Mirror Mirror

Every once in a while I fall down a rabbit hole of obsessing over old pictures of myself. It usually starts innocently enough. I check my daily featured photos on my iPhone for rat pictures to send to Angela, but once in a while an old pic of me comes up and then I end up scrolling through pictures of myself from that time frame. 

The time frame in particular that gets me is about 2017 to 2020, which was the peak of my fun coloured hair and elaborate makeup. I see how hard I used to try and am so annoyed at how hot I was, and that I didn’t appreciate it or believe it at all. Makeup was my hyperfixation and how I dealt with my mental health back then, and I got really good at it. 

Then COVID happened and I stopped dying my hair and wearing makeup. Since then, I have started wearing makeup again, but a whole lot less than I used to. Back in 2018/19 I would often wear foundation, highlighter, lipstick, multiple shades of eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara… Now I’m lucky if I get eyeshadow and mascara on. I was wearing eyeliner too, but I ran out and have been too lazy to buy more. I ran out of all my lipsticks that last a long time, and I simply don’t care enough to buy more, or use a lipstick I have to reapply.  I used to wear all kinds of fun shades and now I stick to neutrals. I dyed my hair back to my natural colour before my wedding in 2021, and it’s stayed that colour since, minus some pink shampoo I used that gave it a little bit of a rose gold tone for a while. 

When I look at these old photos I debate trying to look like that again. But I can’t. I’ve aged, and that’s okay. I feel like bright coloured makeup just doesn’t look as good on me as it used to. I still wear it from time to time, but I tend to stick with much more neutral or muted tones now. Also, applying multiple shades and blending them and doing shapes and such does not suit me at all anymore. Now I tend to apply just one shade, only to my lids. 

I’m not saying that once you’re no longer in your twenties, you can no longer have fun hair and makeup. I know lots of people up to their eighties that still have fun hair and makeup. It really depends on what suits you and what you feel like wearing. Elaborate makeup used to suit me really well, but I just don’t feel like I’m that person anymore. COVID changed me a lot, and I’m just a lot more subdued now. 

I may not be as into makeup anymore and barely buy it anymore, but in the past few years I’ve gotten really into skincare. My skin has always been pretty nice and I never got much acne as a teenager, but it feels even better now. I’ve found products that really work for me that aren’t too expensive (we won’t talk about how much I spend on haircare…). I also make sure to wear sunscreen every day that I leave the house or go outside. I’ve always looked young for my age, and I’m hoping taking care of my skin now will keep it that way. 

On the flip side, I used to wear clothing that was a lot of neutrals and blues, and now I’ve added a lot more colour. I actually wear a lot of pink now, which five-year-old me would have loved, but teen and twenties Alicen would have hated. I’ve always loved earrings, but now I wear all my fun ones on a regular basis, because why not. Since I’ve accepted my curls and have worked hard to stop my compulsive hair-pulling, I’ve started wearing my hair down a lot with cute hair clips.  

I think it really just comes down to realizing that I’m different than I was back then and that’s okay. I like how I look now, so what does it matter if I don’t feel like I look as hot as I did back then. Especially since I certainly didn’t feel like I was hot then, so I might look at pictures of myself now in eight more years and think I was really hot now too.