Years later, after surviving a traumatic and abusive relationship (and discovering feminism), I learned that there are worse things than going out without makeup. There are worse things than being perceived as 'ugly'. As trite as it sounds, what’s on the inside matters most, and covering your pain with makeup doesn’t make anything okay. It doesn’t make you better, stronger, or prettier than anybody else. In fact, performative femininity is toxic because it perpetuates the patriarchal ideology that women exist to be objectified and sexualised. When you make an active effort to look 'pretty' or 'feminine' for anybody but yourself, you play right into that toxicity. The truth is that women don’t owe performative beauty or femininity to anyone, and you don’t have to conform to traditional representations of womanhood in order to be taken seriously. What matters most is who you are on the inside and that person should be someone who knows her own worth and likes who she is.
adherence to patriarchal beauty standards leads to acceptance and validation, it can be hard to know if your relationship with femininity is really your own. I do believe that you can enjoy being feminine without conforming to toxic beauty standards. It just takes a little bit of critical thought. For example, my favourite colour is pink and I think I own every eyeshadow palette Too Faced has ever made, but I don’t wear makeup all the time anymore. I don’t enjoy traditionally feminine aesthetics because I believe it will make me more acceptable to other people. In an active effort to distance myself from my own former toxic behaviour, I’ve also gone out in public barefaced on a number of occasions, and shockingly, it didn’t make me hate myself!
Now when I do wear makeup, it’s because pretty eyeshadow palettes make me happy or because I love the way a certain lipstick matches my sweater. However, with or without makeup, I still sometimes struggle It takes a long time to unlearn the culture with wondering if I'm 'pretty enough' but of performative femininity that girls absorb I've learned to stop letting these thoughts like osmosis. It takes strength to evaluate define my choices, my self-image, or my your choices on a regular basis and ask self-worth. At the end of the day, what yourself, 'Am I doing this because this matters is that everything I do or don't wear makes me happy? Or because I’ve been is ultimately for me. brainwashed to believe it makes me happy?' When we are conditioned to believe that
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APPEARANCE & ATTRACTION
