Growing up, I was devoted to watching makeup tutorials on YouTube. I’d perch my computer on a sliver of counter space in my bathroom so I’d have easy access to pause and rewind as I tried to re-create the looks myself. This was the early 2010s and my makeup was defined by overdrawn cat eyes, sparkly smoky eye shadow, and dark lipstick.
Every time I’d leave the house, I was told a different variation of the same thing: “You’d look so much prettier with less makeup.” “I wish you wouldn’t hide your natural features.” And the worst insult, ”How insecure are you?”
To me, playing with makeup was never about hiding my insecurities. I always thought makeup was fun. I could be my own canvas and start with a blank slate every day. As I got older, I stopped experimenting with makeup and started using it in a more traditional way, sticking with neutral colors, small eyeliner strokes, and nude lipsticks.
My struggle with expressing myself through makeup is only one tiny slice of the pie. Many people have faced far harsher criticisms—natural Black hair has been frowned on and heavily politicized, tattoos have long been considered a surefire way to not get hired for a job, and if you’re a woman with body hair, you might as well be a social pariah.
Essentially, for a long time, if you were not white, hairless, tattoo-free, or willing to fit into the minuscule box of accepted beauty standards, you couldn’t be considered “beautiful”—at least by society’s standards.
Today, beauty standards are being flipped on their head. We’re starting to think about beauty as a tool to express ourselves and our joy rather than a weapon to hide our flaws and mask imperfections. We still have a long way to go (and a lot of beauty standards to unlearn), but it’s the pioneers in the industry that we can look to for guidance that will lead the way.
These trailblazers are teaching us that all hair is beautiful, tattoos are pieces of forever art, and makeup is something to have fun with. We talked to our favorite industry disruptors to learn about how they use beauty as a tool for radical joy and the brands that are making beauty funner for the masses.
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