Pretty: Whatever That Means

On my 13th birthday, I decided I wanted to be pretty. Whatever that means.

I believed that nothing was louder than a blemish and nothing was noisier than an eyelash without mascara. In my attempts to create this new identity of pretty, I spent hours veiling my face with beige and blush and lotions and potions. While my spirit became almost as opaque as my foundation-heavy skin, I entered an era of silence. I believed my powdered cover up would hide my fear of rejection, while my liquid concealer would hush my fear of regret. Unwatched, my verbs switched tense: “I was” swallowed any trace of “I will” or “I am,” and I lived my life in a carousel of sadness. At the age of 13, I was a mastermind at masking who I was. The quiver of self-doubt turned into many painful yet silent shrieks of longing.

I am no longer that girl. I think about her occasionally. Sometimes I even laugh at her silliness. But most of the time when I return to that formative place in my life, my body becomes filled with questions. Was I blending colors on my face to gain a sense of a control? Was I just trying to hide the imperfections? Or was it something grander, like using the disguised physical flaws to also hide some inner flaws? In a weird way, I’m sort of appreciative of this time of darkness. It never fails to spark a potent beam of self-reflection and conscientiousness.

Makeup is striking and empowering and artistic. I am slowly learning that putting on makeup does not always equate to vanity or camouflaging. But by the same token, beauty does not always equate to perfection. I look in the mirror a lot. So what? Every vein tells a story and every freckle articulates a memory. My face serves as an ode to my spirit and my life. I have my father’s full cheeks, my mother’s dark eyes, and my great-grandfather’s dark skin.

I look at my face and I get transported into history, tradition and remembrance. I look at my straight teeth and I see myself sitting in the chair at my orthodontist telling him that I want to be a writer. I look at my left eye and see myself crying in my middle school’s bathroom from getting a D in math class. I look at my discolored skin and see my family making a home in America somewhere between the shattering waves of the Black Sea and the shimmering streets of New York.

I believe that beauty is beyond aesthetics. Something that is beautiful is also intriguing, fascinating, and engaging. To me, there is nothing more interesting than a naked face. I see the poetry of someone’s life inside his or her wrinkles and I hear the rhythm of someone’s soul inside his or her freckles.

Wouldn’t life be a little more interesting if we all just let our faces do the talking?

Written by Jessica Chanchalashvili

Image shot by Guy Bourdn