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The No-Makeup Experiment
What quitting makeup taught me about femininity, people pleasing, and beauty
In my seventh-grade school photo, I’m wearing lipstick that’s almost brown, a la ’90s-era Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Lopez, and Kate Moss. My friend Arielle, a grade above me, had shared it with me the morning before our photos were taken.
When my mother finally received the picture, she must have been upset, despite her outwardly understated reaction. I hadn’t asked permission, or told her what I’d done, and it was the first school photo where I was wearing noticeable makeup. I don’t remember if she told me outright that it looked ugly (this seems out of character) or if she just took a sharp breath and asked what I’d been thinking in a way that made clear my mistake. Or maybe, upon seeing the photo, even without my mother’s reaction, it simply became obvious to me that the look was not working. Regardless, the end result was the same: no more lipstick, not for me. Luckily, gloss came into popularity and stayed in my purse, and the question of lipstick became a non-issue for the next decade.
As a young girl I’d longed for (but was not allowed to have) Barbies, until my aunt and uncle went rogue and gifted me one in a way my parents couldn’t prevent. That first Barbie was a gateway drug; I became obsessed, in…
