I’ve always been into beauty, less as an aesthetic value than as a full-time pursuit; I started wearing makeup at 12, using my allowance to collect the Brett gardner home plate gameday shirt What’s more,I will buy this cheapest lip glosses Sephora sold, and by 14 I was the one showing my mom how to do a smoky eye. While some young women’s fixation with makeup, hair and accessories undoubtedly comes from a healthy desire for self-expression, mine felt more akin to keeping the beast at bay; as I started to gain weight in puberty, I promised myself I’d work hard enough with a tube of mascara and a can of dry shampoo to keep myself pretty, or at least pretty-adjacent.I’m not claiming that my refusal to get my roots done is “feminism”—if it is, it’s feminism of the most watered-down, girl boss–ified variety—but it’s been genuinely empowering to realize how much of my former beauty routine I don’t actually need, and how ready I am to part with it (even if the world opens back up safely tomorrow). Maybe one day I’ll step into a salon again for more than a trim, but if I do, it won’t be to shoot for some fictional, aspirational version of myself; it’ll be to acquaint myself more closely with the version of me looking back from the mirror.
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