“Your face is orange.”

My mother was looking at me as if I had just eaten gum out from under the table of a school desk. We were driving to school on a foggy Tuesday morning.

“Wipe off all that bronzer, you look like a clown.”

I feel as though most teenage girls at this point would have thought “God, my mom is so annoying,” and wipe off the bronzer, and that’d be that. But, to me, each stab at my face got worse and worse as I realized it’s the first thing people see when they look at me. It’s my face. And my mother was just one of many that made me feel like what I chose to do with mine was something I should be embarrassed of my freshman year of high school.

But even on those chilly mornings in a silver minivan that felt more like the principal’s office than a car, it wasn’t so bad. I knew it was coming, and I knew despite what my mother said to “get the point across,” she loved me, and we were alone, and no one could see my flushed cheeks or feel how fast my heart was racing in anticipation of the days critiques. No, the worst was when it was in front of other people. When calling me a “clown face” was a sign of good parenting, because God forbid people think she actually lets her daughter look like that with her approval. God forbid.

And hey, maybe that girl with auburn hair and deep green eyes in my math class really didn’t mean to hurt my feelings when she told all her friends that I cake on so much foundation you can’t even see my real skin. Sometimes I wonder if she thinks I didn’t even hear it. I did.

To these people, to all the boyfriends, classmates, and family members that have made these and similar remarks; make up is just make up. Make up is something I wear because I am insecure; make up is painting on a face and lying about what you truly look like. Make up is a lie. Make up is just make up. But, to me, make up is what makes me who I am. Make up is expressive and dramatic- an art form. It’s creative and beautiful and full of complicated techniques that take weeks to figure out how to do perfectly. Make up is a whole lot more than covering up a few pimples and making your eyelashes more prominent.

Cake face, dorito face, “she must be so insecure,” clown, “her eyeliner is way too thick!” and anything else someone can throw at me won’t change the fact that I am sticking with something that makes me happy despite what other people may think. I am the exact opposite of insecure if I can walk into a room with my head held high knowing girls that see themselves as “too good for that sort of thing” will snicker at my winged eyeliner. I am the epitome of confident and with each technique I get down pat, I believe in myself more and more.

Now that I have been wearing and playing with make up for a few years, I know how to apply it in a much more flattering way that now attracts much more positive attention rather than negative. But it still stings a little to hear the remarks on how “bad” I used to look when all I can think is that even then, it was self-expression. Back then, it was how I liked to look. And I would not take back my overdrawn eye brow days because of all the lessons I learned from it.

I am beautiful with my naked face and I am beautiful with ten pounds of blush on my cheeks. In a way, make up is just makeup. It wipes off at the end of the day and leaves nothing behind. But without it, I wouldn’t’ be able to put up with snickering behind my back. I wouldn’t have earned the confidence in myself to do what I like to do with my face, or with anything else in my life. I wouldn’t be me without it. It’s part of who I am. It is not just makeup.