I Wear Lipstick Even Though My Boyfriend Hates It

Beauty may be on the inside but I need to look confident on the outside

If I had a super power it would be invisibility. Not because I want it, but because it’s pretty much how I’ve felt my entire life.

My face has never been beautiful. Nor pretty. Some might kindly say I was handsome, like my father. Or, when I apply tons of makeup, striking. It’s what one would call a face for podcasting.

Those girls who take pictures of themselves without filters who tell there world, “We just woke up like this,” are far more daring than I. Such actions belong to the genetically symmetrical with their perfect features.

What is my face like exactly?

So I wore dark clothes, stopped bothering to wear makeup, and walked with my eyes toward the ground for the majority of my life. A long stint with adult braces didn’t help matters. But last year I found myself free of the brackets and, to celebrate, I went to the cosmetics counter.

Once there I picked out a magenta lipstick. The sales woman who put it on me stepped back with a look of glee.

“You’re stunning!”

Maybe it was the freedom of being able to smile. Perhaps turning 30 had wiped away the last of the fucks I had to give. For some reason I replied, “I am.”

Now, whenever I’m feeling like nothing is going my way I swipe on that lipstick. Even when working from home, if I have a bad case of writer’s block or pitch anxiety, on the lipstick goes. It’s like going into a phone booth and coming out as superman. Invincible, and for some reason unrecognizable.

The boyfriend complained quite vocally about the sudden false pigmentation of my pout.

“You’re beautiful without makeup!”

Now if this had been all he’d said I wouldn’t have exploded. Unfortunately his next words were, “I like you better when you’re natural.”

When I’m natural, I thought. When I’m depressed? When the anxiety freezes me? When I don’t look good enough that random people compliment me? When my self-esteem is in such a state that you become a crutch because I can’t hold myself up?

I just said, “It’s not about what you want.”

And that’s true. I wear lipstick when I want, and I don’t when I’m not in the mood. It helps me feel a little better when I’m at my lower moments. Who is he to stop me?

The idea of “natural is best” comes from the same place of fear that told men at the turn of the last century that only whores and actresses painted their faces. Makeup was a sign of a false heart and promiscuous woman.

It’s not 1900 anymore. He has to get over it. I’m wearing my magenta war paint to whatever battle needs fighting.

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