My First Lipstick
November 12, 2024
Writer: Izzy Sampere
Editor: Paige Schachtel
I was eight years old when I first detonated my kitchen microwave in an attempt to make lipstick out of crayons.
Per directions from a Youtube video on my iPad, I had undressed my favorite Crayola brick road red crayon, thrown it into a mug tossed with olive oil, and proceeded to put it on high heat for 3 minutes. Needless to say, the biohazardous concoction I just created did not turn into lipstick, but the kitchen appliance my mother was using to prepare us dinner did erupt into flames. The outcome of the situation was twofold. First, I got my iPad taken away – a punishment for my role in the creation of the mustard-like gas in the kitchen. Second, my angel of a mother bestowed upon me the best gift of all: I won a trip to Sephora, where I would buy my first real lipstick.
The Sephora in my local Green Hills mall felt like the MoMA, the Louvre, the Taj Mahal–each row of overpriced powders and lotions was both modern technology and ancient artifacts alike to my impressionable self. I immediately became engulfed in the infinite shades of lipstick, the large graphics claiming to smooth my pores, stop my aging, elongate my eyes. The black and white stripes decorating the store created a supernatural wormhole where time itself stopped, immune to the screams of my mother begging me to leave. After roughly two hours of scouring the store for the perfect lipstick, I finally settled on a satin shade from Tarte in the shade Buffed Pink. Although my mother’s intentions were simply in the best interest of our new microwave, a sonorous jolt of excitement festered in the pit of my stomach as we waited in line. Skipping out of the store in my torn light-up sketchers, I jumped into the back of the car and grabbed my mom’s dusty pocket mirror from her purse. Ripping open the packaging, I applied the lipstick, emulating Monet with his paintbrush, curving over my cupid's bow and pursing my lips together finally to blend in the color.
From the moment I looked into that little dusty compact mirror, I could not put it down, entranced by this uncanny reflection of myself I saw as desirable. Smiling and blushing in the mirror with my gapped and crooked baby teeth, I felt closest to the dictionary definition of feeling pretty for the first time in my life. And that was everything to me.
That moment roughly marked the beginning and pinnacle of my love – dare I say, my addiction – to makeup.
As a third grader who should have been concerned with learning gymnastics, making sandcastles, and other mindless pastimes, I instead began chasing that immense feeling of beauty that overcame me in the mirror that day.
There is a phenomenon that addicts cite when trying to rationalize the pain and ruin they have caused in their lives; they claim they are “chasing the first high”–attempting to reach the euphoria they felt the first time using. In this singular moment, they had no tolerance, no expectations and no desensitization that would soon haunt them. However, this level of euphoria they once briskly endured can never psychologically nor scientifically be equaled, spiraling them further into their ultimate demise, as they increase their dosage with each time using.
Every activity (and well, extension of the limited free will I possessed) in my childhood was marked by an underlying motivation of “chasing that first high” of feeling pretty – and makeup became my drug of choice. At such a young age – one where I was unconcerned with boys, and unfamiliar with my times tables or the fundamental rules of grammar – I was already preoccupied with the demanding and addicting requirements of the beauty standard. Despite being legally too young to even download Instagram or Youtube, I filled my nights and days with the echoes of beauty gurus teaching me how to wing my eyeliner, curl my hair, and paint my nails. Showing up to my fourth-grade gym class disguised in dazzling blue eyelids and smudged red lips, I resembled Pretty Woman’s Vivian Ward more than my own ten-year-old classmates. Upon returning home from school, I would force my sister to help me take pictures, hoping the still immortality of a photograph would conquer the fleeting high I would never reach again; perhaps posting them on Instagram would produce outside validation that would spontaneously transport me to that version of myself I once saw as desirable that day in the Sephora parking lot. Despite the positive comments left from friends, every look in the mirror further distorted that version of myself I saw in that reflection, lengthening the journey to reaching my utopia. With each new product I bought with stolen pennies from my mom’s car, with each technique I learned instead of spending time with kids in my class, my eyebrows only seemed thicker, my nose bigger, and my stomach fatter. My insecurities were on the rise.
This pattern followed me throughout my adolescence, into the awkward years of middle school, where correcting and scrutinizing my appearance seemed like a proxy antidote to the other uncontrollable things going on in my life. I could change my hair length, dye it blonde, cut bangs, go through a phase constantly decked in thick eyeliner, contour my wide nose, and try fad diets to lose weight, but I could never have the same control with anxiety I was experiencing. Masked as my own outlet for creativity, I pioneered a personal marketing campaign that my young yet intense adjustments to my appearance were simply an extension of my personality, neglecting to admit the truth that all I wanted with each spontaneous change was to feel worthy. Yet, each and every vain thought about my appearance was not producing results in my life. In fact, it was an untimely paradox I was too blind to see. Lacking the hindsight of knowing it was pushing me away from the people I loved, I spun further into a tightening web and spiral of superficiality and shallowness.
The appearance we project through narcissism and egocentrism prevents us from focusing our energy on the beautiful things in life; in fact, it tears apart our beauty, leaving it in shreds and pieces that will never allow us to feel whole once again. It destroys our friendships and familial relationships by teaching us that our egos are more important than anything else in life. When you allow yourself to decenter your appearance, decenter your beauty, you will soon realize that the earth will still spin at 23 degrees regardless of how you look. Only this time, you will soon be mentally present enough to experience the delight and things that make you happy on its surface.
I blame the dealer that is social media and intense commercialized marketing for the quasi-addiction I faced in my childhood. Every girl who grows up with a phone, a wallet, even a brain endures the ever-needy demands that the notion of beauty elicits. Her thighs too thick, her legs too thin, her cellulite too apparent. Our bodies become canvases we attempt to restructure: adding different colors, changing proportions, copying and pasting, sawing and hacking, and yet still we are never satisfied with the dismembered and unrecognizable result. By following the addictive and brutal and bloody requirements of the beauty standard, we are subconsciously contributing to a cycle that pushes other vulnerable little girls into the same situation, with a simple gateway drug that seems harmless in theory, like making lipstick out of crayons. It is a cycle that is inescapable yet exacerbated by the insecurities that capitalism and the media creates. It is tragic to be so deeply convinced that by adhering to these standards, and turning something so symbolic of our innocence, into something so shallow, we will be loved and happy. It is absolutely tragic to be so deeply convinced that we are not already beautiful.
