The AOC make-up video is probably the only YouTube make-up tutorial I have ever watched end to end. I love that she makes being feminine about power and control. Just because a woman knows to use make-up and chooses to spend an hour in front of the mirror to get ready for the day does not make her unintelligent, lacking seriousness or otherwise incompetent. It is a fantastic message for young women to hear as they go out into the world, trying to understand and respond to stereotypes they have to contend and overcome.
She talks about the power of loving yourself. There is also the element of feeling that you deserve to spend the time on your look, on how to appear in the mirror to yourself and to the world. In emotionally distressful times, women can't pull themselves together sometimes do pretty up their faces. So what stares back at them from the mirror is the sadness, stress and insecurity they so need to snap out of. The cycle could break if they experienced love for themselves for a bit, used that time to accentuate the beauty nature had given them.
One of my aunts went through a long period of depression in her thirties. I remember how on her relatively better days she would wear a beautiful sari, apply make-up and style her long hair into a bun. It was like the sun had emerged from behind the clouds. When we kids told her how wonderful she looked,it always lifted her spirits and seemed to provide some fuel to battle her demons. Sometimes she had a streak of several such days. Over time, we started to see her more in this happy uplifted state, color coordinated and made-up. Maybe there were other things in play that we did not know about but she did overcome in the end, I remember she too was the fan of a bright red lipstick.
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