what’s an eyeliner?
behold 2013
you can make fun of me all you want, but for a 15 year old, this emo-inspired eyeliner was kinda bussin, idk.
My earliest memory of beauty was my undying resolve to master the liquid eyeliner. I began my quest at 12, seeing all the different ways you could change your eye shape with something as simple as a black line. To a 12 year old Asian-American kid, using eyeliner to change my eye shape was pretty much the same thing as free plastic surgery (jackpot). However, instead of wanting a more western look, I wanted to look more eastern. I was sick of looking ethnically ambiguous — I just wanted to look like a recognizable Asian ethnicity so that people would stop badgering me about what I was.
But aha! One cannot simply do eyeliner ONLY. I learned this lesson the hard way in my freshman high school year book photo — I had on the darkest waterproof liquid liner I could find, face lotion to moisturize and baby powder as a do-it-yourself translucent setting powder (i’m crying as i write this).
The result?
FISH FACE. we got F I S H F A C E.
I have quite large and round eyes. Without a wing, the black liner accentuated the roundness of my eyes. And the baby powder? That was already a recipe for nightmare with flash photography.
As I grew older, I noticed that adding eyeliner to my face led to an imbalance — now everything around my eyes looked washed out. Filling in my eyebrows helped but now I looked top-heavy. Adding blush helped distribute the visual weight but then my lips looked sickly — so on and so forth. A 12 year old girl minimalist eventually morphed into a 15-18 year old make up maximalist.
Beauty is such a subjective and personal journey — it’s also an endless journey. What is conventionally beautiful today may not be considered beautiful tomorrow.
If I have learned anything regarding my beauty journey, it can be summarized in 5 points:
Skincare is the basis for your makeup — it’s the makeup you can’t wash off.
Choose products that work for your skin type (for me, it was learning that waterproof eyeliner/mascara prevented smudging on my oily combination skin).
Products don’t have to be expensive to be good. Period. To this day I still mess with wet n’ wild.
Less is more; look for techniques that accentuate your features and you will look effortlessly put together. Its not entirely what you apply/if you apply enough, it’s how you apply it.
Don’t be afraid to try out new makeup looks that are outside of your comfort zone — experimentation is the natural process we use to improve ourselves.
Photos were from 2013-2023 starting from left to right
Have I reached my final form? are we there yet?
Not quite; I’ve come a long way. Physical beauty was heavily tied to my personal insecurities with my ethnic identity and self-worth. Instead of wanting to be ethnically recognizable, I now find strength in being ethnically ambiguous — it’s something I’ve actually grown to like. But for now I’d like to think I’m close to my final form :)
