Painted lady

If you don't put on your veneer, you don't care about yourself. Your self esteem is zip. If you do put on your veneer, you're succumbing. You've fallen for the lie that you have to be beautiful all the time. And sometimes you stand there and you struggle with what you're told. Am I beautiful as I am? Do I need to lose weight for my health? What IS a healthy weight? Am I perpetuating the slavery of women to the male ideal? Is the male ideal a figment of the female imagination? And you wonder, how can a tube of lipstick be so fraught? How can the way you feel about your own body be so tied up in the psychobabble phrases of people you've never met? And your mother, who loves you, aims those phrases at you, and you know it's because she loves you, but it makes it even harder. Every time you pick up your brushes you question your motives. Why am I putting this on my skin? Who is really benefitting here? You tell yourself your expressing yourself, but you wonder if there's a hollow ring to that phrase, and then you jump at yourself for overanalyzing, but you're still wondering if you're just rationalizing. You cover your face in powder and cream, veiling it, to get a job, to get a date, to get your Mom to not ask about your eating habits and why you're breaking out. And you see yourself in the mirror, and you think you look pretty, and other people tell you you look pretty, but you know it's wax and pigments they're complimenting. And you look at the real you, the shade of your lips, the color of your eyelashes, the true nature of your skin, and you think, this is beautiful too. Why can't people see?