I was about five years old the first time I ever wore makeup. My older sister had applied it before my first daddy-daughter dance. I remember feeling grown and mature with a face of makeup, and lipstick that I smeared quite early into the night. I continued to harbor that feeling throughout my childhood, and thankfully, I had a sister more than willing to use me as her little model. As I grew older, I begged and begged to get my hands on my own makeup products. On Christmas morning, my mother made me a makeup kit out of dollar store products. I was ten years old at the time, and I insisted on applying makeup before the drive to Grandma’s. It was nothing spectacular, but it was the kind of happiness that's irreplaceable. I think a bit of that makeup magic was lost when I got older, but even now, picking up a makeup brush still makes my heart just a bit bigger.

I spent the majority of my teenage years teaching myself every eyeshadow technique I saw on my sister or on social media. Throughout my trial and errors, my grandpa saw a lot of different colors on my lid and sometimes took it upon himself to comment. Apparently, there was an age restriction on makeup that only he was aware of. It annoyed me, the way he talked about my face like it was some delicate rose that could somehow be crushed by the foundation and eyeliners I applied. It felt demeaning at the time to be told that the art I had become so fond of was to cure the insecurities of girls older than myself.

Makeup isn't as detrimental as people build it up to be. When I started to wear makeup to class in Middle School, some of my peers would comment on my face when I chose to go without it for a day. When I started to get told I looked tired or sickly without makeup, that was the moment it stopped being my harmless passion and became my shield. I thought I wasn't “pretty” without makeup, and that any blemish that showed ruined my beauty. Maybe going through puberty with products to cover up everything you hate isn't the best habit, but I wouldn't change a thing about that point in my life. Old habits don't die quietly, and those insecurities aren't dead, but I'm not their puppet either. The years I spent relying on makeup also meant that I would do an eye look almost every day, and when I created a look that I was genuinely proud of, my childhood joy came back stronger than any negative feeling ever could. Peers complemented my skills that I worked on for years — and still do. The art I create is the reason I love makeup and why I can't stand the heavy critiques of it. Sure, it was a bad habit, but it made me feel pretty and confident, and I found a real passion in it.

Makeup is an art that quite literally welcomes imperfections. No face is symmetrical, and no wrinkle is exactly the same. In a world where creativity gets overrun by AI and society throws perfection further and further from our reach, the art that seeps in your pores is the art that is most perfectly imperfect. The insecurities it may help create are obviously not ideal, but every artist is their own biggest critic, and I believe that same settlement applies to the art of cosmetics.