Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

I hate beauty products. A lot. I wear no makeup. My feeling is that this is what I look like, so why pretend it isn’t? Why on earth would I get up early, sacrificing precious minutes of sleep, to smear crap on my face so that I look like something that I do not actually look like? Plus, makeup is expensive. If I don’t buy it, I can waste my hard earned dollars on other useless products, or save it for retirement. I’d rather look semi-fugly in my youth/middle age than be forced to eat cat food in my old age.

Speaking of old age, I am pretty sure that I will be a wrinkled old hag (as opposed to the smooth faced old hag I am now) when I am older. This is because I never, ever use moisturizer, unless my face is so dry that portions of it are cracking off, which has happened. You know what? Old people have wrinkles. Deal with it. I will be proud of my wrinkles, as I am sure that I will have earned every single one of them, especially frown lines. (OK, laugh lines, too.) Moisturizer that doesn’t gum up my pores and cause acne is too expensive. Why waste it on daily use unless I have to?

Here is another horrifying confession: I shun tans. I like being pale. My people are from cold areas. We are very white so that we can soak up every ounce of Vitamin D and not get rickets. It serves a purpose. Tans are like makeup for the entire body. I've gone on vacations to warm places and when I got back, people weren't convinced that I actually went where I said I was going. I'm sure I'll be as ghostly pale upon my return from the DR next week as I am today. (Part of my shunning of the sun will result in me having less wrinkles when I am older, but so goes it. Hopefully it will also result in me not getting skin cancer as well.)

Part of the pressure to look perfect comes from an increasingly unreal standard set by the media and beauty industry. Thanks to photo retouching on magazines, ads, etc., I always feel like I am some super fat fuck. The truth is that I am just a regular average person, and in fact, don't look that much worse than models before they were touched up. My friend forwarded me a link to a campaign sponsored by the Swedish government to combat increasing rates of plastic surgery in their country, which they understood was partly due to ludicrous beauty standards that no real person can achieve. The http://demo.fb.se/e/girlpower/retouch/ allows you to deconstruct a magazine cover and undo the touch ups. Look, the model is very pretty before the touch up, there's no doubt about it. It's amazing how much retouching they do, though. They don't show how armpits and legs are airbrushed so that no stubble shows, but it's still great.

Be a CUSSie and resist the power, whether it be the pressure to be artificially hairless and smooth, have a ginormous bust, or perfect white teeth!