I am addicted and I am not afraid to admit it. Let me rephrase that…I am addicted to make-up and I am not afraid to admit it. I am that girl who refuses to spend money on a shirt that is over $15 dollars, but will buy a tube of mascara that is $28 from Chanel. I fear for the day that I run out of my favorite foundation and can’t make it to my local Sephora (where the employees all know me by name). I wasn’t always this way, but when you fall in love…you fall hard and it’s uncontrollable.
I was the girl who wasn’t allowed to wear “real make-up” until freshman year of high school; I wasn’t interested in wearing make-up at this time, so waiting wasn’t the issue. Although, all of this changed when my step-mom bought me my first Cover Girl mascara in a natural shade of brown. I wore it to school the next day and continuously asked my friends if they noticed anything different. Of course, they said no and had no clue what I was talking about. My sophomore year, I made the huge leap to black mascara and foundation! This was also the same year that I discovered Sephora and came to understand what I was missing out on. Since then, Sephora and Ulta have been gladly taking my paychecks. The thrill about make-up is that there is always something new to buy. Companies are always coming out with new lines and palettes, so you are never bored! Whenever I leave Sephora, I can’t wait to get home and play with my new purchases.
Fun Fact: Make-up makes me so excited that I cried on Christmas day when I opened a gift from my parents and was greeted with the Naked 3 palette by Urban Decay.
The downside of having a love for make-up is the fact that you’re rarely satisfied. Whenever I look through magazines and see advertisements for beauty products, I get excited, buy them, try them, but never see the same results that were displayed in the ad. In addition to creating an abundance of products, the beauty industry has developed an unattainable definition of “beauty”. I could have a great “make-up day” and still not be satisfied because my complexion doesn’t glow in the same way that it did in the magazine. In result of this I feel bad because I don’t look like the models; is there a danger in make-up because it makes you think you can look a certain way? I think so. Even though I love my make-up and have a lot of fun with it, I do feel that make-up is a gateway into trying to obtain a definition of beauty that cannot be reached.
The message that I am trying to get across is the idea that you need to stay true to yourself; love yourself even when your face isn’t painted. Although it may sound cheesy, we are all beautiful in our own way and we need to start embracing it. Will I ever stop loving make-up? Probably not, because what would my Benefit mascara and Tarte foundation do without me?! But really, my “addiction” to make-up has opened up my perspectives of the beauty industry, helping me realize that I need to rely on my own personal beauty before I rely on the products I paint on my face everyday.