Blue Eye Shadow

I’d arranged to join a friend (J_) in town for coffee this morning. As I was walking, a memory from my early teen years suddenly came back to me:

The 14 year-old me had put some bright blue eye shadow on and walked across the commons to see a school friend who lived on the other side. Unexpectedly as I had emerged onto the pavement my father was just driving past. He took one look at me, stopped and insisted I get in the car to go home and ‘wash that muck’ off my face, and that I looked like a trollop.

As I thought about this memory, I was thinking how often I have been told I don’t need make-up, and how that reassuring message has set me free to choose. I’d watched a TV programme recently where one mother castigated another for bringing up her girls with the belief that they needed to paint a mask on their faces in order to have confidence to face the world.

Such was the trend of my thoughts as I arrived at the meeting point and waited for J_. When I saw her coming towards me, the first thing I noticed with surprise was her bright blue eye shadow! I made no comment, and we fell into conversation then after a while J_ brought the subject up and explained that she had been upset because Zoom Airline going bankrupt leaves her out of pocket (she had a Zoom return flight to Bermuda booked and paid for). A former work colleague had once told her she needed to brighten herself up a bit by wearing make up – recalling that memory this morning had led to her putting rouge on her cheeks and the blue eye shadow to try and make herself feel brighter.

At the time I made space and listened, trying not to crowd her with my own thoughts and feelings, but later on I was thinking about the synchronicity of the recollection coming to me just before I met her wearing blue eye shadow. That kind of synchronicity seems like a powerful affirmation to me of the concept of Universal Consciousness, of us all being connected. Thinking about how reassuring it has been to me to be told I don’t need make up, I sent J_ an email in which I wrote:

What [former work colleague] told you wasn’t true – you don’t ‘need’ to put on make up to ‘brighten yourself up’. You have a beauty that shines from 'your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight' to quote from 1 Peter chapter 3. I've been reading a book by Eckhart Tolle: 'A New Earth', where he explains the difference between the ego within us and what he terms 'Presence'. It seems that [former work colleague] may have been speaking from Ego rather than from 'Presence' (or holiness/love). It's not to say you can't wear make up if you want to - that choice is yours to make - but to affirm to you that there is a natural beauty within that wants to shine out of you, to be the natural radiance in your face and eyes and life.

If you’re a woman with low self-esteem reading this today, these words are for you, too.