NOT TODAY, THANKS

I’m writing this from my kitchen table.

There are dishes in the sink. There is a Labubu on the floor and also a Baby Three Secret Rare from Miniso because we are suckers for a cute and fluffy blind box. There is a school dress in the hallway that my daughter and I have stepped over countless times, daring each other to pick it up and put it in the damned washing basket. I haven’t a scrap of makeup on, my hair is pulled up into a messy bun, and that is how I will look all day.

I took one photo before I felt like I needed to use my objectively adorable dog as a crutch and then proceeded to take another 14 photos because I feel so undone today. Please enjoy all of them as my special gift to you.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to look polished, although I never feel polished.

I prefer the look of my face with makeup on than without. But let’s call it a rebellion against the pressure to appear optimised. Cheeks and eyebrows and lips and a perfect glowy base. I have all the products that can do those things, and I love them deeply. But some days I just feel exhausted by aspirational female performance. Exhausted by beauty routines. Tired of the pressure to look effortlessly beautiful when looking effortlessly a bit funny-looking is more my speed. Do you know what I mean? It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I care too much and the effort of caring can feel like a full-time job I never consciously applied for.

ILYSM <3

Makeup is not just makeup, is it? It’s about improving, refining, becoming a slightly better, slightly tidier, glowier version of ourselves. Even on a Tuesday. Even at the kitchen table, with a Labubu underfoot and a school dress silently judging you from the hallway floor. (I picked it up before the dog chewed a hole in it). And I sit here with my messy hair, somewhere between resistance and resignation.

Not today, Gigi. Need to train this rescue Chihuahua to be like those Instagram dogs that put clothes in the basket and turn on the washing.

I genuinely love beauty. I adore it. I am in awe of what it can do. The tiny lift in mood when your skin looks good and your brows behave and you catch yourself in a mirror and think, NOT TOO SHABBY TODAY!

But sometimes, the line between self-expression and self-optimisation blurs into something a little weightier. It’s like how the Clean Girl aesthetic is about performing effortlessness, which ironically, takes quite some effort. And of course I aspire to be naturally glowy, cute and carefree, but life has other plans for me.

I am a Baby Three Secret Rare. Hello from the floor.

It’s half-finished tasks. It’s the dreaded dishwasher always needing to be unpacked (DESPISE!). It’s never quite getting to the end of tidying, which feels as elusive as the end of a rainbow. It’s a brain that is always running five tabs too many. A daughter watching everything I do, learning what it means to be a woman in a world that is very good at telling her she could be better.

That's where this gets real for me, because I don’t want her to think beauty is something you have to earn by getting it right. I want her to see that it’s something you can play with. Step into. Step away from. Enjoy on your own terms. Some days that might look like a full face and glossy lips and feeling incredible. And some days it looks like this. Bare skin. Messy hair. Choosing not to participate: to be a woman who doesn’t always need to edit her face; to just exist without adjusting.  

Tomorrow I’ll put makeup on. On Thursday I have a meeting and I'll relish getting dressed and ready to go (and glow!). I’ll do my brows properly and use my favourite foundation and feel like myself again in that particular, polished way.

But today, this version of me is the one.  Dishes, Labubu on the floor and all.