Since I’ve started wearing make-up, I’ve received some encouraging compliments and tips from friends and the occasional befuddled stare when people (mostly my high school teachers) try to put a finger on how they know me. However, there’s one question I’ve failed to dodge every time I greet a tita cheek-to-cheek: “Sin-o ginapagwapahan mo (Who are you making yourself pretty for)?”
I usually just chuckle and utter a meek “wala, tita.” In my mind, I’ve already rolled my perfectly winged cat eyes so far back I can see my brain cells die a little bit.
In high school, being exceptionally girly (or inta, to use the proper Hiligaynon term) was probably the second worst thing you could be called (the first, of course, being a flirt). My mother, concerned about my oily skin, bought me a humble powder pact, which I quickly stuffed into my backpack— never seeing the light of day again. I didn’t want to be caught powdering my nose, lest I be teased to social death by both the males and females that made up my barkada. That was the unspoken implication that sometimes came with being inta: there was someone you were trying to attract and that made you a flirt as well. It was a two-in-one deal that no girl wanted.
Girls often find themselves performing a balancing act of sorts — we’re constantly walking on the tightrope between “too much” and “too little.” Wear too much make-up, you’re vain. Wear too little, you’re a slob. Equilibrium is especially difficult to achieve when the harsh spotlight of the male gaze is upon you, and yet we continue to make fun of people when they put too much make-up on; we still snicker when we see that they don’t wear enough. We assume that girls do it to attract male attention—or worse, to “deceive” men (I would insert a thousand question marks here but The GUIDON’s style guide and the character limit for this opinion piece beg me not to). Can we really help that some people put make-up on simply because they don’t feel comfortable going out without blended-out triangles of concealer under their eyes, especially when we as a society expect everyone—especially women—to look a certain way?
Of course, society’s standard of beauty is a whole other problem we need to figure out. The least we can do for now is to stop putting people down for wearing make-up. We need to stop assuming that the only reason girls (or any make-up wearer for that matter) put on make-up is for anyone else but themselves. While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to look cute for the boy you’ve been eyeing in your Philo class, this attitude towards make-up as something so superficial and vain disregards the fact that it’s a billion-dollar industry that boosts its patrons’ confidence with the swipe of a brush. We forget that make-up is an art, that make-up is a career for many people from salon employees to your favorite YouTube beauty guru, that make-up is fun, that you don’t have to put it on if you don’t want to, that you can if you do.
This is a long-overdue apology to my titas—I’ve been lying to you. I am making myself pretty for someone. That someone is me.
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