make up.

I've never been totally sure of how I feel about make up. It seems to make me look better.  Though, who decided on that standard of "better", I'm not positive.  Even the name, 'make up'.  As in made-up?  Pardon me, but I don't want my face to be a work of fiction.  I don't want to spend my time masquerading.  I want people to be familiar with what I actually look like - the way my face actually is.  

I remember, in High School, there was a girl they called "base-face".  You're probably familiar with the term.  If you aren't, it means she wore a crap-ton of base (foundation) on her face.  Hence, base-face.  One day, she and her boyfriend broke up.  Oh, the tragedy.  She came to school the next day with swollen eyes and no make up, due to all of the crying she had been doing.  And you know what?  People made fun of that, too.  They were all whispering about how horrible she looked without make up and, oh my gosh, how could she leave the house like that and, oh my gosh, did she even look in the mirror?

And I thought, What the hell?  What do you want from this poor chick?  

And, as I'm now realizing, I think this is where my entire make up complex came from.

Is my face, the skin stretching over my bones, so offensive and unworthy of public exposure all on its own?  I mean, nobody looks at my husband and thinks, Man, he's looking haggard today, could use a little make up.  Of course not.  He's a man.  Men don't need make up.  What a silly thought.  What an absurd notion!  Ha.  And what if a man decides he likes make up?  I'm not trying to be a pretentious, gender-neutrality fanatic, really I'm not, but why does that seem so unnatural?  Isn't make up just as unnatural on a woman's face as it is on a man's?  I mean, it's basically treating your body as a coloring book.  And, okay, I'll admit, if Drew decided to put make up on, I'd probably feel weird about it.  And yet I refused to marry a man who wouldn't accept, nay, prefer me without it.  Does that make me a hypocrite?  Am I just thinking too hard about this?  

Yes.  I am.  It's just that I can't come to a conclusion.  I'll go weeks without make up, mostly because I'm lazy and value sleep above most anything.  But then, I'll suddenly get an urge to put on some mascara, slap on some lipstick, and, wow!  I almost forgot how fun this can be.  Because it can be.  Fun.  Almost a secret weapon, a way to further personalize how you present yourself to your own self and to the world.  When I think of it that way, it seems empowering.  But after a few days of wearing it, I start to hesitate at going out of the house without it.  Since when are me lips so ghostly pale?  Have my eye lashes always been so short and thin?  Consistently wearing make up seems to give me unrealistic expectations for my natural complexion.  It causes me to resent myself.  And at this point, make up starts to feel less like empowerment and more like imprisonment.

Maybe you don't know what I mean.  But maybe you do.  Tell me what you think.  No, really, what do you think?