When I was a little girl, I loved to dress up. I would put on my princess dresses or my fancy dresses, then go to my mother or grandmother’s room and put on their makeup and jewelry, and then I would complete the look with a tiara and the highest heels I could find in their closet. On different days I would experiment with different looks, like one day I’d wear a long strand of pearls, and the other I would try some large clip-on chandelier earrings. One thing that remained constant, though, was that I would base my looks on outfits I had already seen, whether it originated from my grandmothers or mother’s previous looks, from a picture I had seen in a magazine or book, or a getup I had seen in a movie. When I would dress up, or even when I would just dress myself, I would pull ideas from a plethora of stylistic inspirations, but the one constant underlying my earliest styles was trying to copy my grandmothers and mother. I wanted to wear hoops and style my hair like my mother, wear red lipstick and large necklaces like my Ita (what I call my maternal grandmother), wear a scarf over my head and brooches like my Granny (my paternal grandmother), and wear large sunglasses and carry a purse like all three.

Some other influences that I found along the way in my journey to my present style were that of TV and movie characters and celebrities. Even though I knew almost nothing about her, I wanted to wear Juicy tracksuits and carry a little dog in my purse like Paris Hilton. I also wanted to style myself with anything pink and glamorous like Sharpay from High School Musical, even though I wasn’t even a huge fan of the movies. I had my hair in a bob for a large portion of my life in part because I was influenced by Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, and Victoria Beckham; I loved to wear, and continue to love to wear, large sunglasses not only because of my female relatives but also because of Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy. I even did my hair in certain ways for a large portion of middle school because of my love for Princess Leia and Padmé Amidala’s hair in Star Wars!

Furthermore, I also found influences in the trends that came and went as I grew up; I would pick and choose what I liked from them and add them to my wardrobe. I liked high-waisted shorts (or high-waisted anything really, since the low-rise trend was not for me) because of how they looked on me, and I even continue to wear them to this day. Skinny jeans also made up and continue to make up a large part of my pants selection, and a good crop top continues to be something I reach for year-round.

As I enter my twenties and gain more confidence and comfort in my fashion choices, finally being fully true to what I want to wear, I look back at my past influences and see how they pop up in my current fashion choices. I continue to wear large sunglasses and carry a purse almost every day, and to love a good red lip and statement jewelry when I go out. I sometimes wear hoops and do my hair similar to my mom, and I continue to love all things pink and glamorous like Sharpay and Paris Hilton. And, of course, I still love to dress up. Even though my style is by no means the same as it was ten or five years ago, I am still fascinated by the way I’ve continued to include certain things in my personal style, even as all of these years have passed.

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I firmly believe that we don’t talk enough about Emily Weiss’s, founder of Glossier and #girlboss, 2015 pre-wedding routine beauty article. In Into the Gloss, Glossier’s blog, Weiss detailed her six-month pre-wedding journey through beauty treatments that were basically the equivalent of poking and prodding her limbs, skin, wanted hair, unwanted hair, nails, muscles, lashes, brows, and digestive tract. Yes, the digestive tract, something I had no idea we were supposed to be insecure about. And according to her, it was a success. She wrote that day that she was a whole 8/10 happy with how she looked. She spent six months, and maybe the average annual American salary, on grueling beauty treatments for an 8/10. 8/10. Not even an A or a high B. An 8/10.

Initially, when I read it, I couldn’t pinpoint where I felt the discomfort. Was it my gen-Z ‘eat the rich sensibilities’ that were perturbed by her frivolous recommendations to spend what’s probably my tuition on beauty treatments? Or the practical side of me that highly doubts a colonic will flush out the toxins in your body and is also slightly worried about Weiss’s misleading medical advice? Or the mom friend in me that wishes influencers would stop feeding into toxic diet culture and endorsing detox cleanses? (I really wish I understood what it is with millennials and ‘detoxing’) Yes to all of these, but also, her 8/10 ranking will forever haunt me.

Weiss built her brand as a CEO and her company, Glossier, on the idea that minimalism and the natural look can also be beautiful. Her products are easy to use, beautifully packaged, and celebrate dewy skin. Glossier’s Instagram is carefully curated with images of models and actors in ‘natural’ makeup. And in the ten minutes it took me to read this article, the idea of the Glossier girl finally cracked.

The same person who sells us on a brand whose entire ethos is based on minimalism is also trying to sell us on colonics, cleanses, and microcurrent treatments. And if you practice what she preaches, maybe one day you too can feel like an 8/10. The glossier girl doesn’t spend ten minutes applying skin tint with a wash of color and maybe a smokey eye and then goes out the door. The glossier girl apparently spends thousands of dollars to emulate a faux minimalist aesthetic to then only feel 80% good about herself.

And I cannot emphasize enough how profoundly disappointing this was for me. Glossier was the brand that pushed me to accept my skin with and without foundation. I fell in love with the idea of a ‘no-makeup’ makeup brand that focused on skincare. Emily Weiss changed the beauty industry forever and turned a beauty blog into a beauty empire through the magic of genius marketing. Glossier has revolutionized the beauty industry. Despite initial blunders, it has made a concerted effort to support social causes and increase the diversity of its models. It’s refreshing to see models in something that isn’t full glam, especially at the time Glossier was founded. With this in mind, it’s so disappointing to see its CEO, who was heralded as revolutionary to changing our relationship to beauty, parroting archaic cliches about ‘toxins’ and cleanses. So much of the beauty industry relies on triggering insecurities or creating whole new ones. We are told to hate ourselves because it sells juice cleanses, colonics, and a million other procedures or products for an ideal that no one will ever be able to reach. Even the brand that marketed themselves as different has fallen into this trap.

But I believe that self-love can coexist with loving beauty. Beauty can be more than creating insecurities and trying to sell a solution. Beauty can be about care and love for yourself. It can be about the final moments in the day when you unwind or in the morning when you prepare yourself to take on the day. Self-love is profoundly radical when we are constantly told to hate ourselves, our digestive tract, and our bodies. And the brands which capitalize on self-hatred should begin to take note because one day, hopefully, they will be obsolete.

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