All That Glitters

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 1:2 ESV

I smiled a lot that morning. There was a hop in my step. It looked like I was skipping down 29th avenue. I skipped for maybe a block or two (though it felt like much less) and ended up at Bay Terrace. At Sephora, to be exact, where an unintended-but-secretly-desired makeover took place. It was my birthday and I wanted to look nice.

I asked The Artist for a look that wasn’t so glam, afraid to stand out with something besides my brain. “I’m beautiful because I’m smart,” I tell myself. And I like to leave things at that.

The Artist started with my eyes. I’m sure she told me her name but I quickly forgot as she picked up the brush, packed it with dark ink and started outlining. I dared to take a peek, looked back at myself in the mirror, and started to believe: “I’m beautiful because I’m pretty.” My eyebrows hadn’t been trimmed that day, a detail I apologized for, to which The Artist responded with a smear of concealer. The stray hairs now good as gone.

I remember making a trip to Sephora during my leave of absence and also being taken from plain to beautiful in less than an hour for a little under 50 bucks. I’d give them all of my money if they could have done something about the plain-ness I felt on the inside. Sephora promised something that my depression had taken away. A glimpse at my beauty. Superficial as that promise was, I walked home that night and gazed at myself in the living room mirror. I looked at my cheeks now contoured, from all its sculpted angles, and the faded berry color worn by my lips. “I’m pretty,” I told myself. I hadn’t felt that way in a while. I knew the pigments, powders and glitter would eventually be erased by the cotton pad soaked with micellar water, but it was these makeovers done under an hour that always left me with something far more timeless. The confidence to say “I’m beautiful because I’m smart (comma) I’m beautiful because I’m pretty (comma) I’m beautiful (period)“

Sincerely, Esther