Posted on: 10/23/2016 Posted by: Lian Comments: 0

One thing not so cool about traveling; your skin doesn’t know how to handle the sun, salty sea water, chemical swimming pool water, dry air, humid air… My forehead has always been my problem area, and she and I haven’t been good friends lately. Follow my vlogs? If you pause it every now and then, you can do a fun game of pimple counting. They’re right between my brows and my hairline. Good luck!

It was better when I had my Bali tan, but now that that pretty brown glow is gone (thanks Sydney), my forehead is behaving bad again. Of course it has to do with my diet and skin care as well, but I eat healthy, try to drink more water and just bought some new skin products that are helping. But I also got some new make-up products to do a proper cover-up.

I’m a beauty disaster

Because I’m a bit insecure, I’m quite skin and make-up focussed at the moment. So when I’m doing my daily Instagram feed check now, I don’t just look at outfits, I look at faces. And damn, so many girls look flawless! How do they do it?! To get an answer to that question I go to YouTube.

Just so you understand, I’m a beauty disaster. I don’t know how to work make-up and I don’t know what’s good for me. Some things even scare me, like contouring and lip-liner. I’ve got a few items that feel and look good, and I stick to it. Like my Clinique ‘Even Better’ foundation and Chanel ‘Le Volume mascara’, hallelujah.

My skin starts itching looking at these videos

But now that I want to know a bit more about beauty, YouTube comes to the rescue. Thank you youtubbers, for all those ‘Every day skin and make-up routine’ videos! A lot of Instagrammers also do videos and lucky for me, they also do a lot of skincare and makeup videos. But instead of making me wanna get out my new make-up, they make me wanna throw it out. The amount of foundation, concealer, bronzer, highlighter, blush, eyebrow powder, fake lashes and lip-liner (wow, I do know some beauty words!) is just shocking to me. How can that feel comfortable? My skin starts itching just looking at these videos.

The sad thing is, these girls are so pretty when they start the video without make-up. Okay, a little foundation, blush, mascara and eye-brow stuff makes them look a bit more flawless, but so many girls continue putting stuff on their faces when I thought they were done ten minutes ago. I’m sorry for being harsh, but very often I look at it and think ‘Don’t you see you’ve got stripes of makeup on your face?’. So many girls literally use their face as a canvas and just like Van Gogh (or any other Impressionist) hardly blend out the lines. Or is that the point and do I just don’t get it? I personally wouldn’t like to walk around with a dark brown stripe under my cheekbones, but that’s just me.

Who wants to wake up to a different looking woman?

I realize that I’m blessed with good skin (except for that forehead!) and that I’m blessed with a boyfriend who thinks I look my best with just a little mascara on. I know for a fact that many men feel that way and I totally understand. Who wants to wake up to a totally different looking woman?

I also realize that some girls really have something to cover-up that makes them insecure when they don’t. Just as I bought new makeup, now that I’m having troubles with my skin. I get it and I’m not anti make-up. But I think makeup should be used to cover-up flaws and to emphasize your plus points. Not to create a totally different face. Or in some, not so rare cases unfortunately, a clown look. I’m sorry, but I’m also not sorry.

Cover-up & emphasize

The point of this column is not to be mean to women who love make-up, it’s not to make fun of women who use make-up. It’s not that I’m becoming the next Alicia Keys and stop wearing make-up to make a statement. The point is that we all compare ourselves to it-girl on social media, but sometimes when you look closer (or at their YouTube tutorials in this case) they’re flawlessness doesn’t come as easy as you might have thought. We all have flaws we want to cover-up, we all have plus point we could emphasize. And I hope that in the end that’s what most of us will do when using makeup!

Photo by barelytherebeauty.com

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