I was 12 and it was the first makeup I had ever worn. While people’s responses ranged right up to genuine repulsion, they couldn’t quell my happiness
I
wore makeup for the first time just after I turned 12: a tube of green mascara from a pound shop in my home town in south Wales. This was not a chic emerald or a flattering forest green. It was a frosted, mucous-tinted green – a colour that looked like the aftermath of a minor chemical incident involving Shrek. There was a reason it cost only a pound.
I slicked it on with no real understanding of beauty, but a clear instinct that I loved how it altered my face. The outside world was less enthused. People hated it. Teachers told me to take it off; I’d then reapply it in the toilets. Girls in my year looked at me with genuine repulsion. It wasn’t pretty, or cute – so nobody understood why I would want to look like that.
But I loved the way it transformed my face. I loved how polarising it was. I loved that it made people slightly uncomfortable. That was the first time I realised beauty didn’t have to be about looking “pretty” – it could be unfiltered self-expression. The beauty industry is inclined to claim that certain products are “life-changing” – but occasionally that isn’t hyperbole. That mascara was the start of a trajectory.
