Work in Progress

Am I good at being a girl?

The other girls braid each other’s hair. The long, straight tresses belong in their hands. They’re woven into dirty blonde patterns of french and fishtail. They are good at being girls. The differing knowledge shimmers between us like a force field. I can do a basic three plait only and have little desire to learn more.

My eyebrows are bushy caterpillars to their thin arches. But isn’t Cara Delevingne making thick eyebrows something coveted right now? Frankly I don’t want to wax my eyebrows because then I’ll be just like the girls who make me feel like I’m the “weird one,” the “smart one,” the one who doesn’t quite get what it means to be a teenage girl. Why would I learn about bronzer and contour when I’m supposed to just like who I am and be okay with that?

But maybe if I did learn, that force field would shatter. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so removed as I tug my mouth up and laugh about who said what, even as my gut twinges with the feeling that I’m off-center. Maybe the boys I watch with longing eyes, even though they don’t make my heart sing, would think I’m pretty.

I model what the movies and the popular girls with the curated Instagram feeds do. We’re 14, and everyone is prettier than me.

They’re prettier than you.

I ask my friends, “Why do you get it, and I don’t?”

“You’re intimidating. Maybe that’s why the boys don’t go for you. I mean, don’t change that; it’s good that you know who you are,” they say.

But it hurts to be who you are when that means people can’t relate to you and have no interest in dating you.

***

Acrylic paint is scary.

Especially for a detail-orientated, cautious person such as myself. It is not easily controlled, and as a sophomore in high school who has only done two acrylic pieces before, I don’t know what I’m doing yet. I paint tentatively, watering the pigment down so much that, in the end, my piece resembles one of watercolor rather than acrylic. Gradually, I learn to water down my paints less. This is thanks to my own growing confidence and the support of my art teacher and my two good friends. They encourage me to have faith in my abilities and foray outside of my comfort zone.

Blob that paint onto the canvas. Mix dark reds and blues for shadows. Believe in yourself.

Bolstered by their words, I find my love of impressionism.

Achieving great realism through the expression of light and frenetic brushstrokes, impressionism creates an antithetical structure that I adore. I accept that hyperrealism doesn’t have to be the goal every time. In my use of globs and globs of paint and short, quick, dancing brushstrokes, I find peace. I am no longer obsessing over every shadow, every pore. I’m just painting. I feverishly work when I stumble upon a good shade or technique, the spirit of fleeting mastery possessing my hand for a few moments. I strive for that euphoric feeling. The world becomes rose-tinted, and nothing else exists but my brush and my canvas.

As I have gained a newfound appreciation for the numerous possibilities of acrylic paint when uninhibited by my own fear, I have found a love for the dynamic nature of light. The warmth of golden hour, the way it turns everyone and everything orange in the best way possible. The fluorescent diner lighting of a Clemmons Dairio which imbues the ordinary with the reverence of a Hopper painting: captivating nighthawks at a dark, wood counter. The natural light softly whispering through the opaque glass window of the Reynolds High School Auditorium bathroom.

***

One winter day in 2020, I dug my flannel pj pants out from storage where they’d grown dusty with disuse during the fall semester. I queued up my CDs for the day. I felt the itch to create. I pulled out an old piece of watercolor paper, still taped to cardboard by the hopes of an imagined project long gone. Like a varsity athlete returning to their high school track, I shook out the joints with a light wash. I did dynamic stretches with each added layer of color. I found my youth again as I took a curve with ease into the homestretch, creating a finished piece of vibrant hues.

Seven blissful hours later I had a technicolor watercolor of the Wake Radio studio.

Making art used to be scary. My perfectionist standards loomed large. They still have a presence, but I stand toe-to-toe with them now. Part of my hesitancy to begin or work on a piece stems from years of pressure I’ve placed on myself to uphold my own exceptional standards and those of the people I cannot disappoint. I fear I won’t be able to live up to myself. Yet once I get going and tap into my artist self, my right brain activates muscle memory. I am learning to trust in what I’ve done before. Take a hike, left brain! I will appreciate everything I make, no matter the “flaws.”

The creation of the last piece of my senior art concentration birthed this new thinking. My original idea wasn’t clicking. It was the beginning of quarantine, and I missed my friends terribly. Who knew when I’d see them again? As I sat in our front room abundant with daylight, as I was wont to do in those days, I was hit with the idea of a piece full of color and wavy lines – very 70s. I needed to create with joy and freedom. No strict, gridded paper for this project. We would spell out “Hello” in ASL, connected by those wavy lines to illustrate how we could still communicate by phone. Each friend was drawn in their own specific color, either their favorite or the one I associate with them. The space and freedom I gave myself to think allowed me to create something free of external expectations, something which became one of my favorites of high school.

If creating for art class was my snug pair of mom jeans that are only good for the work day, creating “Hello” was that favorite pair of well-worn, lumberjack plaid, flannel pajama pants. I don’t mind the jeans. But I grin and do a little dance as I put on my flannel pj pants. Every part of my body relaxes as I slip those on, just as my mind settles more comfortably into itself when creating “Hello.” This ease allowed me to explore sketching next. The drawings became unattached, unencumbered by judgment and comparisons to past work. I could appreciate them simply for what they were, flaws included. Sketching in this way became an extension of journaling: a means to reflect, to brain dump.

Making art is not scary. It is a catalyst for joy. It is an old friend, one I can fall right back into laughter with, no matter how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other.

Using makeup does not have to mean fear and comparison. It can be the new friend who I feel like I’ve known my entire life. When I was 14, I saw makeup as a compromise, a begrudging acquiescence to something and someone whom I didn’t want to be. It was a catch-22. Be like them and be inducted. Be myself and stay true to my center. The oscillation between the two blurred my sense of self into an uncomfortable ambiguity.

Then came the summer before senior year.

The summer when I learned to see myself as a canvas free from my own judgment.

The summer when the ambiguity became a whole new palette of grays to be explored.

The summer of wild, curly hair so unlike those straight, blonde tresses. The summer of bright eyes, confident waves to any kind, cute boy, and dazzling smiles.

I wore what I wanted to. I didn’t stand in front of the mirror long enough to let the negativity creep in and decompose the self I had built for the day.

I found tranquility in the silence that replaced the internal cacophony of familiar comparison. The cacophony I had fostered like a devilish plant, with witch-finger branches that tore away at my self-image piece by piece. I began to dress how I wanted to. With each new day, I pulled out a root, until all that was left was fresh soil where I planted the joyous blooms of denim shorts, braless outfits, and light makeup.

I didn’t have to have a full face of makeup to be pretty. Eyebrows and mascara. Art socks and mom jeans. Bam. Happy. I could be me, and everyone else could be themselves. My roommate and friends held my new approach to identity high up above their heads, giving me the opportunity to crowd surf on their support.

I could be gorgeous and smart.

No hierarchy existed to tell me otherwise or to shove me into a rickety throne in the royal court’s shadow. I was surrounded at all times by beautiful people who were unapologetically themselves. We were all entities coexisting and learning from each other, seeing the beauty we each offered in our own ways. Learning to grow comfortable in these new fashions and face paint was the stepping stone to the desire I now hold to paint my eyes in green, yellow or Own Ur Power lavender.

***

April 15, 2020. A month into quarantine.

My days were infused with a simplicity and curiosity I had not experienced since I was 11 years old in a brand-new house without internet. On this particular day the urge to “create a whole look despite having nowhere to take it” was especially strong. I was pulled to my one bag of makeup by a gravitational tug in my center – the heroine on the precipice of her coming-of-age quest. I pulled out my singular eyeshadow palette and dug around in my memories like a woman searching through her overcrowded purse for Tic-Tacs. I closed my hand around the memory of the time my dear, makeup guru friend taught me how to do eye shadow. I opened my 8-color palette, shuffling color combinations in my head like Sherlock Holmes. I daubed a solid amount of the lightest shade onto the inside halves of my eyelids, the almost watercolor, acrylic wash covering the canvas. I pulled the darker hue from the outside in, arcing over the curve of my eye. The cobalt blue and burnt sienna Liquitex paint for depth. I blended the two together with a shiny, middle hue. The unaltered white paint, my go-to blender. I created a look which made my dad puzzle, “Your eyes are orange,” and made me feel like Padmé Amidala: powerful.

A full look didn’t suddenly become an everyday thing; I still did just brows and mascara or no makeup most days. Yet every so often my singular non-black Colourpop eyeliner, buried at the bottom of my burlap makeup bag for years before, glazed my eyelids with honey butter. I experimented with my 8-color palette, adding pink depths of flower centers. Not too long after, I found myself scrolling through Colourpop and Glossier’s websites in daydreams of dewy, colorful eyeliners and Prismacolor eyeshadow palettes. Through social media and my own convincing, I was seeing art as something for the wearer, not the observers.

I wanted to explore this new method of painting. My family heard me. For Christmas they gave me Colourpop galore. An Urban Decay palette appropriately titled “Born to Run,” covered in images of travel and adventure, more wanderlust for a college freshman. I felt the feeling any artist knows, familiar to our bones. That pricking in your fingers. That lighting of your eyes as you envision the endless potential beheld in front of you. We know how to make whole worlds out of pots of palette no bigger than quarters.

My acrylic paint tubes, bent like modern dancers from many a project, and my brushes, few but sturdy, splattered with the excess of many an impassioned marathon painting session, have been replaced for the time being. Their current counterparts are cloudscape and flower field eyeshadow palettes, petal soft, yet Basquiat bright. The occasionally shaken off, but not washed, Target makeup brush set. Doing my makeup brings me back to the simplicity of sidewalk chalk. You spend your time creating a masterpiece, only to have it worn down by car tires and washed away completely by the rain. The day’s look is gradually eroded by the eye rubbing and temple scratching of studying and springtime allergies. It washes away forever in the evening’s lukewarm, hot on a good day, shower in Angelou Residence Hall. I know no look will last, but each is beautiful in its embrace of the present. It is a true illustration of the temporary nature of things, especially given my tendency to forget eyeshadow primer.

Just as one can envision a painting as big as a museum wall from five tubes of paint and some brushes, I am able to see myself in the worlds of makeup and femininity. I am finding belonging in my interpretations of these worlds, for knowing how to fishtail braid and do bronzer are not the only ways to be a girl.

My femininity is my black, flare mom jeans. My white, 80s Vans which are no longer pristine but have “character.” My yellow, crew Gustav Klimt socks and matching eyeshadow. My climber’s build which allows me to pull myself up a wall on a hold no deeper than the width of a dime. My curves I use to dance to 2000s pop and Dua Lipa like no one’s business.

I’m good at being a girl.

I’m good at being me.