… the world and casting directors will thank you.
I have struggled with my weight for pretty much my entire life. It started at age 7 when puberty decided to plague me with its annoying existence (there’s nothing cool about being a C cup in elementary school.) With a rack and hips the same size as girls in high school, I felt like an outsider amongst my peers and especially amongst all my female friends (whom have always been the thinnest and prettiest.. go figure.) The humility resulted in me stopping the only sport I ever took part in (swimming… I didn’t even get back into a swimsuit until age 17) and instead I became an AWESOME eater. In middle school I was pushing 200 lbs. which for a person as small as me (5’2”,) made me feel like an oompa loompa. I didn’t want to be known as “the fat girl” so instead; I found other ways to stand out. The easiest way to do that was through makeup.
It was Halloween of 7th grade, I had no costume but had found a tiered tube of different loose neon eye shadow powders and a stick of transparent glitter Wet n Wild lipstick (thank you God for since creating eye shadow primers and glues.) Using the sticky glittery lipstick concoction, I applied it to my eyelid and then carefully applied the neon colors in full rainbow spectrum. Thus marks the birth and creation of what I now refer to as, my makeup mask. I had other ways of escaping “me,” I was active in the drama club (hello other life passion!) but I couldn’t hide behind a character every second of every day so instead I hid behind my makeup. Rainbow eye shadow with glitter liner with a purple tear drop below my eye (yea…..the teardrop was retired after discovering that it was a big trend amongst prison inmates charged with manslaughter.) The point was when people saw me with my friends they weren’t thinking, “hey look at that fat punk girl with the pink hair hanging out with those pretty girls!” Instead they were looking at me and wondering, “hey, how did she do that to her eyes?”
It was the first time in my life that I felt like people were seeing the creative me instead of my physicality. I had strangers on the streets of my hometown of Seattle stop me and ask if they could take a photo of my makeup. One time on the metro a woman even stopped midsentence while talking to her friend just to turn and ask me if I was a makeup artist (DING! LIGHTBULB!). Sure there were still a few guys at school who made fun of me but I was finally starting to build confidence. It was just the boost I needed to realize that I had it in me to change, and that courage aided me in my quest to lose the weight.
Come senior year of high school I had officially lost 85 lbs. I had let my hair grow out and was no longer dying it crazy colors to match the crazy eye shadows I no longer felt I needed to hide behind. I was so unrecognizable that one day during class, a classmate started telling me about a girl that used to go to the school, “the girl with the crazy makeup” (this was often how people had referred to me,) and asked if I had ever seen her or know what happened to her, obviously completely unaware that I was her. I just smiled and said that I think I might have seen her once but that she sounded like a cool girl. It’s crazy just how well my makeup mask had hid me.
The point of my story? I learned that I don’t need to hide behind my makeup or anything else for that matter. I was always beautiful and I was always enough. Nowadays I let makeup enhance the natural beauty that I already have, that everyone ALREADY HAS. This is exactly what I am always telling to my clients when they want their freckles covered up by pounds of foundation (girls I got em’ too, we just need to embrace that inner ginge!) or want those smile lines softened, EMBRACE IT! Those lines, those freckles, THOSE ARE YOU! Those are what make you beautiful, what make you unique, what sets you apart. ALSO it’s what the casting directors will see when you enter that audition room so hiding it will do you no good. As women and especially as women living and working in this crazy entertainment industry, it is hard to appreciate our own beauty when everyone around us seems to be just that much prettier or thinner. Self-love and the confidence that comes with that can be an everyday struggle, but all I ask is that you keep trying. Take off the makeup mask; stop hiding behind a façade you think people want to see and JUST BE YOU. Yea it’s great that makeup exists so we can enhance what we already got but don’t ever let it hide WHO YOU ARE. You’ll know you’re hiding, the casting directors will know you’re hiding and the world will miss out on getting to stop and awe in all that is YOU.