The connection I feel between makeup and mental health started before I was old enough to wear it out of the house – either the cosmetics or the mood swings. It first began with someone else’s irrational behaviour: antisemitism at primary school. This was exactly the age I was starting to contemplate my appearance. The club classic: “Aren’t you sorry you killed Christ?” was a regular. Because of my curly hair and olive skin they called me the N-word – a small child has to really yearn to use the N-word to say it to a predominantly Ashkenazi Jew. They also incorporated into their bullying the three moles I have on my right cheek. “See, that’s proof, these are the mark of the devil,” they said. So you’d think I was interested in things to flatten and cover those moles, but I actually retaliated by using my mum’s eye pencil to draw them on even more prominently.
After a bad day at secondary school – where I had friends, but an impossible time concentrating – I’d lock myself in the bathroom to make up my face with immaculate focus. If I got it slightly wrong, I’d need to make it much worse – swooping lipstick circles and bad words in eyeliner – until I’d made myself look how I felt inside. Once I’d studied the monster in the mirror, I meticulously washed it off. It was, I realised later, a gateway drug to bulimia and self-harm.
