I’d forgotten what I looked like until I ditched makeup in lockdown

It had been years – many years even – since I had final seen myself with out enhancements (Picture: Emily Metcalfe)Back in the times earlier than we’d ever heard or used the phrases ‘coronavirus’ or ‘lockdown,’ I had a reasonably tight magnificence routine. 
I shaved my legs and armpits each different day, acquired my lash extensions infilled each two weeks, had a gel manicure each three weeks, eyebrows threaded as soon as a month, facials each six weeks and roots bleached each eight. 
I would put on makeup to any social appointment that occurred both inside or outdoors of my flat, and spent a good chunk of my revenue maintaining with the newest magnificence tendencies. 
I spent a small fortune on merchandise promising to make my curly, frizzy hair easy, together with – at instances – eye-wateringly costly straightening remedies. 
I’ve by no means had any beauty enhancements however in the last decade earlier than lockdown, I had tried nearly each skincare fad on the market.
From pores and skin peels to micro-dermabrasion, if it had ever been featured in one of many girls’s magazines promising to be the elixir of youth, you would guess I’d given it a whirl. 
I was attributable to get my nails and hair finished the day after lockdown was introduced in the UK final March. At the time, there have been so many feelings flying round about every part – worry, nervousness and common overwhelm – that this reality barely registered with me. 
The appointments had been clearly cancelled and I’d rebook in just a few weeks in spite of everything of this was over, I thought. It’s not like anybody was going to see me anyway. I reside alone.
But with every passing day, it turned very clear that life wasn’t returning to regular any time quickly. And slowly, slowly, I began to really feel alienated from the reflection I noticed in the mirror, because the ‘actual’, unedited me started to emerge. 
Without entry to my regular remedies, I began to note silver hairs weaving in and out of my parting, how unusual my nails looked unpolished after so a few years of back-to-back appointments and the way brief my lashes had been with out the extensions. 
Stray hairs on my brows and chin began to poke by means of the floor of my pores and skin and, with out anyplace to go, there was no level in losing good makeup and so I didn’t put on any.
At first I discovered it startling. It had been years – many years even – since I had final seen myself with out enhancements. To put it mildly, issues had modified fairly a bit throughout that point.
I discovered it onerous to narrate to the particular person I now noticed in the mirror, whose face was puffier and extra lined than it as soon as had been, with shadow-like semi circles protruding from the decrease aspect of every eye.

It was like performing a manufacturing facility reset after years and years of updates (Picture: Rose Stokes)I want I might say it was a pleasant Instagrammable second when I was overcome with self love, however in all reality I didn’t like what I noticed in any respect.
How might I, after 30 years of being taught by the sweetness business that the best way to be lovely was to attempt to look as distant from this particular person as attainable?
This was solely compounded by the elevated publicity I needed to seeing myself on display screen, as I started to spend hours and hours on Zoom and Facetime with associates, colleagues and family, in a determined try and really feel much less alone. 
It merely wasn’t attainable to keep away from myself — a method that earlier than lockdown had all the time labored effectively in comparable durations of self-consciousness.
And so I did what I all the time do when I really feel anxious, and I tried desperately to attempt to set up some stage of management over the scenario. I spent hours on Youtube tutorials making an attempt to discover ways to bleach my roots and truly didn’t do a foul job of it, all issues thought-about. 
I commissioned a pal who’s a nail artist to make me some press-on nails to get me by means of lockdown — as a former persistent nail-biter I was frightened that my unhealthy behavior would possibly return.
I scrolled and scrolled by means of at-home magnificence hacks on Instagram. I spent a great deal of cash on lotions and potions promising to make me look youthful and pored over articles about lash-lengthening serums. 
My associates and I spoke extra significantly about beauty enhancements in these months than we ever have earlier than.
I managed to attain a reasonably efficient rendering of my pre-pandemic self. But like any duplicate, there have been slight variations in contrast with the unique that made me query its worth.
The tone of my hair wasn’t fairly proper and the press-on nails, although lovely, had been so lengthy I might barely kind and would break off at inopportune moments (all the time on dates).
I don’t know whether or not it’s as a result of extra frequent publicity to my unedited reflection meant that I progressively turned extra comfy with myself or whether or not I merely not had the power to be so bothered about it, however ultimately I stopped making an attempt so onerous to cover the return of my pure self.
Maybe, alongside every part else that was taking place, I merely didn’t have the emotional capability to care a lot.
It’s unusual to assume now how a lot of my life I’ve spent altering and modifying my look to make it extra palatable, in a continuing recreation of addition and subtraction that can really feel acquainted to most ladies.
And with out the imposition of lockdown, I’m undecided I’d have ever gained sufficient distance from all of it to essentially think about which magnificence routines I was participating with as a result of I really needed to, and which I merely felt I should in order to suit a sure normal of magnificence conceived by those that stand to revenue from my insecurity.
It was like performing a manufacturing facility reset after years and years of updates. I’d forgotten what I actually looked like with out all of those remedies and therapies.
An inflow of different extra essential issues to fret about instantly made me assume, so what if my hair isn’t naturally blonde? So what if my face is unmade? Is it actually that unhealthy?
I am a agency believer that make-up, hair and sweetness remedies — when used for the precise causes — might be massively empowering instruments that assist individuals to face out or benefit from their pure property.
More: Body Image

I simply hadn’t realised until this yr that this wasn’t how or why I was utilizing them. Rather than making an attempt to face out, I was participating in these rituals to mix in — to have the ability to go by vital eyes undetected. 
Far from prompting a need to reject these remedies as we’re as soon as once more in a position to entry them subsequent week although, this break has made me actually think about what I’d like to change about myself versus what I beforehand thought I wanted to alter or conceal.
I’m now contemplating altering the color of my hair to make it each simpler to take care of and nearer to my pure tone, which, though it might appear small, is definitely an enormous step for me after 22 years of speeding to bleach my roots as quickly as they seem. 
Overall, I’m feeling higher about my pure look than I ever have since puberty. Finding upsides in the previous yr of abject wrestle might be onerous typically, however for me, it will undoubtedly be certainly one of them.
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