Make Up Time
Yesterday, I dyed my hair back again. I have medium brown hair, and this box dye I used really fucking saturated my hair with the black color. It's perrrrfecccttt. I even got up early to do my makeup. I went with a saturated blue color scheme today with blue gitter to really pop against my new hair. Ooooh, I even got a white eyeliner pencil for my waterline to open up my eyes a bit.
I really like how I do my makeup. If I felt comfortable showing my face here, then I'd do an indepth tutorial of how I do my makeup. I can describe as best as I can to make inspire other goth people to do a more toned down goth look without going traditional goth. My make up isn't office friendly, but I don't work in an office setting so it's not something I have to consider. But I'm still kinda pushing it at work. Boss hasn't said anything yet though, so I'm assuming it's fine.
I'll describe a bit of my process below. Keep in mind that I'm white, and I haven't tried to on darker skin. I'm not sure if it'll apply the same as me or someone with my skin tone. Feel free to experiment with what works for you if you're inspired by this little explanation < 3
The key to making your face paler without going full on white face paint is using white facepaint as concealer and highlight and going over it with a powder foundation one shade lighter than you skintone. I haven't tried it yet, but I feel like I would hate liquid foundation because of how heavy it can be compared to powder. Additionally, going over the white facepaint with powder returns a litttle color to your face so it's not stark white. If I contour, I use a brown powder on my cheeks, underneath my bottom lip, and that's kinda it. I prefer to look a little dead.
So, I have really hooded eyes and a deep brow. Like, I have no space between where my brow bone rests and my eyes are. Because of that, I need to be creative with how I do my eyeshadow. I usually put my eye shadow around my eyes as opposed to sticking solely to my eyelid. I'll basically put a lighter shade on my lid, below my brow, and to the top side of the eye. Then, I go in with a darker shade. I put it in on the entire side of my eye and drag the color to my undereyes a bit. Then, I usually put something shimmery on my eyelid and in the corner of my eye because having a light and sparkly inner eye color is a fun trend right now. Sometimes, I'll put a smaaaall amount of black eyeshadow around my eye to give it more depth, but not too much as to not overpower the darker shade I put earlier. Then, I color both waterlines. I use a black pencil eyeliner on my upper waterlines, and then on the bottom, I'll either use black again or a white eyeliner. Depends on my mood and whether I want to open my eye more or not. White eyeliner on your bottom lashline will open your eyes more, black tends to close your eye dramatically. And then use like, mascara.
I usually don't use false lashes because that would be a nightmare with my glasses, but trust me, I'd love to.
And then I'll do a black matte lip. I loooove a good glossy lip but the texture is a nightmare so I don't do it often.
Work Stuff
Okay so I'm, like, a little frazzled right? So essentially, there are two comments that were left on a third party review website for the place I work at. One was transphobic towards me and the other one was racist towards my coworkers. Now, they weren't overtly offensive. It was more of, you know, like a "this can be seen as either ignorant at best," but me and my coworkers aren't stupid. I had a talk with my district manager and regional director today about them because I had requested them to be removed. Now, they did what they could, which was only reach out to the third party to ask if they could be taken down. Of course, the third party did not agree that they were offensive. Which is absolutely bullshit, if I may rage for a second. Because how the fuck are you going to look at a review that blantly misgenders me, particularly in this political climate, and think that's not a cause for alarm? Fuck you, man.
Anyway, yeah, they come in person and I get to talk to my RD for the first time. And so he was basically like, "hey, look, we can't take this down, we tried, so we need to come up with another solution if this happens a next time." And essentially, he stated that we cannot push people away by telling them they're simply wrong, because no one ever listens to that and it simply reinforces their wrong opinions and attitudes. Rather, we need to take the time to meet them where they're at and any progress is good progress. Additionally, we can't speak for a whole community because we cannot know what everyone wants without communication." Which, hey, like I agree with all of this. Like, he is not wrong. I do believe that if we want to have someone unlearn their bigotry, we need to be able to take the time to talk to someone.
My gripe with his attitude is that we are beyond talking right now. Like, look, my RD had a bunch of good sources he quoted, and he actively engages politically, and he even agreed with me about the comments made. But talking to people and engaging with people that actively believe me and my coworkers deserve concentration camps, its exhausting. Like why do I have to beg for my humanity. I understand that community is supposed to be inconvienant, too. Maybe I just need to practice patience. But at the same time, if I open myself up in that kind of way, I could get hurt. Even killed. Is it worth it? Or could I help community in other ways? Something to think about for me, I suppose. And I'm certainly not going to beg for my humanity on the clock.
I know the unspoken part about our talk was "don't rock the boat because you are in public service." Which I think just made me more upset because why should I have to tolerate someone learning when they believe things that actively contribute to me losing my rights. But I guess that I just need to understand that some, most, people aren't nazis. They don't hate us fully, hopefully, they've just been fed propaganda and wrong things about us (I'm speaking just on being transgender here). I don't know. Man, I just want to believe the best in people.
Like I've mentioned, I don't think anyone is inherently evil. I don't think people are born on this earth just to be evil. But I also don't want to tolerate bullshit. Now's not the time. I'm just. Confused, at a loss on what to do. I know I can't solve everything wrong ever, but I want to helpl however I can.