No Make-Up Bride #5: Food...

... as stated on my Pinterest profile, is a daily blessing and hardship. I'm going to be talking about food and how it affects my relationship with beauty. It turns out I'm not quite as secure in myself as I've perhaps made out to be on this blog. But let's start with the positives!

From what I can tell, everyone seems to be passionate about food on some level. Countless friends of mine can talk for hours about their favourite meals and snacks. It's always a good go-to topic of conversation! It takes a lot for someone to stand out as a hardcore lover of food; they usually have to be a 'foodie' (not just love the taste of it, but know a lot about it and be into more 'exotic' foods) and a magnet for free food. 

I am that person. For as long as I can remember and especially since my later secondary school years, I was the 'food bin' for my friends. Don't like your sandwich? I'll eat it. No questions. My absolute biggest pet hate, alongside repetitive noises, is seeing food go to waste. I can't STAND it. It means I always try as hard as I can to finish every scrap, down to the very last grain of rice, of what is put in front of me or what I have ordered (unless Sam's around to help me out - he has a bottomless pit). My friends are wonderful but it really grates on me that some of them are happy to buy food just to let it sit in the fridge and get forgotten. The amount of takeaway that gets thrown away in my current house is nearly unforgivable: pizza slices, whole chunks of fried chicken, kebab scraps, boxes of chips (well, I say thrown away...). Supermarkets DAILY throw away masses of perfectly edible food that could go to hungry homes. I know the whole 'starving African kids' line doesn't work on people any more, but if you actually think about it, there are people starving in the world. Think about the amount of money that goes to waste on food! Maybe I should start a campaign challenging people to make a weekly donation to charity that equates to the amount of money they've wasted on food they didn't eat that week. Either they'd actually eat what they buy, buy less, or help to save world hunger. 

Anyway, back to the fact that I am a 'food bin'. One of my tip-top most favourite things in the whole entire world is visiting food markets. Places where I can sample all SORTS of food, often for free, and not even have to think about counting the calories. Little bits of food don't count, right?! I just love food markets. I love the atmosphere, the smells, the new taste experiences, and what I can learn. I dart around like an excitable little child! I've also recently been trialling different recipe boxes. I'm currently on Simply Cook, and it's possibly my favourite. Cooking is fun for me and I'm happy to spend a good chunk of the evening doing it (unless I'm very hungry!) and relishing the results. My dad used to be a pastry chef and still likes to cook Proper meals every day. I've subconsciously learnt a lot about food and flavour combinations from the meals I ate at home as well as the ridiculous amount of cooking programmes we would watch! My mum also used to bake scones and flapjacks quite regularly when I was younger and I remember getting involved. I should have done more when I was a teenager, but I think I'm catching up now! 

The only problem with eating every last morsel on my plate or everyone else's discarded pizza crusts (that is genuinely the lengths I go to in order to stop food being thrown away - I accept it's a problem and perhaps a small step too far!) is that I can very easily pile on the pounds, given the wrong environment paired with my lack of self-control. I may have valid moral reasons for not wasting food, but when it negatively affects my own health to be eating food that would otherwise go to waste, it's probably not worth it. It's something I find really hard and I'm going to have to work on finding a better solution. Perhaps getting more involved in campaigning against food waste really is the answer!

Very recently I've had to face the fact that I've become a bit insecure about my weight and shape. For nearly all of my teenage years I was a slim 8st 7-ish, perhaps creeping up to around 9st every now and then, at which point I would healthily (and somehow easily?!) bring myself back down. I would sometimes get bummed about the fact that I wasn't very fit or toned and as a typical teenage girl I'd often check I didn't have belly rolls when I sat down, but I knew I wasn't fat and in general I was happy with my shape and it didn't affect me that much. So much so, I was sure that I was impervious to ever feeling insecure about my body, no matter what changes happened. This was only helped further when I decided to stop wearing make-up; I was secure, I was confident, I was different to most other teenage girls, and that was good. 

I probably took too much pride in that, because it turns out that now I'm not within my ideal weight range (I'm still pretty much the same height I was as a teen, so the weight range is the same), I've become less secure. Not having the opportunity to walk as often as I used to last year + being around lots of takeaway food = my body sneakily reaching 10st. I've never been that in my life until now! I knew I'd put on weight but that came as a surprise. I know BMIs are unreliable because they don't factor in muscle mass, but the one on the NHS Choices website also takes into account age and gender so I find it a useful guide, and 10st at my height is borderline overweight. Now I know this is still technically fine, but I also know my body well enough to know that it suits me best to be somewhere between 8st 7 and 9st. It's not just that I feel more comfortable with that emotionally, but physically, too. I feel less bloated (which is enough of a problem for me as it is) and just physically better at that weight. I know that's what's healthy for me, so it's not a bad thing for me to want to get back to that again. It also means I can fit back into some of my lovely clothes that I don't want to throw away!

What is bad, though, is that I've ignored the increasing (emotional) feelings of negativity towards my body. I'm still not dangerously overweight, so I should just be able to go, 'right I'm 10st, let's healthily work my way back down, you've got plenty of time before the wedding so there's no need to feel bad, it's just something you need to work on, it's not the end of the world'. Whilst it is a genuine, real struggle to avoid temptation with food - despite loving to cook and try more 'exotic' foods, I still get tempted by a fried chicken takeaway meal almost daily - it's really not all that bad. But sometimes it feels it. Sometimes I do get insecure. I'm a human and I'm here to say I feel it, too. Even though I'm happy to go bare-faced on my big day, I get insecure. 

Right now, I'm working on it. 

No Make-Up Bride #4: The Trigger

There are a number of reasons why I rarely bother with make-up day to day, from sheer laziness to the expense, as well as the fact that I haven't got a steady hand. And these factors play a big part! I've already explained in detail why I've specifically chosen not to wear make-up for the wedding, but there is one trigger that explains my whole attitude to make-up and beauty. Here's the story...

There was a phase in my teenage years when I wore quite a lot of make-up. Especially (and often only) on the eyes.

Yep, I was an emo.

A really bad one! I put on thick black eyeliner that I insisted wasn't really that thick (I blame the eyeliner 'flick'), I'd wear a triangular scarf for the purposes of looking emo rather than being warm, I'd wear those hilarious 'arm warmers' for the same reason as the scarf, I'd update by Bebo and Myspace accounts with failed selfie attempts and pensive quotes, I listened to Bullet for my Valentine and Paramore (that's about all I knew), I hung out with random (but fun!) people in the park or town on Saturdays, I straightened my hair and always made sure my side fringe was over my eyes*, I'd wear black or red nail polish, I put little badges on my school bag, I'd wear a studded belt (the emo staple!), and I just remembered the worst of all... I had this bright (I mean, BRIGHT) orange eyeshadow. Good grief. Fun times, fun times.

For a while, the eyeliner and hair was an everyday thing before going to school. For some reason, though, one day I chose not to wear any make-up. I can't remember whether I woke up late, or just couldn't be bothered, or what. I mean, considering the stark difference this clearly made to my face, it was quite a big thing to just suddenly not do one day and not remember why. But it happened. It also wasn't on my priority list to take any make-up to school and quickly apply it during morning registration - probably because I didn't want to draw attention to myself in that way or put up with the pressure of people watching me fail to put on eyeliner properly.

So I went to school without my usual black eyes, and sat down in my seat for morning registration. The girl in front turned round to chat to me and my lovely friend Stacey, as normal, and this girl ended up having quite a strong reaction to my lack of make-up. The main thing I clearly remember her saying was: 'You look dead'. Well, you only look mildly alive yourself! I didn't say that. In fact, though it was slightly awkward, I didn't end up falling out with her over it or dislike her for saying it. To be honest, she had a point, and I think I knew it at the time. I couldn't exactly blame her for thinking it, even if I could blame her bluntness. My face was a complete contrast to normal, and I hadn't planned to change it, which would have made any anger on my part for people merely noticing quite unjustified, I suppose. My reaction ended up going a little deeper than this, though.

'You look dead' isn't exactly the first thing anyone wants to hear about themselves. But instead of resolving to never walk out the house without make-up ever again, I logically concluded that I should do the exact opposite. In the short term, people would perhaps carry on saying I looked dead. But in the long term? They'd get used to my actual face, and therefore my actual face wouldn't look dead to them any more. I wasn't bothered if they didn't think my actual face was the most beautiful thing on earth, but I definitely knew I didn't want it to look dead. 

I'm so, so, so thankful that 15-or-so-year-old me at the time was willing and able to put up with any comments to achieve that. I certainly wasn't bullied for it, and I don't remember much about the reactions of anyone else. To my surprise, people didn't really care - the short-term effects were short-lived. Perhaps that's just because I wasn't popular enough anyway, or an obvious target for bullying. I was sort of an 'inbetweener' in terms of school social structures. But still. I'm so thankful that my attitude was automatically one of making sure I was accepted for who I was. I reckon a little bit of Jesus was what influenced me that day. 

Since then, I've gone through minor phases of wearing make-up, but it's never returned to any extremes. I wore it in freshers year for nights out but now I rarely even wear it for special occasions, though I'm still open to. And this all stems from that day in Year 9. It's got to the point where I'm comfortable with my face and have been for a long time. People say my skin is alright anyway, but I don't think it's that great myself (though if it is alright, that might be because of the lack of make-up?). The reason I don't bother is not because I think I'm flawless, but because I don't ever want to have to rely on make-up to feel normal. My face is already normal. It's a face. And make-up is both time-consuming and expensive!

Given the first video I shared in my first blog post, I can't exactly recommend that everyone tries not wearing make-up. That's not what I want to achieve anyway. But I hope my story can at least inspire some of you to think about why you wear it and maybe consider not doing so for a while. If you do choose to do some form of 'no make-up challenge', be aware that people may still only ever compliment you with make-up on. That happens to me and plenty of other women I've read about or spoken to! But realise that's because of a) society, and b) objective beauty. It doesn't mean you're not beautiful, or can't be seen as beautiful without it. You're still a human being. Alive, breathing, and full of purpose. I know it's easy for me to say when I seem to have an inbuilt apathy towards my appearance, but that doesn't make it any less true. 

You are much more than how you look. Ironically, the more you realise this, the more the way you look will reflect who you are. 


*though I thankfully could never bring myself to dye it, and never have. Hairdressers praise me for this and tell me my hair is in very good condition, so I'd personally like to keep it that way! P.S. why do I always seem to have one of these asterisks?! 

No Make-Up Bride #3: Making an Effort

The only thing I feel like I will be missing out on with not wearing make-up for my wedding will be the fun of getting ready and making an effort. Fulfilling my inner girl (it’s down there somewhere!). I totally support the idea of wearing make-up in order to actually feel like you’ve made an effort for someone – time, care and energy show love. What’s more, it builds up excitement, indicates that you respect your appearance, and shows you want to feel and be attractive to someone. I’ve already explained that Sam would actually prefer me without make-up as he’s attracted to me more that way, but I’m totally open to going on a date with him (yes, as a married couple!) wearing make-up at some point. 

I’m also totally against the idea that not wearing make-up shows that you’re lazy and don’t want to make an effort. Even if you only spend 10 minutes getting ready, that doesn’t mean you don’t love a person, you just might express that love differently and make an effort in other ways!

However, I would like to make up for the fact that I won’t be putting on make-up for (eyyyyy!) the wedding, by making an effort in other ways. I still want to enjoy pampering myself with the rest of the bridal party!

One of my bridesmaids has recently started making perfumes (see here), so we’re planning a wedding ‘smell’ to put in reed diffusers for the reception, as well as a special perfume for me. To quote her, everyone cares so much about what their wedding will look like, so why don’t they care about the smell?!

She is also a massive Lush fan and we’ve already been to our nearest store (about an hour’s journey away) to pick up some samples and free facemasks, which was fun. I think they’re doing good things. I’m never sure with my skin, as it seems so unresponsive to everything. But I’ll definitely be smothering my face in cleansers and moisturisers and facemasks on the night before and morning of the wedding!

I’ll also be doing the other normal things like nails and hair. Whilst I don’t do much with my hair day-to-day either (or my nails), it’s something I care more about looking nice than my face. Which is maybe a bit weird. But good-looking hair normally feels and probably also smells nice too, whereas make-up to me feels a bit heavy, and I can’t cry or rub my eyes! So I find hair positively affects more of the senses than make-up. Plus, nice hair tends to compliment the face and draw out its beauty (when styled appropriately), whereas good make-up doesn’t change a bad hair day. As a result, I’ll definitely be making a big deal of my hair to make sure it’s perfect!

I’ll try to think of other ways to pamper myself too. Most likely have some crazy bath with bombs and smells and candles and fizzy things and bubbles (and wine), though I’m never a fan of the way I either feel horribly lukewarm or overly hot in a bath… any ideas of other ways I can ‘make an effort’ and enjoy getting ready will be most appreciated :D

TTFN!

No Make-Up Bride #2: Reflecting Our Marriage (‘Why?’ Part II)

This blog is a platform for me to reach others, whether friends or strangers, with hopefully some at least mildly inspirational or helpful words. These words will primarily (at least for a while) be about beauty and its surrounding issues, as I outlined in my previous post. For this post, though, I need to talk about marriage. It’s something I’m even more passionate about and feel needs just as much tackling in general society. If it helps, you could think of the title of the blog (‘The No Make-Up Bride’) as a way of remembering what and when I’ll be blogging, i.e. during the period of my engagement, I’ll be focusing on the ‘no make-up’ part of it, and following the wedding, I’ll be focusing on the ‘bride’ part. So marriage is not the main focus just yet, but I do need to outline my thoughts on it now.

Whilst one of the main reasons I’m doing this is to be a positive voice about beauty (however small!), I’m also doing it for Sam. This, in turn, has two effects:
1. It reflects what we want our marriage to be by showing sacrificial love (albeit a small amount in this case!).
2. It reflects our marriage on the wedding day itself, by taking the focus off how I look as a bride, and putting it on the fact that we are getting married!

I am aware, of course, that the fact that I won’t be wearing make-up will probably still mean people are focused on what I look like, but as I mentioned in my first post, that can’t really be avoided. To stop attention being drawn to something, you have to draw attention to it. Reminds me of a similar sort of thing that happened when I used to go on summer camp and the girls in my dormitory would say ‘Don’t look, I’m getting changed!’ - some of us would turn around saying ‘What?’ and so inevitably found ourselves looking!

To expand on the first point first, though, I’m going to draw your attention to a blog post by Seth Adam Smith called ‘Marriage Isn’t For You’, which some of you may already be familiar with. If not, become familiar now! After reading it myself for the first time, it was like all my previous thoughts about marriage had suddenly been wrapped up and confirmed. Marriage is for serving the one you love, wholeheartedly and selflessly! Heck, love itself is about serving. Even when you don’t feel like it. And the more you give, the more you get.

Unless called to singleness, a spouse should be the most influential and loved human being in a person’s life. Unfortunately, it seems so few people are actually taught how to manage this relationship. It breaks my heart that a lot of couples don’t seem to realise the commitment a marriage requires unless they’ve tried and failed before (and sometimes not even then). I’m not saying I’m the bearer of all wisdom, or that I won’t face unexpected, painful challenges and experiences. But I do know one thing: a marriage requires work. It’s not enough to just be matched, although I’m super massively thankful that I am a true match for Sam and that he is my best friend; I think it’s just as important to be compatible if you can help it. But we’ll have to work at it when we face all of life’s challenges, from small to big. And if we’re both prepared for and committed to that, it won’t be work we won’t want to do. It may even become easy, joyful work. I don’t think it’s naïve to believe that, at all.

So, back to the deal. I’m not wearing make-up for the wedding as a way of reflecting my attitude to Sam as a (future) husband. This attitude is one of selflessness and sacrifice. I won’t be perfect, but I want to try my best, and for me it makes sense for the wedding to reflect that in some way. It’s not that Sam has asked me to do this - I thought of it. I knew it would be what he would personally prefer, though he wouldn’t be massively bothered either way because he’s still marrying me. I just thought it a small thing I could do to make him enjoy the day just a little bit more (and then I thought, why not blog about it and try to make a difference too!). If it were solely down to me I’d still wear at least a bit of make-up, which makes this a sacrifice, but it’s not too much of one. In fact, the more I think about why I’m doing it, the less bothered I am about what I end up looking like. I WANT what Sam wants as long as it doesn’t cause me serious harm. I’M happier if he’s happier, and I want to go one step further than my vows on the day to show my commitment. Hopefully this will serve as a reminder to me further down the line, and help others celebrating with us focus on what it’s really all about. It’s okay to want to feel visually beautiful (particularly as a girl – we seem to have some sort of inherent license :D), but I don’t personally want that to rule over my wedding, especially when Sam loves me even more as I am. 

Fully committing to someone is a one-time thing. That’s why it’s so important to know what you’re going into beforehand, and get to a place where you actually want what they want. It’s cool to want things yourself, it’s just about balancing that and making it work with another person so you can both benefit as much as possible. If you want your marriage to really flourish, you can’t be complacent; you should anticipate giving, and want to give, so much more than the bare minimum, so long as they are committed to that from the outset too. Then if at some point down the line there is a lack of general commitment from your spouse (I’m not talking about adultery here, just day-to-day commitment), you just have to keep giving more. Be an example. It’s what Jesus does. I suck at this, but I know it works. I believe it’s an equal balance of being naturally compatible with your partner and actively choosing to love them. Never give up!

It sounds overly obsessive, like a chore, like a constant source of stress. It’s certainly counter-cultural! But it won’t be overly obsessive if you know your partner truly loves you as you are, that you alone are enough and you don’t need to impress them (and if you put God above even your marriage, knowing you don’t need to impress Him either!). It won’t be a chore if you’re both committed to selflessly serving one another. But if (when) one of you fails, the other should be forgiving, reminding them a) what love is, and b) that they are loved. And it will be a lot less stressful than going down the route of divorce.

It won’t always be easy, but love conquers all*.

1 Corinthians 13v13 ‘And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.’

*(forgive the cheese!)

No-Make Up Bride #1: Why?

I recently got engaged, and I’m planning to wear no make-up for the wedding.

!!!

My fiancé Sam and I pretty much knew we would end up getting married from Day 1 (more about him in a separate blog post), and it was several months ago I began considering not wearing make-up for our wedding. I very rarely wear the stuff anyway, and Sam loves me without it, so the thought of approaching him down the aisle with make-up on seemed a bit oddly inauthentic. Even so, I’ve been quite hesitant about the idea, because I can still get spots that are large enough to be given names, and such a spot is bound to appear at precisely the wrong moment. Then I saw this video, which made me certain I wanted to do it.

Before I ‘go off on one’ (I am guilty of that a lot), I need to spell out a few things, because I’m not actually anti make-up. In fact, I’m fairly on the fence…

As long as it’s not mixed into a curry, I’m happy for make-up to be used for pretty much anything. I would say face-paint counts as a form of make-up, which is my favourite; I love how people can be made to be look like Simba or the Wicked Witch of the West for the theatre, or just wildly colourful with lots of different glittery eye shadows and stuff (I’m not an expert, if you can’t tell!). Obviously if you’re appearing on TV or film, you kind of need it for the lighting at least, since you’d probably look less natural otherwise. If you do it mainly because you’re arty and you really enjoy experimenting with different effects and whatnot, I can in fact resonate with that a little bit, even though I rarely bother myself. But the one purpose of make-up that really opens up a massive Worm Can is this:

Wearing it to make you look prettier. (N.B. not pretty, like a different kind of pretty to the pretty you already are… prettier.)

This is where I’m very much divided in my opinion. A lot of people seem to justify it by applying the ‘insecure vs. secure’ argument; i.e. if you’re secure in your appearance and you wear make-up, it doesn’t matter because you’re just wearing it for fun, but if you wear it because you’re insecure, that’s bad. 

But it’s not really that simple. 

I’ve not met a single girl, not even myself, who isn’t insecure about their image in some way. Although I would put myself fairly well into the ‘secure’ end of the scale, even I’m still quite nervous about the thought of a zit appearing on the wedding day. And you can hardly blame girls for being insecure, given the nature of the video I shared. If wearing make-up makes you feel good or awesome or better about yourself, especially if you’re tired or ill… well! What a fantastic, simple tool make-up is! Although, it could be argued that it only prolongs any insecurities by not addressing the core of the problem. Who knows; everyone’s different.

Even someone who is totally secure about how they look without make-up (hypothetically, I assume!) could still choose to wear it to look prettier, if we assume beauty is objective. Though the precisely contoured cheekbones and perfect eyeliner flicks are aims that teenage girls and women are often too heavily pressured by, I think there is a form of objective beauty. Please don’t come and egg my house for this! All you have to do is look at a slug and compare it to a swan to know that objective beauty exists. I don’t mean that people who are not more naturally attractive can’t ever be considered attractive – we’re all familiar with the idea that getting to know a person and their beauty on the inside can perceptively increase their outer beauty, and I agree with that. And of course, people have different tastes; subjective beauty exists as much as objective. But there’s normally a widespread appreciation for a good-looking person, even if they aren’t to everyone’s nuanced tastes. And slugs will always be ugly, no matter how much time you spend with them! :D

However, the idea of objective beauty has gone too far. That doesn’t really need saying, because there are Dove campaigns, nomorepage3 hashtags, petitions to create laws that protect models from having to become dangerously skinny, and general materials circulating the internet that fight for beauty to be considered differently in our culture and to get rid of the objectification of women in the media. They challenge us to be comfortable in our own skin - with our natural, authentic selves. They challenge us to fight against our insecurities by saying our flaws aren’t really flaws. Perhaps this attempt to alter the standards of beauty and broaden its definition will eventually take away the focus on beauty in the first place, or at least smooth it out. However, I think this attack against the very idea of objective beauty has also gone too far and needs to be countered; it still seems to have an emphasis on everyone being beautiful, rather than everyone not even worrying about whether they look beautiful. The ‘You’re more beautiful than you think’ video by Dove, for example, could be renamed ‘Why worry about beauty?’ or similar. I worry about its comment that ‘believing you’re beautiful couldn’t be more critical to happiness’ – shouldn’t our identity and happiness be grounded in something other than outer beauty?

This is what I want to help achieve. I’m not trying to say beauty is never important; initial physical attraction is what can potentially make someone more than a friend (if ya know what I mean). I think image and beauty and the gift of being able to appreciate things visually is such a wonderful thing – I wouldn’t say stop telling young girls they look beautiful, but rather do it less often. Or if you are going to say it, balance it with other compliments about their character. It is okay to wear make-up - that per se is not the problem. The problem is that, like in the video I shared, too many people are called ugly regardless of whether they wear make-up or not (which is insulting and unnecessarily mean no matter how true it may be, or how confident the recipient is with their image), and that the victims, more often than not, feel the need to rectify it by changing their image. 

Do I want to inspire make-up wearers to become more comfortable with their non-made up face? Absolutely. But more than that, I want to challenge the idea that outer image is such a strong focus and primary part of our identity in the first place. Most of us already know this; most decent people in the world know that, although visual information about a person is useful, the personality driving it is ultimately more important. But I feel the need to make a statement and cement it nonetheless. It can’t really go much further than not wearing make-up on a wedding day! So maybe this can be the tipping-point (though I’m not quite the first person to do this!). It’s not that I think YouTube channels dedicated to make-up tutorials shouldn’t exist; image can be a fantastic way to express yourself. Make-up can be great. But our identity is not in our image*. For me, this attitude stems from my belief in Jesus. My identity is solely in Him, so that everything I do, say, think, or am, should stem out of that. 

So, apparently that means I’ve decided not to wear make-up on the day I marry Sam.

Wish me luck! :) x

* which means I’ve got to be very, VERY careful not to make the fact that I’m a ‘no make-up bride-to-be’ override the fact that I’m a bride-to-be, because that defeats the whole point of this. Unfortunately, wanting the world to stop focussing on image means focussing on image for a while, a bit like when you tidy a room – it gets messier before it gets tidier!