“You Look More Like a Mom”

“I like you better without makeup. You look more like a mom.”

If an audible gasp ever graced my southern lips, this was that moment. Mind you, this gem came from the same sweet boy who brought me to my knees in a reckoning about my priorities a few months ago.

Sweet child. Dear, sweet child.

Now the reckoning was going to be for him.

The words had barely left his mouth before my Mississippi roots clutched their pearls and staged a full-scale intervention. What raced through my mind in that brief moment was a fierce and unrelenting monologue carefully curated by an impromptu gathering of ancestors and went something like this:

“Listen here. The woman who built you from scratch for nine months, labored to bring you into this world, and keeps this household running on little more than caffeine and raw determination did not wake up looking like this.

Son, your mother is a carefully calibrated blend of Rimmel, Maybelline, and L’Oréal. So much so that I am not entirely certain where I end and drugstore cosmetics begin.

This level of talent takes years of training, skill, and a modest investment in age-defying skin tint.

Come to think of it, my pores haven’t seen daylight since the Clinton administration. And while my dermatologist might be aghast at that knowledge, she can relax.

It has SPF.

I’ll have you know this makeup isn’t simply there to remind me that I existed before all of you showed up and started eating all the groceries and flinging dirty socks across every available surface.

It is a carefully curated masterpiece.

Where I’m from—in the heart of Mississippi—makeup is as thick as our accents and nearly as necessary as air.

It isn’t cosmetics. It’s culture.

It’s a sacred shape-shifting ritual every Southern woman eventually earns the right to participate in. I’ve long been initiated and that club card is not returnable. Barefaced in the light of day is simply not an option.

Going without makeup would be like refusing sweet tea, abandoning football season, or pretending humidity doesn’t exist.

Sugar, some traditions are simply bigger than us. I didn’t make the rules. I merely apply them every morning.

Motherhood may have changed many things, but it did not revoke my Southern citizenship.

Honey, we come from the land of thick gravy and even thicker lip liner.

The land where women shapeshift daily beneath layers of foundation until they are scarcely recognizable in their natural form.

The land where we gather on the front porch with perfectly coiffed hair during a rainstorm and sip sweet tea from a sweating glass while murmuring, “We needed that,” as our landscaping gets thoroughly drenched. Meanwhile, we stay fresh as a peach because, Sweet pea, Southern women don’t sweat.

We glisten and we don’t have body odor.

In fact, the only perspiration that escapes our meticulously maintained pores carries the faint scent of rose water, gardenias, and good breeding.

Our perfectly crafted faces survive hurricanes, tornadoes, and that time Uncle Billy got beside himself after the Ole Miss–Mississippi State game and broke his leg pitchin’ a fit on the lawn.

And if we do happen to encounter the rare occasion of falling apart, we do so with lipstick on.

We emerge from church, funerals, convenience stores, and emergency rooms looking as though we floated down from heaven for a brief visit.

And Mama always told me never to leave the house looking like a potato with my undercarriage underdressed lest I get into a terrible car wreck and the EMTs catch a glimpse of ratty panties and an unkempt face.

These are the values upon which civilizations are built.

And isn’t it just precious that you thought any of this was negotiable?

Mississippians understand that a good shade of blush is practically a constitutional right.

We emerge from the womb wearing lipstick and press-on nails and spend our formative years learning that if you run into someone at the grocery store, you had better be prepared for it.

So while I appreciate your preference for the natural look, I fear you have fundamentally misunderstood the culture that produced your mother.

To abandon the sacred traditions handed down by mothers, grandmothers, beauty queens, church ladies, and every woman who has ever stared into a magnifying mirror and whispered, “Just a little more,” would be blasphemous.

So no, son.

I cannot.

We may live in Florida now, but this woman is Mississippi to her core and will go to her grave with cat eyes so sharp they could kill a man with nothing more than a glance.

After all, if the good Lord wanted me barefaced, He wouldn’t have inspired waterproof mascara.

He knows my heart, but the church ladies know my face.

Or at least the one I apply every morning.

And our bare faces?

Those are secrets intended only for the Almighty and immediate family.”

And just like that, the matter was settled.

Or at least it should have been.

Unfortunately, no one informed the committee.

They assembled without so much as asking my permission.

My mother.

My grandmothers.

Every church lady who ever carried a casserole across a fellowship hall.

Every beauty queen.

Every Walmart cashier.

Every woman who ever sat in a hot car with the visor mirror down applying one final coat of lipstick before walking inside.

And every EMT who narrowly escaped the trauma of discovering a bare face and ratty undergarments at the scene of a car wreck.

They all rose together in righteous indignation—a united front of Aqua Net, White Diamonds, the right push-up bra, and deeply held convictions.

Then I snapped back to reality and respectfully looked all of my ancestors (and their mamas an’ them) in the eye and told them to hush their mouths.

The noise quieted.

The church ladies gathered up their casseroles.

The beauty queens returned to their crowns.

The committee adjourned.

In what felt like an eternity—but was probably no more than five seconds—I realized the uproar had never really been about makeup at all.

It was about the filter through which I hear the world.

A filter built from forty-four years of expectations, insecurities, compliments, criticisms, beauty standards, Southern traditions, and all the stories I’ve collected about what it means to be a woman.

My son doesn’t have that filter.

He wasn’t weighing social expectations or appearance.

He wasn’t making a statement about femininity, aging, or identity.

He wasn’t asking me to change.

He was simply looking at his mother.

Not the version shaped by mascara, foundation, and years of carefully curated presentation.

Just his mom.

The one who reads stories, makes supper, folds laundry, kisses scraped knees, and knows exactly how sweet everyone likes their tea.

And to him, that woman was already enough.

And then there I was, alone, no committee, looking at my sweet, golden-haired boy standing in the kitchen staring up at me. I felt my expression soften.

“Really?”

I smiled.

“Well, bless your heart.”

And then I went right back to making supper.

With You in the Makeup Aisle,

Emily

Ash and Bloom