My mother’s idea of
natural childbirth was
giving birth without makeup.
Robin Williams
Comedy Central’s Amy Schumer parodies our beauty standards in this video “Girl, You Don’t Need Makeup.” We’re in on the joke if we admit how compulsively we submit to the judgment of others, particularly to the itinerant male gaze.
“You look better without makeup,” my husband used to tell me as a young bride and I’d stare back at him incredulously. I was blind to his point of view so his compliment bordered on ludicrous.
Having been raised with Western beauty as the ideal, my small eyes were the biggest thing I wished I weren’t born with. Kids with “normal” eyes teased, “Do you see half as much as we do?” My grandmother offered the best use of my first paycheck, “You should have slits done on your eyelids!” Too chicken for a cosmetic procedure my paycheck could not have covered anyhow, I piled on five layers of eye shadow each morning in a futile attempt to make my eyes look wider, bigger, less Asian. Several women in our family wore a similar patch of black eyeliner on the eyelids, mimicking that fold of skin our slanted eyes forgot to have. For most of my youth, no force on earth could have convinced me that almond eyes are beautiful.
Then my kids started rolling in. The second child was enough to make me feel sufficiently outnumbered and spread thin. Only two hands to get two kids dressed, fed and rushed to school? Something had to give! I lay down those makeup brushes in surrender.
Sixteen years later, it is now a mystery how I thought starting the day with heavy makeup was a bright idea. With three teens testing parental boundaries, small eyes see enough for me to handle. And will I swear off makeup completely? Not likely! What’s the point (and the fun) of being a woman if we didn’t have options, my dear–and plenty of them!
In behalf of those who eschew makeup because they can, this Powerful Goddess glamorously bares it. She is of that rare breed who firmly believes she is most beautiful without it. Why, even the blind can see that! Ah-men.
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© Sharon Birke
201 697 1947
Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com
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