My flu face

I was taken out by a rather potent strand of flu a few weeks ago. Having not had it before, my body reacted pretty badly and I barely moved from my bed for the first few days. Come day 3, I'd booked the train home so I could be properly nursed back to health with home-made soup, tea, medicine and above all, the care of my Mum.

But this is all slightly besides the point I wanted to make.

What I really wanted to address was the fact that I willingly caught the train looking very much like a heroin addict. Well, maybe not so bad, but it was a severe case of 3-days-of-unwashed-hair and no-make-up-face, that's for sure. I slept quite a lot of the way (between stints of emotional outbursts and an uncalled-for change at Westbury), but overall, I noticed that people were looking at me quite a lot more than usual. Were they judging me and my anti-make-up face? Or did I really just look either high on drugs or anticipating my next fix? Or was it merely a case of me being more self-aware than usual, without my usual outer identity there as a reliable safeguard?

Considering I was on the brink of death (or at least I thought I was at the time...), I didn't give a hoot about what other people thought about my appearance. However, in any other situation (i.e. in better health), I can guarantee that I would've been utterly embarrassed and ashamed about what messages my appearance presented to others at that given time. This is self-explanatory, really - impressions are largely based on the visual, so in order to deem ourselves as respectable human-beings, we must take care of ourselves and a certain amount of upkeep in terms of our outer appearance is thus necessary.

Above anything else, our culture and society is based around the visual. I'm the first to admit I'll judge a person by their outer appearance, and how they present themselves on a day-to-day basis. I'm sure we all do it.

Image sourced from talent.itv.com 

A great example of this from (very) recent television would be yesterday's showing of Britain's Got Talent, whereby a 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl came out to introduce themselves (as an act) to the audience and judges. The reaction? Muttering, whispering, exasperated looks from strangers in the audience and a sarcastic comment from Mr Simon Cowell ("just when you thought it couldn't get any worse...").

The reason for such reaction? Basically, the boy was obese. He went against the regulated conventions deemed normal by our society. Based first impression, it would seem that he didn't take proper care of himself and his health/wellbeing. However, two minutes later and the audience are giving the boy and girl a standing ovation, and Simon Cowell is singing his praises. Goes to show that the visual is everything, at least by first-impression and no doubt more so in the television and media industry. It is crutial. We must be pleasing to the eye, or else we risk being remonstrated by the culture and society we live in.

Sleeping through the alarm

Today I managed to sleep through my alarm. Woke up at 9.35am, then quickly realised I had to leave the house to be at Uni by 10am - thus I had to get ready in a mere 10 minutes, forgoing my usual routine of breakfast - shower - clean teeth - make-up - dress - pack bag, and only doing the latter three (and very hastily, might I add).

Consequently, this meant I only had the time to add a quick splodge of tinted moisturiser to my face and a little bit of eyebrow pencilling. Needless to say, I felt awful all day. Not only was my mood terrible, but I know I wasn't feeling particularly comfortable with how I looked, which made things 10x worse.

I haven't gone to uni without any eye make-up whatsoever in a long time. Although I often just apply mascara, even with this I usually feel a lot better about my appearance. Without it (i.e. today), my eyes felt incredibly bleary and heavy (maybe this was down to a bad night's sleep, too) and it definitely made me feel more conscious about how I looked to others around me.

Strangely enough, I tend to focus more on the amount and type of make-up worn by other women around me more so when I have a completely bare face. Today, for example, it was really evident that the majority of my class were wearing a lot of make-up - foundation and eye-make-up in particular. I think perhaps it was because at the back of my mind I was so overly concerned with how I looked that I was subconsciously (and then consciously, once I realised what I was doing!) 'comparing' myself (or my 'percieved' self) with the people surrounding me.

So, I've experienced my first day without make-up at Uni and the overall verdict is that I hope I'll never sleep through my alarm again!

My Exercise Face

My Exercise Face

Welcome to my exercise face.

My exercise face is probably the truest of all my faces, as it seems to be one of the only appropriate times where I can leave the house with just a smidgen of tinted moisturiser, concealer and a little bit of eyebrow pencilling (this has only recently become a compulsive make-up habit of mine) without feeling too worried about my 'bare' face. It seems pretty pointless to me, really, to apply any more products when it's highly likely to result in unsightly sweat-induced smudging all over my face. 

Observing the other women in my legs, bums and tums class today, I noted that most also sported a rather pared-down look - probably for the same reasons as me - though some still wore (what is likely to be) their usual amount of make-up, upkeeping their usual, routinely identities. Perhaps they'd already been in university or out-and-about in the morning, but otherwise I find it slightly baffling that women would bother to take the time to apply a full-face of make-up, only to sweat it off half an hour after application and subsequently having to wash it off post-workout and start all over again! 

What is your take on wearing make-up to the gym/exercise classes? Do you go for an au-naturel/pared-down/full-face look, and why? Do you judge women who wear a full-face of make-up during exercise, or vice versa?

Don't hesitate to share your opinions with me :)

welcome

Welcome! My name is Katie, I'm a third year student at SSU and I've created this blog as a kind of online documentation for my personal dissertation research.

My dissertation thesis:

An investigation into how the modern culture of compulsive beauty is affecting the identities of young women today, due to an expanding pervasive gaze of surveillance and increasing technological advancement 

 This can be translated into simpler English as follows;
Basically, I'm interested in looking into the reasons why young women seem to feel increasingly pressurised to look a certain way, in order to meet the expectations of what our modern society has created and exposed to us as the 'normal woman'. The idea of creating an image of oneself to reflect a kind of fabricated desire of the imagined-self through make-up application is prominent.

I will be addressing how young women use make-up, and how vital it is in terms of self-esteem and matters of psychology. This blog will be a running commentary of the research I carry out, though more centrally it will pay heed to my own reflections of how I use make-up in order to create a seemingly 'natural' outer identity for myself.

In particular, I will reflect on the 'no make-up' days that I will specifically adhere to, giving written feedback as to how my outer identity essentially affected my inner identity (i.e. my personality, behaviour, confidence etc). I will be using photographic evidence throughout this investigation, and the occasional video log - that's if my face can face it!