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!