can be creative about (I think haircuts are totally cool and would exist outside of capitalism) and what is feeding into our insecurities and beauty culture (and capitalism). I don’t think I have all the answers but it really helps to hear from all of you.
I think about this a lot. I work primarily with people experiencing homelessness. Have also worked with incarcerated folks. I'm often in awe at the fashion + self expression of appearance that people cultivate in spaces of scarcity - appearance deeply tied to survival. As the person employed in the field, I find my way to survive emotionally around the secondhand trauma is linking my outward appearance to my inward purpose.
Haircuts ARE cool and have totally existed outside of capitalism!! So many ancient, spiritual beliefs and rituals center around the hair. It's a huuuge part of identity and expression... the trick, I guess, is figuring out which behaviors are self-expression and which are self-rejection masquerading as expression
"Almost all of my beauty behaviors can be traced back to some sort of formative shame" - yes, absolutely, me too. There's a scene in "Legally Blonde" (one of my problematic faves) where Elle gets bad news (her ex is engaged to someone else quickly after their breakup) and to cope, she runs to a nail salon. Elle performs beauty instead of dealing with her feelings of rejection, betrayal and rage. This scene encapsulates how I've operated for most of my life. I have a bad day at work, I feel unappreciated and incompetent? I do a face mask instead of advocating for myself. I feel too fatigued and depressed to go after the thing I really want? I buy a new bold lipstick instead of facing the root of the depression. A dude friend points out my hairy Italian arms to me at age 14? I shave my arm hair AND leg hair AND buy a new mini skirt that will make him think again, rather than say to him "that's not cool, friend."
I deeply value all of Jessica's writing, and I get so much out of it. Something I've rubbed up against when discussing beauty performance pressure is gender performance, and I was wondering if anyone (Jessica?) has any thoughts on how to navigate these conversations. I was discussing how my BDD, my eating disorder, etc can be traced to the pressure to perform beauty with a group of friends recently. A queer friend noted that she deeply values beauty behaviors as they allow her to perform femininity when she wants to, like putting on a glamour or a costume. This same "costume" that helps her feel free and affirmed, has for me, a cis het woman, been an unrelenting pressure, exhausting, expensive, and harmful to me physically and mentally. Obviously different individuals have different experiences, but does anyone have any thoughts on discussing the systemic harms of how harmful the beauty industrial complex is to women while being mindful and respectful of gender performance?
Thank you for sharing all of this! I've written a bit about gender-affirming beauty behaviors before and it's definitely something I want to dive into more. But my general thought is this: When cis women perform gender by adhering to these impossible, made-up ideals that signal womanhood, we actually enforce the beauty gender binary and make it harder for trans and non-binary people to break out of it. The fact that beauty ideals ARE so gendered — thanks to beauty culture/cis peoples' perpetuation of beauty culture through beauty performance — increases feelings of dysphoria and dysmorphia for trans & non-binary people. It's on cis people to dismantle these ideals in pursuit of collective liberation from gendered beauty standards. But it's like anything else; what feels freeing to someone can feel oppressive to someone else. For trans folks, there is a LOT of freedom that comes from performing gender via beauty. But so much of that comes from the fact that our culture's aesthetic gender ideals are so oppressively narrow. There's also a big difference between a cis person performing standardized "beauty" (trying to adhere to an EXTERNAL ideal prescribed by an outside force) and a trans person communicating their gender (wanting to align with an INTERNAL knowledge of one's actual gender, coming from one's own instinct, intuition, and emotional/mental understanding of the self).
Thank you for this comprehensive reply! "It's on cis people to dismantle these ideals in pursuit of collective liberation from gendered beauty standards" - absolutely, yes, and I think places like this that encourage all of us to investigate our relationship to gendered beauty standards is a great jumping off point for collective liberation action. I'll look into the archives for more on gender-affirming beauty behaviors!
I think the difference between you and your queer friend is about expression. Your friend modifies their appearance as an act of self-expression (an external expression of an authentic part of their inner self), whereas you and other women 🙋🏼♀️ who perform beauty aren't expressing themselves but expressing a standard imposed by others.
So well said, thank you! I will definitely borrow your language if/when it comes up again
Shaving, waxing, makeup, so much money on hair dying, anxiety about the right clothes, anxiety about not having enough money to buy the right clothes, irresponsible debt to buy clothes and shoes. I should’ve bought a condo when I was in my 20s but wasn’t really in the right head space for it. I’m not against beauty and believe you feel better when you look good, but we need to check the standards bc they are not realistic or attainable
You know this one time I actually added up the annual hours of unpaid overtime and total out-of-pocket expenses that only women have to expend for work on a spreadsheet.
Guess what! It's terrible! Daily makeup alone is around 125 hrs unpaid overtime per year. (30 mins per day for a standard full-time employee, including application of compensatory skincare and cleanser).
Or you could say simply applying professional makeup daily devalues female labor by 7.5%.
And property ownership is such a huge part of generational wealth - you give such a good example of how this seemingly minute stuff can snowball into genuine social disadvantages.
Oh my God this is AMAZING information
Yup, using Excel to prove second-wave feminism was right!!
You TOTALLY feel better when you look good. But like you said... when "looking good" = adhering to unattainable standards, it's a dangerous path to "feeling better." Also "irresponsible debt" in service to beauty standards... so relatable!!
Allllll of my investment into my appearance (makeup, highlights, skincare, injectables) is in reaction to fear that others will see me as incompetent and worth less than my peers. My earliest memory of coping with the shame of being perceived as “less than” began with straightening my very curly hair and begging my mom for the “Rachel” haircut that all of the popular/athletic/straight A girls were getting. At its most difficult, my beauty as coping manifested as an eating disorder that spanned decades. I cultivated the belief that if I look like I “have my shit together” I can convince myself and others that I actually have my shit together. Looking “perfect” protected me from the shame of being less than perfect. I still struggle under these beliefs, but it’s getting easier as I near 40. I’m so grateful for this resource as I continue to divest from the systems that diminish our spirits. Thank you for this work Jessica!
Thank you so much for sharing all this. "I cultivated the belief that if I look like I 'have my shit together' I can convince myself and others that I actually have my shit together"... THIS is truly the heart of beauty for so many of us!!
So I quit skincare and makeup two and a half years ago. It was a combo of reasons (mostly because I was a new mother and had zero time, energy, or inclination for it all), but somehow I went from being someone who spent thousands a year on beauty, hadn't felt comfortable leaving the house without makeup since she was pubescent, and had chronic skin problems, to being someone who wears makeup maaaaybe once every couple of weeks and considers running a warm washcloth over her face at night "a routine". I've learnt so much about myself and beauty over the last few years, but this post has got me reflecting on what little things I'm still hung up on.
1. Facial hair. I used to shave my entire face every week. I have pretty heavy peach fuzz on my cheeks and forehead, and grow a blonde moustache that glints golden in sunlight. I don't do the full shave anymore (and my skin is so much healthier for it), but still get rid of the moustache. I have a strong memory of a male friend of mine in high school pointing it out to all his other friends and laughing at it. I even told him about it when we caught up a couple of years ago, and he was horrified, but that shame runs deep. So the golden moustache still gets the chop every week.
2. Leg hair. I recently experimented with letting my leg hair grow out AND baring my legs in public. Kept them at full growth for about two months. Gotta say, that's still a tricky one for me-- I'm back to shaving semi-regularly. I just can't wear a dress, look down at my hairy legs, and feel okay about it. The only thing time I felt good, interestingly enough, was in a bikini at the beach. The closer I was to being nude (and the tanner my skin), the more I felt comfortable in my natural state. When I finally shaved them again, it did take me about a week to not look at my legs and think, "Weird, I'm bald," so I think my perspective is shifting on this one. I'm going longer stretches between shaves.
3. Eyebrows. I went through a bout of trichotillomania postpartum with my first child. I had experienced it as a side effect of anxiety in the past, but fortunately my brows had always grown back with time. This time, not so much. Due to the depleted state my body was in after giving birth, plus the hormonal changes that occured with motherhood, my eyebrows barely grew back in, and what did grow back was a barely visible shade of wiry white. I've been waiting for them to change back, but two years in and it seems like this is just their new colour. It ages me so much, and makes me look sickly. I struggle to look at my odd, bi-coloured brows (I only pulled out the outer half, so the inner half of my brows are still more-or-less the same as ever) and not feel some shame. I generally enjoy the ageing process, I like getting older, and I like how my emerging wrinkles make me look, but when I see my eyebrows I can't help but think, "Yep, I hit The Wall and there's no going back." So, yeah, brow product is the only thing I put on when I'm trying to make myself look casually "presentable'.
4. Wearing a bra. Not sure if this is what you're talking about, but I definitely only wear a bra these days for beauty standard-related reasons. I much prefer being braless, but am way too self-conscious about my lopsided, saggy milkers (lol, yay motherhood) to forgo a bra. It's not even my boobs that bother me, as I don't mind them when I'm naked, it's just under clothing I still expect them to appear a certain way. The word 'presentable' pops up in my head again. I don't feel presentable without a bra. (Presentable to whom? Am I a present?)
I'm sure there are other things. In general, I'm proud of how far I've come with my self-image and how I view beauty these days. I am so glad to have mostly quit skincare and makeup. I'm now at a place where beauty for me is the same as health and happiness. When I feel healthy and happy, I feel beautiful. This is how I see beauty in others too. But there are still a couple of niggling things that I haven't been able to let go of yet. A lot of it comes down to how I look in clothing. I can accept and love my naked body, but as soon as I get dressed, I start expecting myself to look a certain way. It will be interesting to see where I'm at in another two and half years.
Loved your points on wearing a bra and looking "presentable." I will go braless when my dress or top is loose-fitting, so you can't really see the outline of my breasts. But wearing a fitted top? Even with nipple covers, I can't do it. It's like I expect my breasts to look like cut-in-half cantaloupes perched jauntily below my collarbones. (ETA: And I don't feel the same naked! Naked, I'm totally fine with my breasts.)
I relate to all of these as a first time mother of a toddler but #4 is SO REAL. I can't even walk the dog without a bra on but bras as SO uncomfortable, especially as a nursing mom. I just can't bring myself to be seen by anyone other than my husband or child with uneven boobs and i'm constantly trying to figure out why not?
Thank you so much for sharing all of this!! I relate to a lot of your points... facial hair, shaving, and eyebrows are big ones for me. And omg, I could write an essay on "presentable."
Please write an essay on "presentable"! It's a big one for me and something I've heard all my life from women.
I so resonate with the bra point. I don’t have kids, but for pretty much as long as I’ve had boobs, they’ve always been big, downward-pointing, and saggy. When I was a teenager I felt so self-conscious for having “grandma boobs” and I still find it hard to go braless in public unless I have something baggy on. I did read an article a while back (maybe on the lingerie addict? I can’t remember now) about how our current, very round, perky version of how boobs are supposed to look is just as much of a “trend” as the pointy, bullet bra styles of the 1950s and that blew my mind. Still working on the confidence to go braless more often, but just knowing these standards are made up and arbitrary helps a little. Maybe we’ll look back on this time and think that we looked just as strange as the pointy-nippled sweater gals of the 1950s.
Ooh the bullet bra thing is such a good point. I have giant, saggy boobs and haven't worn a bra in ~4 years. It's definitely weird at first but after a couple months of pushing through, it stopped feeling so strange/aggressive and now it just feels natural
So all these answers are going to go real deep real fast. Here's something wild that happened to me. Last year my Mom was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and pretty quickly lost her hair during chemo. As a Filipino woman, it was a huge shift for her not to have her glossy thick black hair - grappling with cancer and impending death also included the mortality of her self image. In my agony of anticipatory grief and not wanting her to go through this alone, I shaved off my long black hair too. Didn't think twice. But after the fact YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE the shit I got. All of a sudden I encountered strange ass unsolicited comments and questions about my appearance - and about my sexuality! The utter hostility and microaggression from men!! Mom and I got wigs and other fun cranium accessories. When I was at work or out and about, I put on much more makeup and jewelry and felt some internalized pressure to look more stylish or feminine. With her, the only beauty that mattered was our love and her comfort. During hospice, my Mom had the sweetest soft baby hair growing back, and in her last days, she showed me true beauty and strength. <3
So much more beauty, joy, and awareness is found in the letting go. Letting go of beauty definitions, habits, and comments from others takes some reminding. Thank you for sharing this💕
Ashley, I LOVE that you did this with your mama, and also relate so hard to unsolicited and just straight-up WEIRD comments about sexuality directed at women with shorter hair. My experience was bizarre--like, suddenly just being at a bar, men would come up to and make comments that basically amounted to, "I'm attracted to you, but your haircut is signaling to me that you might not like men, can you please clarify?" Obviously not that direct, but certainly more direct than when they were assuming I was hetero/cis and would have probably just said, "hi." Not to mention the other blatant micro-homophobias that weren't inquiries so much as statements. It opened my eyes to just one of the many we inject coded meaning into appearance in the most messed up ways.
Your love for your mama is true beauty and strength, too. Thank you for sharing!
thank you for commenting all this too <3 yup, totally relate to this. so it's wild it's 2022 and stereotypes (?) persist about women or people read as women, who have short hair. My mother's and my experience opened my eyes to the various conditions and disabilities and other reasons leading to hair loss. There are some amazing forums and writings by people with alopecia, especially recently by Ayanna Presley, about image, identity, and hair that I've learned from too. Bottom line on all this, Patriarchy is ableist AF!!!
This is so, so beautiful Ashley. Thank you for sharing that <3
Wow. So I am def aware that nearly all of my beauty routines are coping mechanisms. And, honestly I’m ok being called out on it too. But these days the big one is foundation/redness reducing on my face. I went through a very gnarly separation and divorce (lying, gaslighting, cheating with a woman who worked for him and was in our lives for 10 years.) Anyway…during that state of constant stress for 2 years I developed rosacea that has never gone away. I can’t bring myself to NOT cover it up. It’s like a reminder, a sign of my unworthiness, a glaring red light (pun) to any other suitors that screams, “stay away, she’s too much (according to my ex), she’s unlovable.” Anyway, I cover it…for all kinds of oppressive patriarchal reasons. Sigh. Oh…and also…FUCK HIM. 😏
This is so relatable! I went through a similarly nasty divorce several years ago and suddenly I developed acne, which I had never had before, even as a teenager. I bought SO MANY PRODUCTS to try to fix it (nothing helped), tried out all different types of hormonal birth control (meh), and started using prescription retinoids. Horrible. It did go away after about five years. But that experience made me 100% believe in the idea that our skin is an outward manifestation of our inner life.
So very true…and you give me hope! Maybe this will go away on its own in time. Ive actually stopped using a lot of products and now only use mild soap and jojoba/rosehip oil. I mean other than the coverup. I’m very hesitant to go to the Derm and get “stuff” for it. Maybe I’ll just wait it out and keep taking care of the rest of me.
Yeah, fuck him. 🧡
I get that!!! I relate so hard. I'm convinced my chronic dermatitis was stress-induced around my (now ex) husband and whenever it flares up, it's a like a reminder of all the stress and heartbreak of that relationship. (But yes... fuck him!)
Ugh, I am soo sorry that you, or anyone else, has to deal with this particular kind of stress. I swear those years triggered some autoimmune issues in my body. In fact, I know they did because of some lab work, etc…I could write a whole blog myself about how infidelity and gaslighting are abuse, especially because of the very real physical toll it takes on a partner. Our poor skin picking up the slack from bad (putting it mildly) partners. Big hug to you.
Oh no I feel this so much. My situation is very like this. I think some coping mechanisms we really do need, at least for a period of time. At least if we're watching our motivation for doing this or that beauty thing, we may eventually get to a point where we can re-evaluate, and might not need it anymore.
Totally agree that some coping mechanisms are necessary! I think the point I hope to get across is that so many people (women especially) aren't aware that they're using beauty as a coping mechanism and perpetuating this idea of "I do it for me! I love this!" and it's like... the REASON you love it is much, much deeper and deserves to be addressed as its own separate thing.
Jessica, your writing has helped me practice being really honest with myself about why I do the beauty things I do. It's been very enlightening!
I had been working on trying to deconstruct my attachment to alll the beauty things, and then my husband of 11 years suddenly left me. My mind is spinning out with all the things I need to do so I can find love again; lose 15 pounds, straighten my teeth, do something prettier with my hair etc. I know intellectually that's not how you find love, but it's wild how ingrained in my mind these mechanisms are for seeking validation. I know it won't help me through the grief of being rejected by the one person who knew my whole heart and still left, but it kind of feels like at least trying will help me convince myself that I'm working on moving past this. Waiting for time to heal me, and therapy, and reading, and walking really don't feel like enough; like I'll only win if I come out of this with a divorce glow up! It's so stupid.
I'm so, so sorry to hear that. I went through a divorce fairly recently too and can relate to a lot of what you're saying. It's also like... let's not gaslight ourselves here! Men are just as brainwashed by beauty standards as we are. The pressure to embody the beauty ideal is REAL because the pressure is applied... by media, by celebs, by men. So what you're feeling isn't just in your head. I think the real "win" is doing exactly what you're doing — mindfully examining your feelings and your choices and being gentle with yourself, whatever comes up.
Starting somewhere around middle school I started to notice and care and feel bad about my appearance. "ew your legs are hairy" etc.
My neighbors joked around a lot with me, and one day they jokingly said I have a 'white mans nose'. (I am Russian Jewish). I laughed it off, but I was mortified. I looked and noticed it was "true." I did not look like Brittany Spears or J.Lo or any of the girls I saw put on pedestals for their conventional beauty. decades long insecurities. I started to notice my curly hair and its frizz. I thought I looked horrendous. Social anxiety was starting to build inside me, and looking 'hot' can help you in a lot of awkward situations. Or playing dumb.
I wore lots of coverup to help blend my nose into my face with dark eyeliner. I avoided rain, all water, beaches (I live in Florida), and sweating from jogging and heavy exercise so that my straighten hair wouldn't be ruined. Part of my hair was burned off from a poorly done relaxing job. Worst of all, I spent hours on hours obsessing about my looks in negative ways, which, even at all, should be a minimal thought! Later, going to therapy to deal with real issues, made a lot of the fabricated ones smaller.
I learned how to cope with my anxiety, face and reframe my thoughts, be mindful. Also that I had actual beliefs that "my worth was vastly lower because of my looks."
In my 30s I have started to embrace curls and my nose and my natural state. Almost wearing no makeup (but... still a little something), & almost fully convincing myself ... IT DOESN'T MATTER THAT MUCH. Still trying to fully grasp that. This blog is so helpful for maintaining those loving positive beliefs
Thank you so much for sharing all of this!! It makes me so happy to hear that you've been able to contextualize all of that as "conditioned beliefs" vs. "beauty truths" and address the underlying anxiety... it's a leap that so many people never make. But yeah... the work is ongoing!! Maintenance required lol.
I'm naturally a redhead, but for part of my teens and early 20s, I dyed my hair black because I just wanted to be left alone. It's wild the number of strangers who think it is appropriate to just grab/touch you when you have an unusual natural hair color. Also, in stereotypical beauty as a coping mechanism fashion, I used to give myself what might be best described as "at-home depression haircuts."
Lmao, at-home depression haircuts. I have had so many of those. It's been a few years since my last one. I recently started cutting my own hair again. This time, though, I'm not doing it from a place of self-hatred and desperation, I'm doing it from a place of creativity. The mindset shift is huge. I have fun cutting my hair now and can laugh at the sometimes uneven results. It's a very expressive thing, no longer about making myself look hot.
Hair is *such* a big one! I wrote an Allure article about it once — we process our hair instead of processing our feelings.
It's so sad (but also empowering) when you're finally able to realize that you're just trying to control something (your hair, the way your face looks) when the rest of your life feels so out of control.
I've realized a LOT, if not most, of my beauty routines came from coping mechanisms to alleviate my feelings of ugliness, awkwardness, not-fitting-in-ness. I started shaving in the fifth grade, after a mean girl made fun of my leg hair (and my hair is blonde and barely noticeable!). I wore mascara because my eyelashes are lighter in color and I felt they were "too short" and "not visible enough." I wore concealer because of dark circles (what dark circles? I was 20!) and acne. I never felt like my bare face or my natural body was pretty enough or good enough. I've spent a lot of time in the past few years reflecting and trying to root that stuff out. I think I'm somewhat lucky in the sense that I never *really* enjoyed a lot of it or got good at it--especially makeup--and so it was easier to see it as a bad coping mechanism instead of something "I totally do for me!!" So I've stopped wearing makeup and winnowed down my skincare routine to the very basics. That said, I still use my prescriptions for my adult cystic acne, because it's hormonal, it won't go away, and on top of my cultural conditioning to view it as unsightly, it's also really freaking painful. I'm not really sure how to "be okay" with cysts on my face that are agonizing when I touch them, or if I'll ever get there, or if I even need to? This is also my first spring/summer going out with all my body hair, and so far I still feel nervous about how other people will perceive/judge me--oddly, a lot more so than when I started going without makeup.
I was just commenting about this to Val Monroe yesterday. She linked to an essay she'd written last March about looking at one's self with loving awareness as a salve for the impulse to "have work done." I have to say, I am amazed by the way I've considered procedures (Botox & a boob job) as a means of side-stepping the GRIEF that would come from looking at myself with deep truth and vulnerability and saying I LOVE YOU, YOU ARE GOOD AND YOU ARE DETERIORATING. (Because... you're alive.)
What the beauty industry sells us is a side-step around the existential pangs of our own humanity. It's so truly American. Just go DO something rather than passively let something be done TO you (like, say, gravity). It's manifest destiny on the body. But truly a shocking realization for me yesterday to see that I--a deep-thinking, sane person--might rather be cut open than have to look hard at my vulnerability and the grief that comes with it.
Thanks for your work, it is NECESSARY.
"manifest destiny on the body" - brilliant, so well said!
Wow you put this so perfectly. This explains my "divorce glow up" instinct. I feel like I need to be doing something! Like the healing can't just be internal, other people have to be able to see it. Haha how wrong.
"What the beauty industry sells us is a side-step around the existential pangs of our own humanity." This comment is EVERYTHING!!!
Oh, man, that cuts deep! "I LOVE YOU, YOU ARE GOOD AND YOU ARE DETERIORATING."
This is me and hair dye - I created a whole persona of 'the redhead' for years...
YES! I did the same with black hair, then blonde hair...
Ah yes, I remember my younger self thinking "once I can get my skin perfectly smooth, poreless and blemish-free, THEN I'll stop anxiously picking at it, obviously"
cos, that was the problem, lollolol
Lol. "If I squeeze just one more blackhead, then my skin will finally be pure."
I relate SO HARD
This is probably not the answer you are looking for, but the other day, when I was feeling frustrated about something outside of my control, I took a pair of scissors to my head and sheared off three inches and gave myself what might very generously be described as a "shag." I thought it would make me feel all better, somehow. It did not! And now I need to go get it cleaned up by my hairdresser.
I feel like this 'transformation' topic is just like when you go on vacation or extended travel thinking that you are going to somehow be a magically changed person, and you come back from your trip realising you are still the same! Either way, I feel like how we are marketed to plays into this mindset on a whole host of levels.
It's a perfect answer and very relatable haha. I do this with my bangs all the time and it's never once worked out for me
Lol. Actually, my bangs I've got down—I trim them every two weeks or so. Made me over-confident about cutting the rest, I suppose.
Love to hear that!! Thank you for being here :)
Omg, what a horrible 6th grade activity. Just proves to me that so much of beauty culture conditioning comes from our peers rather than media/celebs/etc. It's so much closer to home than we think.
Thank you so much for sharing all of this!! What incredible insights, especially this line: "The solutions I kept trying were the problem." YES!!! I'm so happy to hear the jojoba is working out for you.