I feel like I fail as a woman when I don’t know how to do my hair. When I know that with the dress I’m wearing, a full up-do would compliment the dress best. I know that my hair should be off my neck to show off the backless dress. I know that the other women in the bridal party will be wearing full faces of makeup and I will stand out of I don’t wear any. I also know that I don’t like the feeling of layers of makeup caked on my face. I like being able to rub my eyes whenever I want and I like not worrying about lip gloss or shimmer or stick making it onto my teeth.
There is a certain set of rules you are supposed to follow as a bridesmaid—that’s what I was this weekend, but it is true for most of womanhood, too. You are supposed to look pretty, you are supposed to know how to craft a pretty vision, and you are supposed to have the skills to execute it. I feel like a fake woman for not feeling confident in my ability to do my hair nicely. I feel like less of a woman for not feeling confident about my ability to deftly apply a full face of makeup.
You’re supposed to know how to do it. It’s supposed to be as easy as breathing. You can learn it, I supposed, and that is accepted, but somehow I also feel like you are just supposed to be automatically good. It is hard to perform femininity when the femininity you are performing isn’t executed well; a shade of concealer too dark for your face, blush or mascara that looks a little too gaudy, curled hair that is or and a little too flat. Femininity, after all, necessitates perfection. Or delicacy. Or at least grace. To be a woman is to be held to impossibly high standards, to fail to meet those standards is falling short of the “ideal” feminine. If you can’t do the hair or the makeup or pick the right dress or don’t have your nails well pained or well done, you aren’t doing it right. You aren’t a member of the secret club everyone else is effortlessly a part of.
I don’t know if it is more my lack of confidence in some of these skills or my distaste for their requirement, but I have never felt like I was able to adequately perform femininity. The gaps in my beautification prowess feel to me like they scream “She is bad at being a woman! Everyone, point and laugh, because she is not as much of a woman as she is supposed to be!”
I challenge myself by learning to do my hair—learn how to curl it and how to do so in a way that looks how I like. I challenge myself by trying out makeup here and there—try mascara, find a shade of something that I like on my lips, see if I like how eyeliner looks on my eyes, figure out how much sparkle I like on my face and when. The whole of makeup is overwhelming, but a few items isn’t so hard. It’s not so bad, either; not so daunting to only do what suits my soul
Finding the pieces of femininity that I like and learning how to do those make me feel better. It’s a ridiculous notion at all that I can fail at being a woman, but I don’t think it’s an unreasonable conclusion. Women are expected to be everything, and that of course includes being pretty. It’s supposed to be effortless, which means any blips are a failing. A moral one, of course, an admission of the fall from the pedestal.
I think the greatest refutation I have is to only do what I like. I can learn what suits me. I can lean into that which makes me feel good, and I can leave the rest behind. I need not waste my time mastering something I hate simply to perform femininity better. Femininity is a performance, plain and true. But it is also an essence, one that can be held by anyone who wishes for it. I can keep what I wish and eschew that which I don’t. Perform what feels true and nothing more.