Cover Up The Bad Bits

“What if there was make up that didn’t just hide your blemishes, but actually made them go away?”

This statement was part of the 2011 Neutrogena US advert, and similar statements plaster the beauty industry every year to encourage consumers to cover up the uneven parts of ourselves in an attempt to appear flawless.

Match master, luminous, full coverage foundations, using highlighters and contour kits for depth in the face, individual lashes and a mean matte nude lipstick. We just can’t wait to catch the good lighting and share our selfies with the world! And of course we all know how to work those snapchat filters that makes us look bomb even without makeup.

I’m not ashamed to say I like makeup, and I have been beginning to experiment with different looks and making more of an effort on a daily basis, but aside from all my efforts to look ‘flawless’, the key to great make up is great skin.

If your skin is suffering, the temptation is to just pile on the makeup to cover it all up, but we all know this often makes it worse in the long-run.

It got me thinking, this is a little bit what life is like.

Our lives are beautiful expressions of who we are, but often we intentionally make them out to seem more beautiful, and try our best to hide the flaws.

In a world where ‘assigning a new captain, but not fixing the ship’ seems to be the norm, it’s very easy to make ‘masking’ our problems habitual, and not have the courage to share the truth or dig up the root.

Perhaps you’ve faced hurt, disappointment, dishonesty, loss, lack of love, loneliness, or something else so you’ve used a ‘concealer’ to portray happiness and contentment.

It’s easy to mask our issues because honesty and vulnerability take bravery but like bad skin, it doesn’t matter how much make up you put it, it only lasts so long before you come home, take it off, and are faced with the truth without having dealt with the issue at all.

It’s important to not let our situations define us and instead, let’s allow our lives to be a beautiful struggle and be unafraid to expose the truths we experience, as there’s healing in it for us when we share.

Ultimately, let’s re-learn to “Love the skin you’re in” – OLAY.