Dictionary.com - "the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest)."
UrbanDictionary.com - "Beauty is a thing seldom seen. It is held by all within the soul it lies, waiting to come out to the surface, but it can only be found if someone is sharing your soul with you. Beauty is suppressed by the evils of the world. Only love can bring beauty out. Once seen, beauty never hides again. Not even hatred can deny beauty of it's true design. Beauty, although possessed by all by few and fewer yet will ever see one of the most beautiful sights - the beauty held by you."
"The one thing that draws you towards her. The thing she cannot see herself, without your help."
Beauty is often a..... round(?) topic. I guess relative would be a better term.
Long story short... well, not that short. But I watch a LOT of makeup and/or beauty videos on YouTube (check out xsparkage and petrilude) and I think the eyeshadow has soaked through my eyelids and into my brain. Or at least in my eyes and clouded my vision.
Honesty time: Last week, I looked awful. My unibrow was growing in, I was too tired to bother with makeup, and I was just... "letting myself go." Now maybe it was because I still had choir last week and I was just sick and tired of the world being in my face all the time. In a way I guess I was making myself brain-dead to other people's judgements of me. I was insecure, sure. But did I let it get to me? Eh, not so much.
Today? I gotta say, today, even I looked in the mirror and thought, "Beth, you look good today." Today I messed with powder foundation, eyeliner, mascara, and even some lip gloss. Way to go me, right? OH and some cover-up on a certain epic "love bite" but we won't go into that... Oh wait, we did.
Then I spent the afternoon with my boyfriend. And it was great. I love him. We went to dinner and then he looked around Border's while I at reading a PostSecret book for at least an hour. And I found my first secret! Random, but important to me. I've always wanted to touch someone's secret. And there I sat, in Border's, holding a postcard in my hand. And on that postcard was written someone's secret. And I was touched.
Back to the story.
We walked around outside the new section of the mall, where we went into one of the... four? makeup stores they have. I looked at the lipgloss and the fake cupcake decorations, and finally found some loose pigment shadows at the "try me!" counter. They were beautiful. At least 50 colors, every shade you could imagine wearing on your eyelids, and half of them sparkly. Now number one, I'm a woman, and number two, I'm a makeup woman, so you better believe I like the sparklies.
So after smearing about 5 different colors on the back of my hand for reference, I decided I should find out how much they cost. So I walked around to the other side of the store where there was a sign in script writing that read, plain and simple, "Eyes". I picked up a jar.
Thirteen Dollars.
Three for Thirty-Six.
It broke my heart a little inside.
Because I don't have the money or the will to buy makeup - even the sparkly kind - for that kind of money. I'd love to. But I just don't.
So we walked back in, and I was spending some time in my head. (If you know me well enough, you know that's NEVER a good sign. If you don't, you do now. Don't leave me alone with my head...) Just thinking about beauty and makeup and self-confidence...
When we have to walk through Nordstroms to get back to the rest of the mall. So as we were walking out we just so happened to walk by the MAC cosmetics counter. I'm curious now and decide, hey, why not stop? Just to see how much things are here, compare prices, you know, that sort of thing.
Well I never got around to checking the prices. Because I was looking at the models.
MAC faces. Perfect skin. And it's not the makeup that makes the face. The face is already there. Putting already-gorgeous models in all of their advertisements and pictures I'm sure does a lot for MAC's sales. It's the Hollister employee syndrome. If I buy my clothes from Hollister, I'll be as hot or as pretty as that cashier over there. Then you go home and the large shirt is too tight, the skirt is too short, and you just look like you spent a whole crap load of money to fail at looking good without looking like you're trying too hard.
Same idea. If I spend 10 dollars more on this lipgloss than the one at Target, I'll look like the model in the picture instead of one that, well, shops at Target.
Side note: I would NEVER pay over 10 dollars for a makeup brush from MAC! Or anyplace else for that matter. And I LOVE buying makeup at Target! Or even the drugstore. 5 Target lipglosses = 1 MAC lipgloss. It's a great deal! So even if I had looked at the price, it, number one, would've been too expensive, and number two, wouldn't have made me look any better than if I bought my makeup from Target.
So then I crawled back into my head and was thinking, what makes some people more "beautiful" than others? I mean, sure, symmetry in a face can make a difference, but Rachel McAdams has face moles/freckles too and she's gorgeous! And then I was thinking, why can't I be beautiful like that?
I just don't see any reason for people TO think I'm more beautiful than someone else. I mean, I don't really have any defining features, there's nothing special about me that no one else has, and despite the fact that I always tell people around me to be self-confident. I'm not.
I'm just another girl who tries to be everything she can't, instead of embracing who she is. I'm just another girl who can look in the mirror and think, "I look nice today." and then fail to capture it in a photo. See the thing is, I don't doubt that I'm beautiful. I just can't prove it. The camera can't pick it up. As vain as that sounds. I'm just another hypocrite, after all...
And he said to me, "Believe me... You're different."
And I don't think he realizes how much it meant to me.
