Redefining Healthy

     I think this is a big problem for girls that grew up in the 90's and I want to talk (write) about it. During my formative years, skin was supposed to be matte. Super matte. Shiney skin was the bane of the beauty world. Foundation was medium to heavy coverage and everything was matte and covered in setting powder. I thought this was the ideal. I thought that healthy skin was matte, and since I had difficult skin, I needed to be working towards totally matte so I could finally attain perfect skin. So I spent about 15 years trying to make my skin matte. Which was impossible! I had extremely oily skin for many years and no product on the market could handle absorbing all the oil my skin would produce. I tried foundations, primers, toners, lotions, masks, setting sprays, and powders. All of them looked perfectly matte when I put them on my face, and an hour later it was a hot mess of an oil slick, slipping and sliding all over the place. Not cool face, not cool. So I would give up. Swear off even bothering to wear foundation and just go around with bare skin and an oil sheen on my face. It seemed the lesser of two evils.

     The downside to all this is that I spent far too long reaching for a normal that wasn't even normal. Healthy skin isn't matte. Let me repeat in case you missed it: Healthy. Skin. Is. Not. Matte. Period. Matte skin is for damaged dehydrated skin or photo shoots. To paraphrase Caroline Hirons, you're skin can be matte when you're dead. Wanting ultra matte skin is always going to lead to frustration, frustration because you have oily skin and it's never going to happen for you, or frustration because your dry unhealthy skin is going to look really aged and wrinkled by the time you hit forty. You don't want matte skin, the beauty industry just brainwashed you into thinking you did. Matte skin doesn't automatically equal beauty or health. It's not at all the appropriate rubric to use. So, in the words of Disney, let it go. Let it go! Redefine a new healthy. Shiney isn't always bad and matte isn't always good. Healthy, smooth, hydrated, glowing, even-toned skin is healthy. Work towards those goals.

     I was working an event this month and I looked in the mirror and thought "Wow, your entire face is shiny. Go find some powder STAT!" Not 5 minutes later, before I had a chance to powder or touch up my makeup, my friend comes over and says that my skin looks so good and she wished she could get hers to look good. I actually laughed out loud because earlier she'd been bemoaning the fact that her skin was so oily and she kept having shine breakthrough her foundation. Again, we judge ourselves so much harsher than anyone else does. Because of my conditioning, I looked at myself and thought matte=beauty and judged my skin imperfect, while to anyone else looking at my face, my skin looked healthy and clear and beautiful. Let it go, lighten up, relax, let your skin be free to have some shine. It's not the end of the world, in fact, it's probably the beginning of learning to celebrate healthy beautiful normal skin!