Originally published in April 2020.
Every morning, I wash my face, apply whatever skincare sample I’m scraping the bottom of this week, look in the mirror, and face a few truths. First, the roots. I typically dye my hair once every five weeks, but have yet to meet a shade of brown that can come anywhere near my real color, so at the moment, my grown-out, chestnut-colored hair is being chased by my natural graying hair like a pickleback. I am a human calico and I hate it.
But here’s another truth: Ugly is happening to everybody. There isn’t some underground salon operating like a speakeasy — this is a time where it’s not safe for anyone, literally no one on earth, to go glam. Even if you happen to live with someone who has both the supplies and talent to make you look red carpet-ready right now, where the fuck do you think you’re going? Only so much effort shows up on Zoom anyway, so slap on some BB cream and call it a day.
And I have to admit: I like it. I like that everybody is ugly together. I like this complete 180 of societal expectation. Typically, if you show up makeup-free, with messy hair, grown-out roots, no mani, and, like, half an eyelash, you’re ratchet! But in these wild times, you’re a goddamned hero. Look at her! She’s obeying social distancing like a pro! What an absolute pillar of society right now. I see your roots my sister, here: Look at mine! We are in this hot mess together, and I’m proud of us.
So I’m reveling in it! Sure, there’s the skin on my face that looks stressed, uneven, and just basically not 27 anymore, but that’s no shock because I’m a decade older than that. There aren’t enough sheet masks in the world, not that I’m giving up.
I can’t even call what’s left on my fingernails a manicure. Actual shards of gel polish hang onto my nails like Mission Impossible-era Tom Cruise off the edge of a cliff. The color has outgrown a third of each nail, so that by the time we get out of here and I can get back to my girl, it’s going to look like the world’s most inept French tip. (Though shoutout to early-March me for choosing the palest pink shimmer polish money can buy. If I’d opted for navy blue, I’d be scratching off that lacquer as if I were digging for treasure in the sand.)
What’s happening with my body is even more interesting — and by interesting, I mean, who is this bitch? I don’t know this body, I don’t like this body, and this body hurts every time I come back from a long walk. My plantar fasciitis is flaring up, my back is getting tired of hauling canned goods around Brooklyn, and my left hamstring has quit its job without giving notice. By the time I get home from a six-mile round trip to Target, I’m not carrying my groceries so much as my own left leg, dragging it across my threshold like I’ve purchased a large side of lamb. I got on a scale yesterday, which is an activity I do not advise. I know body positivity is the move, but I grew up with dELiA*s catalogs and Britney Spears’ midsection as examples of the female form; give me a little longer to join the party.
Regarding fashion: I exist in clothing that drapes gently from my limbs not unlike ivy from a branch. If I can feel its presence, I take it off. If you think you’re getting me back into zippers after there’s a vaccine for this shit, you have another thing coming.
Quarantine is keeping us from any number of routines we enjoy. The one I miss most is perhaps leaving the house without having a panic attack, but there are others. Working with colleagues, dinners with friends, traveling farther than a 10-block radius, and so on. But the one I have a feeling we feel the guiltiest for missing is everything we regularly do to look and feel beautiful. Insert societal beauty standards here, obviously, but we still participate in them so… ? Fierce feminists are allowed to contour their face, shut up.
At present, we have no access to the beauty services we’ve grown accustomed to since the first time our moms let us wear makeup. Absolutely everything is DIY, and heaven help you if you have highlights. I think it’s okay if we think that sucks. Just as long as we let it suck, without trying to do something about it that can’t be solved in our own bathrooms and kitchen sinks.
Part of me thinks we’ll come out of this with a new, minimalist approach to beauty and physical presentation, given that we’ve gone without it for so long and the world hasn’t ended. (Well, at least not because we haven’t had a facial this quarter.) Maybe we’ll get so comfortable doing less that we’ll just keep doing less forever. I often imagine myself as the living embodiment of a boutique hotel in Copenhagen, in calming neutral tones with just the slightest amount of effort and tons of Instagrammable cool.
But the other part of me knows that once we’re allowed inside a Sephora again, it’s over for you bitches.
We have an opportunity here. We can band together in low-maintenance solidarity, for once. We can start to see evidence of beauty services long overdue as badges of honor and community, where they once meant you looked hungover.
I say we embrace this time, this globally glam-less moment, and celebrate each other. Not celebrate each other’s “natural beauty” or whateverthefuck, because obviously, we are beautiful in our most stripped-down state and deserve to be loved and adored in it — most importantly, by ourselves. I’m talking about also celebrating each other’s distance between beauty services, and acknowledging how proud we are of each other’s DIY attempts. I say we go full mat-talk from Cheer on each other right now.
I see your shitty eyebrows and I’m proud of you! I think you did such a good job at cutting your own bangs and your eight-year-old’s hair! I absolutely applaud you for giving home-highlights a try! Press-on nails?! YOU VIKING.
This is a time to come together as a world separated… from our beauty routines. Let us emerge from our cocoons and robe-only wardrobes someday, looking back on every at-home beauty touch-up we did — and did not do — with pride, respecting ourselves for not feeling shame, and for recognizing that now is not the time for flawless.
I’m not happy I can see my roots. I’m not happy you can see my roots. But the root of our connection to each other, as human beings who are living through a pandemic, is that we’re doing it together, and so is our bad hair.
We are all ugly right now, and that, my friends, is beautiful.