“I’ve been experimenting with the possibility that makeup does not have to be an artifice. That it can be a bold-faced statement. In the same way a shirt is. Nobody believes that the shirt is your skin.”
Transcript
Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. The
Leela Sinha:hardest thing for me about a public face is the difference
Leela Sinha:between artifice and grace, which sometimes feels like the
Leela Sinha:thinnest possible line. And sometimes it just feels like
Leela Sinha:lies and I don't like lies, they've never served me. Well, I
Leela Sinha:don't maintain a falsehood into the future. I can make up a
Leela Sinha:story on the fly, but I won't remember how it started by the
Leela Sinha:time it ends, much less long enough to carry it forward as
Leela Sinha:though we were friends. We're not friends, we're something
Leela Sinha:else. We're uncomfortable, awkward bedfellows. It's the
Leela Sinha:same with makeup. The thing I don't like is the thing where I
Leela Sinha:would be trying to pretend to look like something I'm not. It
Leela Sinha:just doesn't sit right fit right... leaves me feeling like
Leela Sinha:I can't breathe or touch my face. My hands end up smeared
Leela Sinha:with paint. I'm questioning why it is that I have to be
Leela Sinha:something different. And make myself so faint. I don't. I
Leela Sinha:don't want to be anybody but who I am. For you, for my clients.
Leela Sinha:For the world. I don't think the fake me has much good to say,
Leela Sinha:frankly. And I have so many words that are real. I have so
Leela Sinha:many thoughts that are real. I have so many everythings that
Leela Sinha:are real. Why would I waste time and energy putting forth
Leela Sinha:something that isn't? Now this isn't the same as fiction, where
Leela Sinha:we tell a story that has more truths than just the facts. And
Leela Sinha:sometimes costume is important. Because it opens doors. It makes
Leela Sinha:us believable as the people we know ourselves to be to the
Leela Sinha:people who have to believe us, in order for us to get into the
Leela Sinha:room. But recently, and by recently, I mean over the last
Leela Sinha:several years, maybe since 2017? I don't know. I've been
Leela Sinha:experimenting with the possibility that makeup does not
Leela Sinha:have to be an artifice. That it can be a bold-faced statement.
Leela Sinha:In the same way a shirt is. Nobody believes that the shirt
Leela Sinha:is your skin. We all know you put it on over the top to look a
Leela Sinha:certain way, to get a certain kind of environmental comfort,
Leela Sinha:because it's considered appropriate or necessary or
Leela Sinha:proper in that context; because you felt like it, because you
Leela Sinha:thought it would help you, because who knows why? But we
Leela Sinha:all know that it's not your skin and we don't expect it to be
Leela Sinha:your skin and we're kind of curious to see what skin you
Leela Sinha:would put on if you put a skin on over your skin and so we look
Leela Sinha:at the clothes you wear to find out a little bit about who you
Leela Sinha:are. And what if makeup could be like that? I started asking.
Leela Sinha:Looking at my phua, putting a bindi on her forehead. Looking
Leela Sinha:at my cousins putting on lipstick so bright you couldn't
Leela Sinha:possibly mistake it for homegrown. It was a weird moment
Leela Sinha:because they wanted me to dress up, to look a certain way to,
Leela Sinha:meet a certain standard that was culturally embedded. And I was
Leela Sinha:there for eight months. I was a guest in the culture but I was
Leela Sinha:also of the culture and I wanted to do it right and so I
Leela Sinha:acquiesced. I didn't fight the way that usually I would have at
Leela Sinha:24-years-old American-queer-feminist. Instead
Leela Sinha:I said "okay, but not too bold. I want it to look like me." And
Leela Sinha:so my aunt found me a lipstick the exact color of my lips. And
Leela Sinha:I wore these tiny tiny tiny red bindis. Clearly a bindi, but
Leela Sinha:nothing more than just a placeholder.
Leela Sinha:And then a few months in, I decided to pierce my nose, which
Leela Sinha:is an odd decision because I already knew that I was not a
Leela Sinha:girl. But I had found the part of me that liked flash and
Leela Sinha:ornament. That liked swirly skirts and bright colors. And I
Leela Sinha:didn't want to forget. I knew I was returning to a country where
Leela Sinha:the darker and more boring your clothes are, the more respect
Leela Sinha:you get. And I did not want to be that person anymore. I was
Leela Sinha:awakened to smells and colors and sounds and ways of being
Leela Sinha:that were part of my blood and that I had not had access to.
Leela Sinha:And so I pierced my nose. And I got a little sparkly pin for it.
Leela Sinha:And aside from having to let it heal and repierce it, I have
Leela Sinha:worn that nose pin since that trip in 1999. Because I did not
Leela Sinha:want to lose the part of me that was so easy to efface to make my
Leela Sinha:life easier. And it has become a part of me. It would be really
Leela Sinha:weird now if I didn't wear a nose pin, and I love it. And so
Leela Sinha:over the last few years, I have started to ask myself the
Leela Sinha:questions that that nose pin evokes. What if I could wear
Leela Sinha:stripes of bright color on my face? Ones that are so clearly
Leela Sinha:not me that they express a deliberate choice about me
Leela Sinha:instead of trying to present me as something that is not me. And
Leela Sinha:what if I were those along with a three-day scruff? What if I
Leela Sinha:wore those along with a button down shirt? What if I wore those
Leela Sinha:along with my 18th century men's clothing? Where are the lines
Leela Sinha:and why should they stop where they do?
Leela Sinha:And how do we use the tools that we have to be truly boldly who
Leela Sinha:we are in the public eye so that we can shift the conversation,
Leela Sinha:so that we can open different doors, so that we can move
Leela Sinha:through the world more freely and make the world more free for