All Done Up

     One of the most important parts of womanhood is feeling beautiful.  It was my one great desire with this project to capture the process of young women following the routines they use in regard to beautifying themselves, and why they do them. 

     This collection of photographs depicts a range of actions; The beauty regimens of some of my teammates and friends, what they do to get themselves ready for the day, the tools they use, and how they feel about it. Do they enjoy the beautification process? Do they resent the time-consuming rituals, or do they simply accept the process as being a part of womanhood? At what point to they consider themselves presentable? What does it truly mean to be "all done up?"

This photo depicts one of my teammates, Kate, applying lip gloss in front of her super-magnified makeup mirror. I found the mirror to be the most interesting part of this picture because it essentially designed to help achieve a flawless facial appearance, and to point out superficial shortcomings no normal observer would even notice. 

No makeup regimen would be complete without mascara. This seems to be the consensus of all the girls I talked to, even the ones who chose to not be photographed. 

"Have you ever noticed how it's impossible to keep your mouth closed when you're putting on mascara?" Must be a concentration thing.

   

"I change my makeup maybe 2 or 3 times before I even leave my room in the morning. If it doesn't look right, or doesn't give off the vibe I'm feeling, then I wont like it and I'll change the look. It get's a little time consuming."

Concluding Kate's regimen, is her fingernails. She chose pastel violet because "technically, it is spring." This part of her routine prompted me to wonder why our hands are such an essential part of our femininity, and why unpainted fingernails sometimes gather the connotation of being "immature" or "unprofessional." 

When asked what she thought about the beautification process, Kate said that thought it is time-consuming, she enjoys it "because I like to feel at least a little bit cute every day."

My roommate Maddie's regimen is a little more simple. We both get up early to go to breakfast together every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday before class, and Maddie says she has bigger things to concern herself with than taking a long time to do her makeup everyday. Also, as an in-season water polo player, she knows her makeup is just going come off in the pool later anyway. 

"I'm pretty vanilla. Concealer, eyeliner, mascara. As for my hair, I was blessed with decent-looking natural waves, so I just let it fly. I'm not trying to impress anyone in my classes."

Here is Maddie's minimalist makeup-bag contents. Simple-looking to the untrained eye, but without it, she says "I would look like a gremlin. I put a little bit of white eyeshadow in the inner-corners of my eyes to make it look like I'm not asleep." 

When asked about how she felt regarding women's pressure to be and feel beautiful, Maddie simply responded. "Being a woman is a struggle. I feel like I'm wasting my time making my face look like this just so people will think I'm not atrocious. Guys don't do that. They just are the ones doing the judging. Kinda messed up."

In my room, there are at least 5 or 6 little bags like this, full of fingernail polish. We have every color on the spectrum, and many of my girl friends have the same amount of nail polish in their rooms. But why? I know my nails go naked 85 percent of the time. "It's the principle," one of my teammates said. "We like having the possibility to match our nails to any outfit. I like having special nights set aside to paint my nails. I like to pamper myself." 

For this photo, I did a little experiment on myself. I let one of my friends (who is very talented at doing makeup) do my eye makeup on one of my eyes, while I left the other one makeup-less.

The difference seems almost uncanny, and I decided that it is a little crazy to think how much different I can make myself look just by using a little paint, powder, and dye. My eyes look almost asymmetrical, and my naked right eye looks significantly younger and less fierce than my peacock-inspired left eye. This makes me wonder just how different some people would look sans makeup, and how we expect people to look at us (women) for who we truly are, if they aren't really seeing our true appearance to begin with.