There are these beauty embarrassments no one ever mentions, but your mind won’t let you forget. This includes a small clump of mascara under your eye, one eyebrow painted higher than the other or even a patch of hair on your leg you forgot to shave that you find out about in public. No one tells you about it, of course. You’re just left wondering: Did they see it? Were they judging me, or did I just imagine that weird look?
Even if no one noticed it the way I did, I’ll never know peace. The discovery replays in my head like a broken record: Did that person glance at it? Were they laughing, or am I being paranoid? I’ll lie awake thinking about it, even after the moment has passed.
It’s embarrassing, but it’s also human.
Everyone probably has moments like these. For some of us, they don’t feel small (while a lot of people will argue that they aren’t a big deal). They feel like failures. If beauty culture has taught me anything, it’s that you’re supposed to look effortlessly perfect in public. So when you miss something, even if it’s something super small and hard to notice, it feels like you’ve really messed up.
What’s worse is there are these flaws that are invisible to everyone else but yourself, which makes them feel like ghosts that follow you around to haunt you all the time.
Sometimes I wish I could turn to someone and say: “Hey, you might have seen that mascara smudge. Or maybe you didn’t. Either way, my bad.” I don’t, of course. It’s ridiculous. I’m pretty sure most people don’t care nearly as much as I do, but that doesn’t stop me from caring.
That’s the problem. We’ve normalized staying silent about imperfections, as if recognizing them for what they are makes us insecure. All it really does is leave people trapped in their heads, overthinking what was probably just a smudge. Maybe if we were more open about how insane these pressures are and called out beauty culture, we’d stop treating ourselves so poorly.
I hope that someday I’ll stop noticing my own mistakes so much or at least be able to laugh at them. Until then, I’ll carry these memories around like awkward little souvenirs.
Because if I’m going to be haunted by a patch of leg hair, I might as well make it funny.
