This is my face and everyone knows it.

I hardly ever wear makeup. I’ve never had a daily makeup routine, and until embarrassingly recently I didn’t even have a daily skincare routine. While my dry, sensitive, blemish-prone skin appreciates that I now take better care of it, my morning and evening cleansing, toning, treating, and moisturizing isn’t followed by foundation, contoure, blush, shadow, mascara, or lipstick. At most, I might apply a coincidentally tinted lip balm with sunscreen.

The fact that I have never been a regular consumer of makeup started with my adolescent self-identification as a tomboy. Tomboys don’t wear makeup. I didn’t like anything girly after about age ten. I eschewed flounced floral dresses in favor of t-shirts and cargo shorts. I think I did this mostly to separate my identity from that of my more delicate-looking sister, but I was also much more likely to be found playing football with the guys at recess than hopscotch or four-square with the girls. Being told “You’re such a tomboy” repeatedly reinforced the stereotype.

So while my girlhood friends were learning how to do their makeup in their pre-teens, it remained an irrelevant mystery to me. My mom did take me to the mall in my early teens to one of the many department store makeup counters, where a nice lady “did my face” and then sold us a bag of nearly two hundred dollars worth of product. I followed the routine the makeup counter lady taught me for a while, but not daily, and then eventually only for special occasions. I still have the small eyeshadow palette, nearly two decades later. It’s perhaps half-used.

By high school, my friends were all experts, it seemed, and had defined “their look.” Meanwhile, I struggled to put on eyeshadow and blush symmetrically and never looked like myself in the mirror after I did. People were surprised when my friends didn’t wear makeup. People were surprised when I did.

Putting on makeup felt more like playing dress up than like a normal part of my day. Even though I knew that my mom did this every morning and wouldn’t leave the house without lipstick, I never got to the point where it seemed like it was time for me to do the same. Wearing makeup every day was what adults did, I guessed, and I wasn’t an adult yet. I still got sweaty playing frisbee with my friends between classes. Who had time for running to the bathroom to power their nose? Why did it even matter?

I felt the same way throughout college. Nobody seemed to care that I didn’t wear makeup. I think nobody did. Yet the other young women in the seats around me had faces full of color, darkened eyebrows, overdrawn lips, and often false lashes. I never understood why. Nowadays, it makes sense to me that this is normal. Every day is a series of selfie opportunities, so people want to have their Instagrammable faces on, but when I went to college the world was barely on the cusp of influencer-driven social media. Instagram didn’t exist yet, so what were all these women spending all that time and money on makeup for? I didn’ t know, and I hardly thought about it.

I graduated college, got my first “real” job, went to grad school, floated around the gig economy for a while, and eventually started my career in the high tech industry. All the while, I showed up to class, to interviews, to work, with a bare face. With rare exceptions, I was the only woman in those settings who had nothing on her skin.

These days, I enjoy trying to make myself up for special occasions. Makeup can feel like part of a well-considered outfit, and that is something I do understand and value. But on ninety-nine days out of a hundred, my face is naked.

I find freedom in showing my true face to the world. I know that many women find freedom in the self-expression that makeup allows them. They can literally look like a different person, from a different era or a different culture. They can be unrecognizable, if they want. I understand why makeup is a tool in their toolbox. It enables self-transformation.

It’s not a kind of self-transformation I value, though. I want to be recognized for me. I have seen many examples of someone being unrecognizable without having their “face” on. People might say they look weird or even ugly. “Wow, that’s what she looks like without makeup? Gross!” go the comments.

I don’t want that. I want to be seen as me, always. I don’t want washing my face at night to be like taking a mask off. I don’t want to go through the world in disguise. I don’t want to spend time and money every day on the illusion of changing the shape of my nose or the set of my eyes.

Not wearing makeup frees me from the time that would otherwise be consumed by it. It frees me from the expense of having to buy the products. More important to me, however, is the freedom from the social pressure to have a face that is on-trend. My eyebrows are my own. They do whatever my genetics tells them to do (with a touch--I’ll admit--of unibrow maintenance now and then). I don’t change them to be thicker or thinner or darker or lighter depending on the cover of Vogue. I don’t change the shape of my mouth or my nose with contouring, and because I don’t do these things, I don’t worry about whether I look the way that influencers and movie stars do. I can’t look like they do because I don’t put on a face like they do.

I don’t judge people who wear makeup. That would be silly, rude, and, well, judgemental. Those are not things I want to be. I see other people’s makeup routines as normal. I also see my own lack of makeup as normal, just as it is normal for men to be bare-faced. Both choices are fine, depending on what you want.

I do feel, though, that the sense of requirement to wear makeup should be consciously revolted against by some women. Wearing makeup should be a choice. My mother is not free to leave the house without makeup because it makes her too uncomfortable. She feels naked without a fake hue to her lips. I don’t blame her for that. She’s a product of her culture. My culture just happened to be the boys I played soccer and football with during recess in grade school. Most of them probably don’t wear makeup these days either. If they do wear makeup, they are trend-setters. People might call them odd, queer, or brave.

It never occurred to me until recently that choosing not to wear makeup as a woman was not only freeing, but also an act of bravery. Many people see a naked female face as unprepared or unfinished, as though I left the house in nothing but undergarments. I’ve certainly been passed over many times in my life, in conversations at parties, in job interviews, in bars where other girls were getting picked up. Was it ever because the alternative to me was a young woman with false lashes and red lips that made her look doe-eyed and sultry at the same time? I don’t know, but perhaps. I certainly could be seen as not trying or as not caring. Perhaps men or other women have looked at me as someone who didn’t bother, or someone who didn’t want to look pretty.

But I do care, and I do bother, and I do want to look pretty. Just not like that. So not wearing makeup, if you are a woman, seems to be a small act of bravery, just like wearing it is brave if you are a man.

I’ve always hated wearing makeup, so it’s not a difficult type of bravery for me. Makeup is uncomfortable. It works its way into creases. It gets smudged. It gets in your eyes and makes your lashes stiff. It makes me feel heavy, dirty, and mess-up-able. I want my skin to be free to breathe. I want my husband to know that he can reach out and touch my cheek without consequences.

Sometimes I do worry I will be discriminated against subconsciously, just a little, for not looking as pretty or as “put together” as other women who clearly spent a lot of time on their routines. But I have to trust that whatever I am bringing to the table is more than enough to make up for what I didn’t.

This is my face, and that’s all it is.

Letters to The - #7

How can I tell you that sometimes I am so sick of your world? I have watched three documentaries now just describing how Instagram is ruining people’s lives. Not just for a moment, either. It ruins their minds, their perspectives, their relationships, their ability to see reality with clear eyes and unburdened hearts. It rips them apart, like by like. It turns young girls into gyrating titillations who think it’s normal for married men old enough to be their biological grandfathers to comment on the size of their breasts and ask to see them naked. These children armed with self-destructive weapons called camera phones think they have things under control because they don’t reply to the haters and the creeps, because they’ll never meet that man in person. They don’t know that they meet them every day. Nothing is under control. Never have I felt the nauseating spin of the earth like I do now. I’m about to be flung off, and I know that the moment outer space sucks itself into my lungs and freezes me from the inside out and vaporizes all the liquid in my body, it will feel normal and innocuous, because that’s what we are all doing to ourselves down here. We are turning into vapor and empty skin, shoving a vacuum free of true being into our souls and rupturing every nerve ending and blood vessel with overexposure. We are lost in a universal, unending thread of posts and comments and upvotes and downvotes. We beings of only sight, hazy filtered sight. We can’t even call a lie a lie anymore. It’s fake news. Things that are real are not “real.” They are “unfiltered”, and even that might be fake news. We are numb. We don’t smell or taste or feel or hear. We take photos and we see photos and we scroll and scroll and scroll until we are sleepless and nearsighted and we think that’s all there is because that is the brightest thing in our world now. How big is your TV. How new is your phone. How perfect is your selfie. How cute is that filter. How trendy is that hashtag. How lit how dope how fire. We are disintegrating into pixels and bots and AI, and there will be nothing left of the species that was once awestruck by a sunrise, deafened the roar of a waterfall, awakened by the cold wind on a winter morning, humbled the cry of our first child fresh out of the womb. We are too busy taking a selfie, our Crest Strip teeth and fierce eyebrows in the foreground, the new innocent promise of the future in the blurry background, her own first precious moments stolen from her by more love for half a million followers than for the seed of our bodies. We are falling apart, and the earth is flinging me off it. Ultimately, I don’t belong here, but I have to stay, don’t I? I’m a third of the way done, perhaps. Please promise me there are no selfies in heaven.

Advice for Humans

Be kind. Not when it's easy, but when it isn't. Not only to the those who are kind to you, but more importantly to those who are not kind to you, and to those who do not even notice you as they rush by and knock you over. Be kind to them in your heart, as well, not just in your speech and actions. Try to help them. Try to heal their hurt, because unkind people are hurting. They are hurting themselves as others have hurt them.

Try to smooth out the wrinkles in your brow that you are permanently etching there by frowning, smirking, furrowing, and distressing. Do not distress. It is pointless. Take action, or let go. The only other choice is moral and emotional destitution.

Remember that everything you do is a choice. Nothing is a choice, and it is a valid choice. Inaction is a choice, and can also be a valid choice, but it is a choice that most people make too often. Take action, but take it easily. Don't push too hard, more than necessarily. Move smoothly through the world. Find your balance and save your strength for the things that matter.

Write down what is most important to you, and take time to do it. Write down who you are, thoroughly and precisely. What is your unalterable essence? What beliefs are you unwilling to ever compromise? What sacrifices are you unwilling to make? What do you love enough to die for? When do you thrive, and when do you wilt? This is what defines you. Write down these things, and read them every morning and every evening until they are not the mere interesting facts about yourself that you share at a party, as they are right now. Know them as you know your face in a gleaming mirror. Wear them as your wear your jacket, your jeans.

Do no harm. This is an impossible mandate to follow perfectly, but one of the most worthwhile. Do no harm to yourself, to other humans, to other living animals, to the water and air, to your country and your culture. Whatever you put into the world around you, first ask if it is non-harmful, and then ask if it represents the truth of your being. Feel free to create abstract art that nobody understands or admires, to write silly pop songs, to dance in new ways that no one finds beautiful, but don't paint the walls with your hatred, don't sing in praise of injury or misery, and don't dance in someone else's space.

Bake a loaf of bread, and then give the entire thing away to someone who is starving. There is nothing like the smell of fresh-baked bread when you are hungry, and there is nothing like the taste of food when you've gone without it.

Stop eating for a day, if you can. Most people can. Take a break from feeding your body, which you do every day, many times a day, and feed your soul with books, poetry, trees, open space, silence, and love.

Count your blessings not at night before falling asleep, but before walking into your difficult meetings, when getting in line at the DMV, while swallowing pills and getting shots. Count three things you could have done better at the end of each day, and remember them when you wake up in the morning.

Be careful when you speak to yourself. Words spoken aloud have a mysterious power. They exert their meaning over reality. Even the words you say quietly to yourself, silently in your heart, take root and grow in you and change the shape of your spirit. Telling yourself that you are weak, nervous, or inadequate is a curse you weave over your mind. Do not do that to yourself. Cast a beneficent spell with your words. Speak the truth, and speak the truth of what you want to be true. Call yourself brave, and in doing so, become brave. Call yourself patient, kind, and calm, and then be the goodness that you have spoken. It becomes easier if you say it first. It becomes more solid in your mind, and makes an easier path to follow.

Slow down, and breathe more deeply. Feel your chest expand slowly and broadly. You are suffocating, and you need to fill your lungs and your heart with pure things much more often. You need to breathe intentionally. You think that you breathe without thinking, but often you are forgetting to breathe, and you don't even realize that this is happening. Pay attention to the breath. Yours, yes, but also the world's. When was the last time you closed your eyes to know the wind on your cheeks? If you can't remember, it wasn't recently enough. You aren't paying attention.

Pay attention, bravely. It is hard to pay attention to ugly things, but they often deserve the most attention, so don't look the other way. Suffering is unattractive, which is why there is so much of it. Our souls are drawn to beauty, and so are our paychecks. Have courage when you see something you want to turn away from because it disgusts your sensibilities. This is the moment when your love is worth the most, in the place where others have loved the least.

Treat your body like a garden. Plant good things in it, water it often, and give it some sunshine. Keep it neat and orderly, so that when someone comes to enjoy it, they have no excuse to leave too soon.

Treat your friends like your family, and your family like your friends. Treat strangers like your friends as well, and treat your enemies like your children; teach them how to behave by setting a good example with your attitude and your actions. Don't yell unless it is with joy. Don't run away, only towards. When you feel like escaping, hold still for a moment. When you are about to die, which is always, remember to be grateful for your life but don't cling to it. Keep your affairs in order, and always ask for help when you need it.

Don't spend too much money, but don't spend too little. Give some of it away to help other beings. Work hard, but not too hard. Rest often, but not for too long. In all things, learn moderation.

Whatever you want to be good at, practice. You will become good at what you practice. Everything is practice: your waking, your sleeping, your breathing, your thinking, your eating, your working, and all the other ways you fill your time. Pay attention to what you practice. Don't practice anger, hatred, fear, greed, sloth, abuse, or anything else you don't want to be good at. When you practice something, practice excellence. Give it your best effort.

Don't practice being a victim. Stand up for yourself and what you cherish boldly, with pride and strength, but also with peace and love. Do not give in to evil, and do not believe convenient lies. When you learn something that is true, share it with others. Don't keep the light to yourself.

What I Believe: A Personal List of Values

Several years ago, I wrote a list of things I believe about the best way to live. At the time, I was reading numerous books and websites about personal development, health, habits, mindfulness, ethics, religion, and so on. I wanted to write a concise guide to myself that summarized some of the crucial ideas about living well and doing good that had become close to my heart and which I wanted to uphold in my daily life.

I occasionally modify this list, but it has largely remained unchanged since I first created it. It is a document I visit somewhat often, especially when I want to remind myself of who I want to be. It's not a comprehensive list of things I believe, and I think that its contents are a reflection of my areas for growth, rather than of my areas of expertise. (You may notice that there is nothing in this list about seeking justice, maintaining individuality, or speaking your mind--important values, but ones that historically haven't been much of a challenge for me.)

I also think that it reflects my deepest concerns about humanity and the way we treat each other. If I could direct a megaphone at the world, these are some of the things I would want to shout. If we all lived by these principles, we wouldn't go to war and kill each other, we wouldn't cruelly and needlessly slaughter billions of animals, and we wouldn't hate or ignore the people who truly need love. I guess you could call this my "Be the change" list, because these are the changes I want to see in the world, recognizing that the only person I can change is myself.

I am rather far away from being this person, but I think it is good to know the direction you intend to go if you want to get somewhere specific eventually.

This is my current "What I Believe" list:

1) Always strive to consistently and deliberately apply your beliefs and uphold your values when making any choice or taking any action, however insignificant or vital.

2) It is good to live peacefully. Do no harm.

3) Be loving. Practice empathy and altruism towards friends, enemies, and strangers. Develop your compassion and give it freely.

4) Treat all humans equally well. Don’t criticize, judge, or dismiss before you seek to understand.

5) Face reality, and take responsibility if you reasonably can. Hold yourself accountable before trying to change others. Blame can lie fully with more than one person.

6) Be of good humor and slow to anger and irritation. Have goodwill towards your fellow humans. Don’t act as though others intend to hurt you, and don’t be easily offended.

7) Choose a few creative hobbies to occupy your leisure time. Reading, writing, music, art, dancing, spending time in good company, playing tabletop games, sports, enjoying nature, learning languages, and science are good options. Exercise your mind, body, and soul frequently, and do so in ways that you enjoy.

8) Eat a healthy, seasonal, and locally-produced plant-based diet. Drink water.

9) Be genuine and tactfully honest with everyone you meet. Listen more than you talk, and talk about things that matter. Things most worth saying are both kind and true.

10) Be honorable both in your actions and in your intentions. 

11) A good decision considers what is best, not just what is right.

12) Take action on your plans as soon as you reasonably can and should. Procrastination is a vice.

13) Be patient and calm. Practice mindfulness. Be present.

14) In all of the above, strive for excellence, consistency, and authenticity.

If you've never written a list like this, I'd encourage you to do so. How do you want to be in the world? What's on your list?

Quotation of the Day x3

"We keep our troops wherever we want" -Vladimir Putin (Source)

Geez, Vlad. Who do you think you are--America?

And then there's this bag o' goodies:

"since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders." -John Pilger (Source)

The truth is that I've become almost completely cynical and hopeless about the global Hunger Game of Thrones War of Terror that is being waged against the population of earth. Rich people with massively lethal toys make me sick.

If you haven't read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, I'd highly recommend it. If you don't have time, I'll leave you with a sentiment that I think should be plastered on billboards in all first world nations and on the walls of high school campuses:

"I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that." -Kurt Vonnegut

An Open Letter to Gov. Jerry Brown and the State of California

Dear Governor Brown and the State of California:

I've been noticing a lot of large-scale state-centric activism altering the geography of American political power lately. Some states as political units are pushing for broad change by implementing it on their own, becoming massive pilot projects for the nation. Consider the moves that are being made by Washington, Colorado, Oregon, and soon California, in opposition to the federal government. This gaining and defining of political rights and powers that has received so much attention in the media is part of a wider tendency of nature to delegate demanding tasks to increasingly specialized executive organs and to evolve pathways that shift weight downward to correct top-heavy systems.

The attempts of lower levels of government to differentiate themselves will of course be met with mixed success. Some innovations, such as NYC's large soda bans, have been ridiculed as poorly conceived and sloppily enacted. Other changes, those more successful ideas that have been implemented peacefully and thoughtfully, have fascinated the nation and have convinced many that the local men and women who govern the states are more capable and more in touch with their citizens than the distant capital can ever be. Soon, California will follow the leads of Washington and Colorado and vote on whether to defy the DEA in order to legalize a Schedule I drug. Of course, "defy" seems to be too strong of a word, since the capital hasn't truly taken a stand against the states who have blatantly disregarded its policy. The federal government, too big and too busy to enforce consistently even its most notorious statutes, has implicitly permitted this assertion of state sovereignty, and it is in the interest of every American to find out what other rights of decision-making we can claim.

The authorities that govern California, including the citizens at large, unfortunately missed their opportunity to set a truly landmark precedent and compete politically by being the first state to claim the right to legalize marijuana. There are other opportunities, however. I believe that the State of California should demonstrate to other states and to the federal government, which is too big and too busy to negotiate all of this world's controversies, ways in which money might be better spent and people might be freed through previously unconsidered political innovations. There are so many possibilities for how government might be made more efficient. Legalizing a peaceful, profitable, relatively harmless crop is just the first step.

California has the chance and the duty to pioneer the next state sovereignty activism project, and it needs to be something big. My suggestion is to amend California's tax code to offer households unlimited dollar-for-dollar tax deductions for private contributions to non-profit organizations. A huge part of California's burden is taking care of people, which we currently attempt to do through inefficient welfare programs that are too bureaucratic to be efficient and too impeded by political distractions to be fully dedicated to their causes at the collective level. Non-profit charities meet needs where governments fails to, and they do it with fewer people and fewer resources more successfully than overburdened governments. Specialization is the life force of economic efficiency. Let governments govern, but let us delegate to charity specialists the care and keeping of the needy--the poor, sick, orphaned, jobless, homeless, and mentally anguished. Giving public programs the chance to compete with private efforts for funding and attention through unlimited deductible charitable qualified contributions would not only hold our public programs to a higher standard, but would also reveal the true preferences of California's citizens and allow highly respected, well-established, innovative groups to do what they do best: alleviate the suffering of the impoverished and outcast. Such a change may be initially seen as drastic, but taking advantage of charitable giving as a way to correct California's dire economic situation is not nearly as drastic as allowing our state to stagnate and bankrupt itself while our people grow hungry, poor, weak, and embittered against their leaders and protectors. Our financial and human resources should be freed to flow to where they are most valued.

Most of what goes on in government has been tried before, many times, with only timid changes and semantic differences; it's no wonder we see only negligible improvements at best. Consider something really new: a government that isn't afraid of asking for help from privately organized, conscientious citizens. Let some of our tax dollars skip the politicking and go straight into the hands of the volunteers, the healers, and the servants of the under-served. Most importantly, let the people decide who deserves to spend these hard-earned wages. Can you imagine a government that ASKS for money instead of taking it? Can you imagine a government that acknowledges its lesser talents and hands a small portion of the reigns over to those more qualified and more passionate? Americans are extremely charitable as individuals. Let's invest in that spirit, and use it to solve some of our very glaring problems.

I hope you will consider deeply the role California might play in liberating the process of political evolution from the sluggish, porcine, distant federal government by empowering citizens and setting an example to other states who also are looking for big solutions to big problems. Legislation to independently legalize non-violent black markets, grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, withdraw support for dangerous imperial foreign policy, end police brutality, improve transparency, and decrease corruption are all within California's reach. In short, California could become a much better place. I look forward to your reply and would be happy to talk with you further about these ideas. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Laralyn Murphy