I am OUT of the beauty game!

This post is probably going to make me sound like a very crunchy hippie, but here goes...

So, I was thinking yesterday about how my hair's been looking very nice of late (at least the last few months). This is owing, in part, to the FIERCE haircuts I get from a good friend of mine. But I've also noticed that my hair usually looks really healthy and shiny, and even has a hint of volume (which never used to happen with my very fine hair). I was thinking about all this, and trying to figure out what the cause might be. And then, quite by chance, I stumbled across a feminist blog where the conversation had turned to the effect of heat damage on hair. Aha!

Ready for this? I haven't so much as blow-dried my hair in nearly a year. The only product I use is shampoo about every other day. Hell, I don't even brush my hair all that much (just finger-comb it occasionally).

There was a time (mostly in high school) when I put all sorts of goops and serums in my hair, not to mention shampooing with a revolving variety of "volumizing" shampoos, all in an effort to give some "oomph" to what I thought was unattractive, limp hair. I used round brushes, hairspray, flipped my head upside down for blow-drying––you name it. At some point, I just stopped. I realized that my hair (which really doesn't hold a style, even now) was going to look the same, no matter what I did. But I still blow-dried my hair pretty regularly.

Soon, even that stopped. I valued my sleep too much to spend an extra 10 minutes every morning blow-drying my hair. I realized that, by and large, I really don't care anymore how my hair looks. I make sure it's clean when I go out and about, and I keep it tidy (basically, finger-combing it). Aside from that––eh. I've got more important things to do than obsess about something that's not really under my control anyway.

And, really, the same goes for my face. I've never really used makeup, except for certain, special occasions (I find this to be kind of common with us Pacific Northwest women). But there was a time when I got sucked into buying product after product for my skin. Acne skin cleansers (even though I haven't had acne since I was 12), pads and toners, scrubs, pore strips, etc. I have sensitive skin, so all this did was torture my face. Around a year ago, though, I got really crunchy, and ditched a lot of the chemical products I'd been using. Now, I use Cetaphil cleanser once a day, (real) witch hazel on occasion, and a fragrance-free moisturizer. And that's it. I always get a pimple or two right before my period, but I usually let them ride their course, and they go away pretty quickly. (Note: I do realize I am very, very lucky to have the blemish-free skin I do.)

Another aspect of this is a skin condition I've had since I was very young, keratosis pilaris. It took me a long time to not feel self-conscious about my always-rosy cheeks, or the bumps on my arms and thighs. In middle school, I went through a period where I wore thick foundation to cover up the redness on my face. I tried the doctor-prescribed Retin A and lac-hydrin creams to get rid of it, but realized that going through prolonged bouts of twice-daily ointment application was not how I wanted to spend my life. So I made peace. As I've gotten older, the skin on my face has gotten less red (I think stopping the constant irritation from harsh products has helped, too), though the skin on my arms and legs is the same, and might be for the rest of my life. Frankly, I just decided to be cool with it, to accept myself as-is. Actually, 'accept' isn't the right word––it's more like 'love.' Loving my inner self led me to learn to love my outer self. Occasional glances in the mirror no longer provoke a critical "Ugh, I look terrible", but a "Wow, my hair looks really nice," or, "My skin's looking good."

Whew. This is really long. I'll just say this, in closing:

I am by no means saying that everyone and their mother should adopt my (lack of a) beauty routine. I'm merely saying that, in my opinion, I think we'd all be better off if we ignored the advertising and social pressures about what products we should use and what we should look like, and find something that makes us happy. For me, it was realizing that no amount of primping, grooming, creams, makeup, or products were going to make me into the "ideal" I was striving for. I chose to change my ideal to fit myself, and it's made me pretty happy. I'm not some bastion of self-esteem, mind you, but I can honestly say that most of the time, I'm happy with the outer me.

Sometimes, Books Make Me Cry

...but usually in a good way. I'm reading Daniel Radosh's Rapture Ready!, which is a pretty entertaining, in-depth, and remarkably unbiased look at Christian pop culture. The author approaches it from an "outsider's perspective", although I often find myself rolling my eyes or snickering at some of the kookier people he interviews. But then I just read this:

I nodded, and Jon went on. "Some things we just have to struggle with, you know? Look at gay marriage. I know what the Bible says, but I have gay friends who adopted a child, and now this little girl that nobody else wanted has a loving..." He shrugged.

That's what made me cry. When you start taking a long, hard look at the conservative, evangelical brand of Christianity, it's easy to get bogged down in the hate speech that seems front and center to modern American Christianity (Pat Robertson, I'm looking at you). And, truth be told, gay rights were a major influence on me turning away from religion. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about the gay people I knew, the more I realized that to say they were sinning just by loving who they loved made no sense, that to be a moral person, I actually had to reject many of the beliefs I'd been taught made up Christian 'morality'.

Things like the simple little quote above actually give me an eensy bit of hope for humanity. That one Christian can look at people he knows and respects, and realize that maybe the Bible doesn't always apply tells me that maybe there's more common ground out there than I thought.

Plus, I'm glad that a little girl nobody else wanted has a loving family.