I’m Intentionally Failing Right Now

I can’t say I want my fine lines to show because that would be a blatant and bold lie

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After last week’s very intense but needed foray into CF proximity rules, loss, and friendship… Here is a little bit of fun flluff to “start” the week?

(Who AM I?)

I am currently failing.

At this very moment. At the exact thing that this particular post is possibly pretentiously supposed to be.

If you’re like me and you love skincare and rituals and routine glimpses into other people’s lives, you live for arbitrary bits of aesthetic …. before that word was hijacked by a new generation and used in consistently confusing verb-like ways. (No shade. Just… shade?)

But if you’re like most people, you also care about quality.

This is not “quality”. This is a face in her eldest sister’s bathroom, excitedly showing off a new system for looking “filtered” while also being someone who never wants to truly look filtered.

I want my freckles to show, even though growing up they were something I was ashamed of (it was different times, for sure).

I can’t say I want my fine lines to show because that would be a blatant and bold lie, but I can boldly say that I don’t want them fully covered, because they are the marks of my culture (Deafness and ASL are beautiful because of our facial expressions; That is my accent, my inflection, my intent), as well as my on-and-off profession of being a sometimes-professional dancer and actor (though my agent would probably want me to say that with way more confidence).

I don’t need my facial expressions for the journalistic side of my life, but the side of my life that laughs and loves and performs? Emotion is our humanity. Emotion is my sentence structure. Emotion is… why we are here.

This footage is not “quality” and the products are not “quantity” (although imagine how good this nonsense would look with mascara and a bit of a cat eye had I been bothered)… But playing around with playing around is always optimistic.

Recently, I’ve been challenging myself into finding the optimism for what will eventually (and very slowly- scattered throughout work commitments) be a large fistful of surgeries down the road.

I need to be able to take them on to keep acquiring more fine lines in this lifetime, but the texture that makes the tragedies and triumphs of not being “able to” just live a life where operations or hospitalizations aren’t part of the sustainable agreement is the same ‘texture’ that makes up the scars and smile lines of our ediface.

Even so, I shared my face bases and balm obsessions a lot lately because I think systems can make us feel safe. I am completely okay with a lot of my “beauty writing” seeming redundant because… isn’t that the sign that something is working?

If you struggle with clinical OCD like me (something I talk about very rarely in public because I’m only slightly coming to terms with sharing it due to stigma), then you like systems already… even the systems don’t always make sense. Seeing that other people have systems can make us feel safer, even.

For me, if I see that someone is using new products all the time and writing about new things constantly, I enjoy learning about new chemicals and seeing if a product is worthwhile… But I love finding someone who repeats what works over a long period of time (at the risk if being “boring” or sounding like a broken beauty record), because that means their “data’ is long term. I don’t want to be annoying by saying the same things again and again… But I’m almost rather do so- and you know that you can trust what I’m consistently trying- than never test a product long enough to really know what I think.

Skincare and makeup can often take extended periods of time to show results… for cell turnover to come into effect… or even just to figure out the best mode of application or layering. So this broken record has only JUST figured out a new system for a “natural looking filter face”, using products I’ve used for extended periods of time, and playing with them in a different order than previous.

You might hate how this looks (it IS very glowy, so it’s definitely a personal preference experiment), and this works for me at the moment because I am aiming to soften my fine lines without covering them (context: almost 38-years-old), and embrace my freckles instead of painting them. This look is not using blush or concealer, on purpose… so that might automatically make someone dislike the style of design.

This recipe is not going to be for everyone… but I hope that the quantity of “glow“ is warming, even if the quality is intentionally relaxed?

I want to influence absolutely no one… I will not influence you here today.

We don’t follow people for people anymore, you know?

I don’t even like the term “following” and never have.

I read and watch accounts because I love what they make, and who they seem to be.

Often, the more curated something feels, the farther I lean away. But that’s not the case for many of us and I understand the class-acts out there who want top of the class. We want ring lights. We want optimal angles. We want HD product plugs and professional purposing.

Even though I started much of my journalism career in the beauty and lifestyle field- press lines and editorials - if you don’t “know” me as a person, you likely aren’t “here” for complexion complexities anyways. Health… Dance… Maybe even Deafness are often the draw, if I’m lucky to meet you “here” at all. And what even IS here?

This amorohous place where we all become so self important that we lose track of what might be important at all (for me: trying to find the positive in pain with all the sh*ttyness ahead of me this year).

Therefor…. a skincare video a week might be reason enough to hit “unfollow”, even. Dislike. And I don’t want that. I want more friends in this life, not less.

I have reasons to keep posting redundant happy bathroom ritual videos, for sure (there aren’t enough Deaf women in the beauty creative space being the primary one)… but I don’t want to worry about ads or marketing; plugs or statistics.

I’m intentionally failing right now… and it feels pretty damn good, you know?

If I keep sharing messy, fallible, poorly-lit bathroom get-readys in the same sloppy sleep T, and the products stay almost the same, and the brands feel like the same brands again and again: then I’m actually doing what I hope to do. What I love to do. It might be cause for celebration, contrary to what numbers and acquisitions might tell us.

How can you test a product if you don’t use it consistently, over long periods of time?

If you want perfection and plugs and products?… Then you will not be influenced. Maybe you’ll even want to unfollow. (I hope not!)

Because even if we don’t all share the same interests all the time or want to fit under the same SEO’d umbrella…

Why share a routine if it’s not actually a routine?

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