Scandalous!

I know.

So I have been meaning to film an everyday makeup tutorial for probably like three months now.

It's been on my to do list for a hot second, but every single time I think I'm ready to film the video.

I get my camera set up, I get my makeup out and I look in the mirror and there's something about my face that I don't like that day, whether it's like Oh, my cheeks for two chubby today or like I have acne scars that I'm still dealing with.

Let me just wait until those go away, and then I'll fill this video later on.

And eventually it just occurred to me that it's so absurd that I am this person on the Internet trying to be this like feminist, empowering, badass person.

Yet I still barely have the courage to show my bare face on screen for like a split second.

Feeling confident in yourself and battling and security is something so much easier said than done.

And it's still something that idea with to this day.

So today, while I do my makeup routine.

I wanted to talk to you guys about kind of my journey with insecurity shift.

And I still deal with my thoughts on social media and marketing and the makeup industry and how it all effects how we perceive ourselves.

So, yeah, I've really been enjoying these, like, girl talk videos with you guys.

So yeah, that is the video that you're watching today.

Let's jump into it.

Okay, So my first step, I feel like such a fucking beauty guru.

My first step is this milk hydro primer.

I used to not be a primary person, but I later on so much flush that it does actually help when you have oily skin to have, like a primer to lock it all down and make sure it doesn't slip Totally optional.

Though I don't do this every single day.

I know primers could be kind of expensive for something that seems to not do that much for your skin.

I grew up very carefree tomboy type and high school was the first time that I really became self aware of how I looked.

High school also happened to be the time when I started getting really, really bad acne.

I had, like cystic acne.

Pretty much my entire cheek area was always covered with zits for, like, four years of my life.

So I really started using makeup as something defensive almost every single day in high school.

Whether I was going to school or work, I had to put on foundation concealer eyebrows.

It was like this mask that I had to wear in order to become like a socially acceptable version of myself.

I literally felt like it would be offensive to other people if I went out with my bare skin and my acne and people had to see it.

I looked so different without makeup and with makeup on that I ended up having this almost like imposter syndrome for my own face.

If that makes sense, I felt like I almost had two different faces.

There was my makeup face, and there was the face that I woke up to every morning, and I honestly didn't know which one I identified with more.

I would look at my super acne ridden face, and I would say I don't feel like this.

I don't feel like this person, but when I put make up on.

I also felt like I was still faking people out because I knew what I looked like under the makeup.

This is the foundation I used by the way.

It is the milk sunshine, skin tint.

It's basically like a tinted moisturizer.

I like it because it's super glowy, and it also just has this cool like bull apparatus.

And I do love a good ball, so this is very much a side note, but I honestly think if you ever feel insecure about how your vagina looks, just think about how weird Guy's balls are.

Like all generals are fucking weird.

So there's no point in being embarrassed about what yours look like, anyway, that was completely unrelated to this.

This whole face talk, but I just have insecurity about how my vagina looked as well.

So just saying one time in high school, I think it was for my 17th birthday.

My friends came over for a little surprise birthday party gathering, and my mom called me downstairs and I thought she was just calling me to, like, do dishes or have dinner or something like that.

So I came down in my sweat pants and my glasses without any makeup on.

And there I see all of my friends, and I was so mortified because the vast majority of them had never seen me without makeup on before.

So I remember in this moment that was supposed to be something like really happy like, Oh my God, that's so cool that all of my friends are here to celebrate my birthday.

I was just freaking out, like trying to cover up the side of my face with my hair, trying to figure out if everybody was judging me for the way that my skin looked.

I think that Megan can be empowering to people.

I think that some people really do find enjoyment and art in it.

But I think the sad thing nowadays is that woman are expected toe wear makeup so often that it becomes this barrier to actually living your life to the fullest.

As cheesy as that sounds, it's this barrier to actually being spontaneous because we have this, you know, 2030 minutes, however long it takes you to get ready before we can hang out with people before we can go out before we can even fucking go to a meeting.

This whole construct of beauty does really, in a tangible way, become a barrier to woman just like enjoying their lives.

Sometimes I wonder how much more of my life I genuinely could have enjoyed if I wasn't worried about how I looked or whether my concealer was slipping off or whether my IRAs looked all right are I had to run to the bathroom to fix my hair.

Okay, here is my face all foundation duck to cover any little spots that my foundation missed.

I have this concealer I've been using for ages from Nars.

I am looking for an alternative, though that's cruelty free.

If you do happen to have any suggestions, leave him down below.

So obviously I had insecurities about my acne when I was in high school.

But growing up in suburban Maryland, I really was never insecure about the way that my face looked or the way that my body looked.

I never felt like I wasn't pretty enough.

I just knew that I didn't have clear skin.

And once I moved to L.

A for film school.

Oh boy, did that change?

L.

A is a whole new world of beauty standards.

When I came to college, that was the first time that I really deeply felt insecure about the way that I looked.

And it was something that was on my mind every single day.

I knew that I shouldn't be comparing myself to other people, but I literally couldn't help seeing in L.

A.

All of these beautiful, beautiful girls with like, model faces.

It made me feel worse about myself, even though nobody else's beauty should rob away from my feeling of beauty.

But, like if we're being honest, it fucking does.

It's really hard to look at beautiful people and not feel less beautiful yourself.

L.

A also has a very white and blonde standard of beauty.

In my high school, there were a lot of Asian kids, and there were also a lot of mixed kids that looked like me, and I never felt like I was any less beautiful or attractive because of being half Asian and half white.

And when I moved to L.

A.

That was the first time that I really felt like I would never fit into what people defined is beautiful because of my race, and L.

A.

Was also one of the first time that I became very like aware of how my race affected my everyday interactions.

My first ever day in l.

A.

I was walking to my internship and ah, guy on the street yells at me, Hey, you Chinese girl trying to be white.

I was like, sir what?

What, like a comment on my ass?

But don't fucking comment on my race in the string.

Also, realistically, please don't comment on my ass either.

And this happened several times.

Like when I was on a date with a white guy.

Somebody yelled out of the car like, Hey, white agent, I love that.

I was like like where I grew up.

It was super normal for there to be interracial dating because it's the fucking 21st century and nobody should care anymore.

I never would have expected my race to be something that mattered more in L.

A.

That it didn't fucking suburban Maryland, but it really did.

As a freshman, I also gains probably like 10 or £15.

I felt very isolated.

I felt very lonely, and it kind of turned into this self perpetuating cycle of eating is like a comfort and then feeling shitty about myself because I was gaining weight and then eating more because of it, I started hating things about my own face, which had never happened before.

I hated the way Find knows Waas kind of rounded and wasn't super pointy.

I wanted that cute little like tip of the nose that white girls have.

I hated my smile.

My parents, growing up always said that I had a Wallace and Gromit smile because it's very like rounded at the edges.

I would sit in my spare time and try to teach my face how to smile with, like, sharp corners at the edges of my mouth instead of these rounded corners, and you never fucking work.

I still smile the way that I smile and most of all, especially because this was the time on the Internet were like cheekbones and eyebrows were super in.

I hated how shall be my face was, and I hated that I didn't have super sharp cheekbones.

Weirdly, I didn't even realize that all the things that I had hated the most about my own face were the things that were most Asian about my face until I was literally, like, outlining this video a couple of days ago and I realized, like, shit, those air, just all of my features that are the least Eurocentric.

Sorry, I'm getting distracted by talking, and I'm actually doing my makeup.

I'm gonna tackle my eyebrows.

Now, this is a very faded benefit brow Joe situation gonna smack that on these babies.

I think we're at a very interesting time right now.

When it comes to diversity, Finally, brands and Hollywood are accepting the diversity a little bit more like Finally, in 2019 we have a movie with an Asian cast like that took forever, but it's also awesome.

So I love the people, are accepting the diversity more and more.

Yet at the same time, we have these snapped on instagram filters that impose euro centric features on your face essentially and create a narrower.

And there were ideal of what beauty should be.

I remember when that one beautifying Snapchat filter first came out and it makes your eyes big and it makes your nose looks super slim and pointy and it even makes your skin lighter.

I remember looking at it and being like shit, like I look prettier with this filter in L.

A too.

You see, all these girls like getting there lip fillers and nose jobs.

And I don't judge anybody for doing whatever cosmetic procedure they want their own face.

But I can't help feeling like sometimes we're all snitches.

Like in that Dr Seuss book.

We saw what Kylie Jenner get her lip injections and she got the star.

And now we all want the star.

And now Kylie took out her lip injections.

Then everybody's going back through the machine to get their start taking off.

I am hopeful, though, because I think that especially kind of with this like euphoria affected with the next generation, beauty and fashion are so unique and funky and expressive and diverse.

And I fucking love that so much.

I'm so over this, like, face tuned perfection like Fuck that.

That's boring.

I literally cannot multitask while I do my brows.

This is the one activity that takes my entire brain power and more to do properly.

So I'm gonna shut up for a second while I do my eyebrows.

And then we'll keep talking.

Okay, I think that's that's about right.

It's always an adventure with my eyebrows.

They're different every single day.

That's the saying.

Actually, life is like doing your eyebrows in the morning.

You never know what you're gonna get for my eyes.

I just do a really simple cover excess.

So Okay, let's talk about where I am today with my relationship with my own face.

You know, today I have good days.

I have bad days when it comes to confidence.

But at least the thing that feels like a lot of progress to me is that even though I have, like, my flaws and my insecurities, I wouldn't wanna wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and see anybody but myself.

If that makes sense, I think I'm just going to the point where this is me.

And even if it's not perfect, I like the fact that it's me.

Sorry, that sounded like some motivational poster shit.

I genuinely feel like at this point, even if I could get free and perfect plastic surgery so that my face looked this ideal way, I wouldn't want to wake up in the morning and not be able to recognize myself.

And that's a good fucking feeling to have.

Let's do a little bit of eyeliner.

This is one from the drug store.

It is Loreal linear, intense carbon black.

Why make up names will be so intense.

By the way, make up always sounds like a weapon or a sex toy.

No, in between again.

I require my full brains effort for this part.

So I apologize for the awkward silence that's that.

I'm gonna have to wipe this off and I'll be right back.

Okay, here is my eyeliner.

I touched it up in the bathroom because I am horrible in multitasking.

We got them to be like not twins, but stepsisters.

And that is really the best that one could ask for.

Although gaining confidence has been a very gradual process for me, there was one trip in particular that really helped me change my perspective.

When I was 19 years old, I went to Austin by myself.

I only packed one pair of contacts and I didn't pass my glasses and I lost my contacts on the plane.

So for my entire trip in Austin, my vision was like slightly blurry.

But it was the first time in my entire life where I couldn't look in the mirror and pick a part like I have a little bit of acne.