crayons and faces do not mix

Nov. 8: Think of something that truly repulses you. Hold that thought until your skin squirms. Now, write a glowing puff piece about its merits.

Well everyone, I must confess.

Whenever I look at a woman’s/girl’s face, I have a mental checklist. The list doesn’t check proportions or piercings. No, instead I look to see how much make up the woman/girl has on. Usually the items I run through are normal, run-of-the-mill make up items like concealer, mascara, eyeliner, etc. and they tend to be applied properly. Of course, since I’m not one for wearing make up daily, I tend to think that even that’s a little heavy, but whatever. It’s not a big deal. Until I see someone like this:

Living in Dubai makes seeing a face like this almost…common. Which sucks because even after 3 years I haven’t yet acclimatized to it. Ugh.

Yeah. Seeing people like that is something that makes me have multiple internal heart attacks. I can control showing an outward reaction though. I’ve managed to train down the initial gag reflex to a cringe and sudden interest in a piece of wall, or floor, depending on where I am.

I have seriously never understood the need to put on pancake thick layers of make-up. Apart from stage make-up, no other make-up needs to be so thick that you notice the layers of paint before you notice the person’s face. It actually, truly disgusts me. The only things that those layers of make-up do are ruin your skin and broadcast to the world how insecure you are about your actual face. That is not a good thing at all.

The worst part for me is that those are the two things I immediately think of when I see too thick make-up, so apart from the gross plastic-y look, I imagine really bad skin (worse than mine, even!) and someone who is so sad and insecure that they need a literal mask on to go out and face the world. So yeah. Those two factors just make the whole ‘Oops-I-fell-into-a-box-of-Crayola-and-can’t-get-up’ look that much worse for me. It stops being just gross and becomes sad as well, and honestly, I am not equipped to deal with feeling that much emotion just from looking at a person’s face. I’m just not.

For those who claim to like that type of look, I call bullshit. To explain, let me break this down into groups. To the people who don’t actually apply that much make up but say it looks nice, I bet you’re one of those people who still think that Barbie is the ultimate ideal of beauty. Which is why you like the look of plastic and kind of scary frigid looking. I urge you to re-think this. It just excludes all the people who are beautiful but don’t fit into the great ‘Western Ideal’ of beauty. Also, on a less superficial level, it just isn’t healthy for women to keep doing that stuff to their faces. I’ve listed 2 reasons above, but I’m confident there are more.

These lovely ladies are the type of beauty that would go extinct of the population of Oompa Loompa hybrids keeps expanding.

To the people who put on layer upon layer of make up just because “Duh, it looks good”, let me just tell you it doesn’t. Psychologically, people generally tend to feel comforted by and more attracted to things that remind them of people. You cannot induce those subconscious warm-fuzzies when you look more like plastic than flesh and bone. It’s not possible. Look, I don’t mean to repeat myself, but again, this habit will kill your skin and most likely your self-esteem. Please do not do that to yourself.

Ugh. I’ve gone on too long, and thought too hard about something that completely grosses me out. I’m going to go watch “Wreck It-Ralph” and forget about how long I spent thinking this now.

Bye, thanks for reading, and if this grossed you out too, I’m sorry my comrade. We will suffer through this together.

Love,

Jos

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