The first time I ever waxed my face was pure torture. I was standing in front of the mirror that covered the wall in the community bathroom of the house I lived in my junior year of college. After carefully following every direction on the box of Sally Hansen body wax, my little plastic jar of molten facial hair remover was finally the perfect temperature to spread ever so evenly over the top of my lip. I stirred the wax with the plastic spatula once more just to make sure the little blue "hot" didn't pop-up on the handle again, and I went to work covering every inch of facial hair that up until about two hours before, I had never given a second thought.
His name was Jack. I met him through a friend; we immediately hit it off, and a few weeks later, I found myself on a treadmill in the cardio room of the student recreation hall, his face inches from mine as he barked "encouragements," and I sputtered my thoughts concerning my hatred for running. As the track of the treadmill whirred on, my brain began to muddle the other noises in the room as well, including his voice, so that I was only catching snippets of his motivational speeches that, to me, seemed far from helpful. In the middle of this muffled exchange of words (from him) and glares (from me,) my ears did register one phrase loud and clear: "I can see your mustache."
My mustache? Excuse me? I was instantly shocked, angry, and incredibly humiliated. Here I was sweating and jiggling and giving everything I had on a treadmill to impress the guy I was into, and instead of noticing my incredible calf muscles or complimenting me on my extreme determination, I was being told I needed to wax. No, of course, he didn't say those words outright, but we all know that girls are the queens of implied meaning, so to me, it could be no clearer that he was displeased with my current appearance and would appreciate me getting rid of whatever fine hair rested above my upper lip.
So now, there I was, spreading goo the color and constancy of honey all across my face, peeling off/ripping out every stray little hair I could fine, hoping that fine tuning my appearance would give me the edge I needed to earn the approval of a guy who would never truly love me, and all the while, tears were streaming down my face because well, if I'm just being honest, waxing flippin' hurts.
But hey, pain is beauty.
There is no escaping that simple quip that seems to rule the lives of females from their preteen years until death. Yes, there are those few women who are fortunate enough to come to some self-awareness somewhere between the ages of 40-60 when they realize that vanity is simply that and no more, that being "kept" on the outside gives no value to the person you are on the inside. However, for most women it seems that our outer beauty becomes a prison, detaining who we truly are on the inside because the bars of youthful skin, current makeup trends, and fashionable clothing keep us locked away from the freedom of the truth about who we really are. For some, it starts with a first crush, that crucial moment of realization that because we "just" noticed him, all it would take is him "just" noticing us. For others it's the guidance of a mother who remembers awkward preteen years filled with clumsiness, embarrassment, and an innocent sense of desperation who just wants her own daughter to experience something a little less disconcerting. Some fold to peer pressure: a story in a teen magazine or "advice" from a friend who has already discovered the transformation of which a bit of mascara and lip gloss is capable. Some girls attempt to fill a gap, a place left void that should've been filled by a father, a mother, a sibling, anyone who had our best interests at heart. Others find themselves locked away by the opinions of others, by people's careless words and actions that leave us with a need to impress and a sense that we don't measure up. For me, it was the latter; it was always (and unfortunately still is) the latter.
Like many people I know, I have always struggled with my weight, and to be honest, I think that particular phrase sugar coats my situation. To put it bluntly, I was fat. There is absolutely no denying that. Once I started school, I began to swell, and I didn't stop until the 8th grade. I remember being in 6th grade and weighing 115 pounds. I remember some years earlier my mother suggesting I have a lemon instead of the peanut butter crackers my sister was getting as an after school snack. (I knew the insinuation behind this, and the result was me running from the house, tears welling in my eyes.) There was also the comment from my aunt, her declaration that she couldn't believe my mother would have a fat kid, and of course, I never found it fair that my little sister and my cousin were allowed to sport two-piece swimsuits every summer, and I was always in a one-piece. Each of those moments ingrained in me just a bit further that idea that I didn't add up the way I was, that I didn't fit the expectations of those around me, but it wasn't until 8th grade that I associated my "lack" with beauty.
His name was Brad, and I had a major crush on him (what I would now classify as my first real crush.) We flirted. All the time. In science class. And he let me wear his necklace. He even let me keep it over the weekend as a good luck charm for my first honor band. It was obvious I liked him, and to me, it was just as obvious that any day now, he would be passing a note to me (in science class) asking me to be his girlfriend. Then it happened, the comment that forever changed the way I looked at myself, the way I looked at life.
My best girl friends and I sat at one end of the lunch table, he and his friends at the other. The boys and girls always ignored each other. We were too busy talking about chocolate pudding and the 9th grade girl whose bangs stood out a foot from her forehead, and they were constantly talking about...well, honestly, I didn't have a clue, until the day I overheard this: "Megan would be hot if she would just lose some weight." Straight from the mouth of the boy whose necklace I was wearing. Straight to the heart of a little girl who five seconds before didn't realize people thought she was ugly, but now she knew. So began my imprisonment.
My sentence consisted of the standard tear-inducing plucking of the eyebrows, the occasional jab in the eye with a mascara wand or an eyeliner pencil, the tender fingertip burns from overexposure to hair dryers, hot rollers, and straight irons, the cuts from careless strokes with soapy razors. I hated the itchiness of facial masks, the pain of a comb being pulled through tangles, and the sting of hairspray in my eyes. Once, I even left a nice scar on my leg while trying to iron my clothes. Still the punishment wasn't enough. My junior year, I battled an eating disorder, finding a way to manipulate my schedule so that no one would notice my lifestyle changes, dropping 50 pounds in two months. The trends continued into college where I picked up diet pills, tanning, and yes, waxing. Sure, all the girls I knew had the same experiences, the same pains, the same complaints. Sure, we all vented to each other about how unfair it was to have to work so hard to be beautiful and how much we didn't like being girls. Yet the conversation always found its ending in our mantra, "Pain is beauty," the answer to every complaint, the truth that governed our lives, the finality we had come to accept.
Now, I understand a different truth. Pain is not beauty. In fact, to ring true, the phrase itself needs to be reversed: beauty is pain.
Don't misinterpret that phrase. Beauty is not pain because it hurts to tweeze our eyebrows or we burn our fingers on the curling iron. Beauty is pain because it is impossible to live up to the world's standards of beauty, and when we try, we put ourselves through an incredible amount of emotional torture. The world says that if the scale doesn't reveal the correct number or our clothes cannot be valued by their tags, we are worthless. The world says that if we can't walk a mile in heels, wing our eyeliner, and keep our hair glossy, we have no value. The world whispers to us, "If you would just do this one little thing, you would be beautiful." The problem is that there is always going to be one more little thing. The list of physical expectations the world gives females never ends, so no matter how much weight we lose or what shade of red our lipstick is, when we measure ourselves by the world's standards, we will always walk away feeling ugly. Yes, it hurts to rip wax strips from your body; yes, it hurts to pinch your eyelid with the lash curler, but what hurts worse is placing your value in the hands of a monster that will never know what you're worth.
(Side Note: I am not speaking ill against the use of beauty products or against a woman's desire to look and feel her best. I myself love eye shadow, jewelry, and red lipstick. I love getting dolled-up for date night with my husband, and dresses are my favorite things to wear. Please understand though that there is a difference in wanting to look your best and giving yourself a value based on outside expectations.)
