OBSESSED WITH BEING BEAUTIFUL

A beauty writer comes clean

It’s 11.39pm and, rather than getting the sleep my twitchy eye tells me I so desperately need, I’m scrolling through Kyliecosmetics.com and adding a highlighter palette to my shopping bag. Of course I don’t need another highlighter. I have over 100 illuminating products already, and only ever use the same three shades. But then that’s not the point. You see, my relationship with cosmetics is, how can I put this…

complicated. Make-up has been there at some of the most joyous moments of my life (first dates, friends’ weddings, family celebrations), but it has also been there during the darkest times too.

I’m 31 years old now, and my make-up obsession (for it is an obsession) began when I was 15. Right about the time I started being bullied. I would save up my weekly wages from my after-school job mopping the local bakery floors and buy a new Versace lipgloss every month from the local department store. I wasn’t a chubby child, but not long after I hit puberty my body started to pad out. That meant secondary school became a cold and hostile place.

Unfathomably, while other girls remained annoyingly tiny, chowing down on sausage rolls at breaktime, I grew. It was the kind of puppy fat that I hoped would disappear one summer so I could have that high-school transformation you see in the movies. But, despite exercising regularly and eating the same as everyone else, I just got bigger.

Boys were the worst, publicly embarrassing me with their “Michelin Man” comments, or telling me I’d won the award for “most obese student”. Unsurprisingly, I became terrified of them, afraid even to look up when I walked around. The thought of heading into school every Monday morning made me feel physically sick. On Sunday evenings, I would cry in the shower, a feeling that has stayed with me to this day. I wanted nothing more than to disappear.

Girls were no better, and I struggled with girlfriends that I could truly connect with. My only real bond was with an old primaryschool friend, Sophie, who was having an equally hard time. And so there I was, a 15-year-old girl who wanted nothing more than to blend in; to be so completely and utterly ordinary that no one will pick your face out from a crowd. The only thing that made me feel special was my Versace lipgloss. Each time I bought a new one I would tell myself that it would be the thing that would change my life.

Make-up was kind in a way fashion never was. Make-up did not reject my “curvy” body, it only accentuated the bits I loved best – my lips, my lashes and the deep blue of my eyes. I realised that while I couldn’t disappear altogether, I could use make-up to transform myself into someone else. The problem was one lipgloss was never enough.

A taste of acceptance

Things changed for the better at the end of secondary school. While the boys who’d eroded my self-esteem went off to work, I found a group of friends who were up for anything – except conforming to other people’s standards. Make-up was no longer a crutch. I dyed my blonde highlights Schwarzkopf Cosmic Blue, and swapped my lipgloss habit for metal nights at Croydon’s The Black Sheep Bar, “windmilling” to Killswitch Engage. And, finally, I met a boy who liked me. The idea of finding someone who fancied a fat girl seemed ridiculous, but into my life he came. He played me his favourite Bob Dylan records and told me I looked beautiful without make-up. For the first time in my life, I started to enjoy my body and my life without having to rely on make-up. My happiness wasn’t dependent on finding the “perfect” eyeshadow shade any more. But one day, after four nearperfect years together, he told me it was over (turns out he’d cheated on me). All those feelings of inadequacy came rushing back, and with them, my make-up obsession.

The MAC years

I let that break-up ruin my midtwenties. I stopped going out, and while my friends went off to university and built new lives,

“I could use make-up to transform myself”

I gave up my degree after two days and took a temp job at an insurance company. I didn’t intend to stay there, but somehow I did – for six long years.

And so at 23 I found myself sitting in my bedroom for days at a time feeling hopeless. My GP prescribed me anti-depressants, but they didn’t stop the sadness, only made it impossible for me to physically cry. After a month, I stopped taking them altogether. Instead, I selfmedicated the only way I knew how… with make-up.

Except that this was now the era of YouTube beauty vloggers. Watching effervescent personalities like Kandee Johnson transform themselves into Megan Fox helped my make-up addiction come hurtling back. An £18 Versace lipgloss didn’t cut it any more. Instead, I thought nothing of spending £300 on the MAC website. It didn’t matter that I already had a million brown eyeshadows because only the exact same products those YouTubers had would, I was sure, lead me to transformation and acceptance. It felt like I was 15 all over again, only this time I had more skills and more make-up to transform myself. Applying it made me feel calmer; looking at my drawers crammed to the brim made me feel something akin to happiness. Following these YouTube tutorials and turning myself into icons like Marilyn Monroe, Pamela Anderson and Angelina Jolie was my form of escapism and allowed me to forget about my day-to-day life.

Parcels would arrive almost every day, so often even my dad noticed. One day my mum poked her head into my bedroom and told me she could see what I was doing. Despite being surrounded by Jiffy bags, most of which weren’t even opened, I didn’t know what she meant. Just like any other addict, I was lost in denial.

The peak of my addiction was in 2010, when MAC’s Venomous Villains Disney collection launched. I spent weeks researching exactly what I wanted, and on release day I queued, clutching my wish list, for two hours outside Selfridges. But that feeling of pure joy as I left the shop with my yellow bag crammed with make-up quickly disappeared.

In two years, I’d amassed a make-up collection that filled nine entire drawers, and I owned almost every limitededition item MAC had ever made. I’d stopped going out with my friends and instead spent weekends alone attempting to transform the way I looked. My mum and sister told me I “couldn’t carry on like this”. But I wasn’t ready, or able, to do anything about it.

Finding a purpose

Then, at 27, something truly life-changing happened. Although I still spent my working days calculating employee-benefit insurance (as exciting as it sounds), I started interning at women’s magazines during my annual leave. I glimpsed another world where writers, designers and stylists carved careers out of their obsessions. It inspired me to apply for a job as an editor’s PA on a women’s magazine – which, to my complete amazement, I ended up getting.

The pay cut, as well as having a job that I loved, had a dramatic impact on my shopping and selfesteem. I started seeing friends again… and shopping less. For the first time in my life I was seen for my talents, rather than my appearance. After a year, the job of beauty assistant came up. To be

paid to work in the beauty world seemed unimaginable, and yet, at first, I did not put myself forward. Would working in beauty – and managing a beauty cupboard filled with every conceivable make-up product – be like a recovered alcoholic going to work in a brewery? I didn’t want to spend my life running from the very

thing I loved. And so I went back to my GP. She advised cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety and depression. I took her advice. What’s more, after so many years of beating myself up about my weight gain, I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome. As crazy as it sounds, in some ways, that was a relief. I could finally cut myself some slack for the body I’d spent my life berating.

Feeling stronger and filled with hope, several days later I applied for the job. Even if I didn’t get it, I felt sure enough within myself that I could survive the sting of rejection. And yet, four weeks after I sent off my application, I got the phone call I thought would never come. I got the job.

So did that herald the end of my cosmetics compulsion? Not exactly. Sure, I’ve reduced my ridiculous expenditure, but just as any recovering addict has to be careful, I have to be hyper-vigilant about using make-up as my coping mechanism for periods of anxiety, stress or depression. Whenever I find myself on the Kylie Cosmetics website at 11.39pm, the question I must ask myself is: do I need it because I’ll get masses of mileage from a highlighter palette inspired by baby Stormi Webster-Jenner, or is it because the guy who I thought was my future husband didn’t text me back? If the answer is the latter, a good night’s sleep will serve me better than clicking “buy”. No eyeshadow will change the way I feel about myself – it’s me who has to do that.

Standing out

It’s taken me almost 32 years, but I can look back and almost be grateful for those school years because they made me develop a personality and a sense of humour I quite like. I’ve met enough “beautiful” people to realise that being blessed with good genes isn’t everything. Slowly my habits are changing. I’ll probably always prefer the “getting ready” part of a night out to the actual night out itself, but I’ve reduced my nine drawers of make-up to five. I unashamedly love make-up. I love the therapeutic process of painting my face every morning and the fact that I can do whatever the hell I like with the contents of my make-up bag. It’s my form of self-expression and an act of rebellion after all those shitty teenage years of desperately wanting to disappear.

Luckily for me, as I’ve worked towards self-acceptance, so has the make-up world. Take a look at MAC’s #WhatsYourThing campaign to see that there are no conventional beauty standards any more. And, if I’m truly honest, being a fat beauty writer gives me a point of difference to my skinny peers. After years of being told what we should and shouldn’t look like, us underdogs are slowly taking over.