The Make-up Consultation

I guess I will preface this by saying I have a lot of hang-ups about make-up and my face in general. I have low self-esteem and have always had low self-esteem, and sometimes when people talk about make-up on my face, and about how important such-and-such is, sometimes (okay, all of the time) I get the thought in my head that my face is not really all that pleasant to look at on its own and I would be doing a service for humanity by wearing make-up. When someone tells me about the make-up I SHOULD wear, it always comes out to me like a list of the faults on my face: you have bags under your eyes so you should wear concealer, your eyebrows are light so you should darken them, and on and on. Instead of hearing, there is natural beauty in your face, let's highlight some things, I hear, here are your faults, let's cover them up.

In general, in life, I don't wear make-up, and when I do it's for a fancy occasion and I can't wait to wash it off after. If I didn't feel like my dress would completely wash out my face in all of the pictures because I am super-di-duper white, I wouldn't bother with make-up at all.

I am pre-wired to be defensive about my face. Or really about anything. (This is something I am working on)

I guess I should have told the make-up artist that before I went, because after I told her I didn't wear any make-up ever nor did I know anything about make-up or what looks good on me, I kind of felt defensive the whole time. I felt defensive because I don't use a different moisturizer in the winter than in the summer, or an eye cream (because of my previously mentioned bags under my eyes), or have an extensive make-up routine, and on and on. I said, I concentrate all of my face-care efforts on preventing acne.

I am so sensitive about comments on my face. Like, "oh you have big eyes!" which should be a compliment, I guess, but it was followed up with, "oh, this one is bigger than that one," which is my NUMBER ONE anxiety-producing aspect of my face, the thing I see in every picture and every time I look in the mirror is that one eye is bigger than the other, and I had it pointed out to me by someone else. And she said, well, it's natural for one side of our body to be bigger than the other, which is true... I know that's true, but it's not exactly a compliment.

She did a very nice job with the make-up but I have to say I felt kind of down during the consultation.

I also felt defensive because we had only scheduled an hour and a half for make-up, nobody knew how long it would take, etc etc... "You aren't having a wedding coordinator?" "Isn't the bride's family the one who pays?" "You're letting your fiance see you before the wedding?" (We are doing the picture-taking before the ceremony) And all these questions and I was just like ........... I just wanted to see what you would do to my face...?