In case you needed a reminder that nobody is immune to insecurities, not even people who make others feel beautiful for a living: Veteran makeup artist Alex Box, who’s worked with stars like Kate Moss and Lady Gaga and created runway looks for a roster of brands including Chanel and Alexander McQueen, took to her Instagram recently to discuss a much more personal subject.
“The reason I’m posting this [is] because for years I’ve been really self-conscious about my lips,” Box began the caption of her makeup-free selfie. It’s one of only a handful of photos of herself that Box has posted to Instagram; scrolling through her feed, you’ll mostly see images of her avant-garde editorial and runway work. “I consider myself a strong woman but, as we all do, have body and face issues that can chip into that confidence in a micro scale.” Box goes on to say that she usually compensates by wearing bright red lipstick, which she says she not only loves, but also helps her get away with overdrawing her lips to make them look bigger.
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It wasn’t until, after returning from a shoot, a friend saw her remove her makeup. “[She] was really excited to see me without red lips, saying how nice my lips were with no makeup,” Box wrote. “I spend so much time encouraging others to be experimental, have faith, and have courage. I was really needing my own medicine, realizing how unconfident I was about this particular thing about me.”
At the end of the day, Box said that having a friend who encouraged her to embrace her insecurities and imperfections made her feel empowered — so much so, in fact, that she gave a public talk the next day in barely any makeup. That taste of her “own medicine” was an eye-opening experience for her. “I see so many beautiful women and men every day, all unique, all different, all have their thing going on. We have so many conventional stereotypes bombarding us to have this or that ass or face and everyone is touched by it,” Box said.
It’s true: Societal pressures often cause us to hold ourselves to unrealistic standards. But as unrealistic as they are, they’re also frankly undesirable — because when it comes down to it, who really wants to look exactly the same as everyone else? Rather than get caught up in the belief that there’s some semblance of “perfection” to be reached, we should embrace individuality, in ourselves and in other people. “Uniqueness is what makes us so special,” Box concludes. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.