sacred mask

Doing my makeup is a sacred act. I started when I was 8 years old, something most people probably can’t say. Most of the dance moms did their daughters’ stage makeup before dress rehearsals and shows — I did my own. And not because my mom wasn’t there or wasn’t supportive, she was in some ways the most supportive one. 

At competitions I would see girls get off stage and get berated by their mothers in the dressing room, telling them they messed up the choreography or they could have had better facial expressions or whatever other critique. Even at such a young age it made me sad. I didn’t understand why a mom would say that to their child when they came off stage crying. I would come off stage critiquing myself and my mom would always say how amazing I did and how nobody probably noticed I messed up because “she didn’t and she had watched the piece a million times”. In some ways I’m still very much in pain because of things she did. In other ways I don’t feel I even deserve her at all. 

Although she was a very hands on parent, she let me do my own hair and makeup for dance. I’ve always been strikingly independent for someone so fragile. By 9 or 10 years old I was doing a full face of stage makeup and fake eyelashes and fire engine red lipstick, the whole thing. I had my ‘caboodle’ — a brightly colored plastic case that snapped closed and opened up to reveal all of my makeup and bobby pins and hair things and odds and ends I needed for shows. It was a ritual, looking at myself in the mirror for an extended period of time and transforming into someone who could go out on stage and perform. I still remember the feeling, and I have flashes in memory to sitting in front of certain mirrors at certain theaters and venues preparing to compete. Certain moments of crying to my mom because something was going wrong with my makeup or hair or costume and how she would save the day every time. It was my experience, but I wasn’t alone. 

I still participate in that ritual to this very day. I no longer do my makeup to go on stage to dance and compete for a trophy, but I do sit in front of my mirror almost every day and transform into someone who can go out into the world and perform. I don’t listen to music or anything else while I do my makeup — I sit in silence. I don’t engage with the outside world at all if I can avoid it. I often don’t respond to texts or notifications during. I can count on one hand the amount of people I’ve ever talked to on the phone while I’m doing my makeup, including my parents. It’s a time in my day that I don’t allow many people into. I have to focus and drop in and dissociate slightly and I don’t feel comfortable enough with most people to engage at the same time. Often it’s my only time to center myself, and I protect it. 

It’s striking to me that I can sit in front of a mirror and take a baby wipe to my face and start removing my lipstick and be taken back immediately to when I was a little girl, doing the same thing after competitions or shows. I did it tonight and it’s what prompted this piece of writing. The act of making up and unmaking up myself is perhaps the most consistent solo thing I’ve ever done in my life. It’s always me, and myself, in the mirror. Two different people and yet the same. My mirror self represents the part of me that I’m able to view as separate — someone that needs to be cared for. Someone that needs to be protected with all of the weapons I have. Someone worthy of effort and attention and love. 

My makeup was once my mask to go on a literal stage, and then as a teenager it became a mask to try and hide myself and all of my visible flaws, and now it is something I revere. Something that has shielded me when I needed to hide or when I needed to be someone else. Given me shelter when I literally couldn’t face the world. It’s become a part of me, but I’ve also started liking myself without it. To look at myself in the mirror bare faced and feel beautiful has been one of the greatest achievements of my life, and something I thought might never happen. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I feel grateful every time it does.

This ritual has been one of the foundations of my life. It is the broken up yet continuous moment over the years where I am truly with myself. In the mirror I’ve hated what I’ve seen, I’ve loved what I’ve seen, and I’ve felt everything in between. I have no doubt that I will still be sitting with that reflected version of me when my youth has fully left me. She is my companion. She is deserving of my continued reverence.