Tonight, There Will Be Glitter.

I don't talk about it often, it's one of those things everyone can see and no one feels the need to go into, which I appreciate. But, today it stares me down, mocks me, allows me no peace.

I have bad skin.

Not, like, I have big pores or a weird birthmark, or even like dryness or shine... no, these would be OK with me. These can be concealed, or even accentuated and played up to my benefit. No, my problem is that I would be quite beautiful, if not for the fact that I have more acne than a teenage fry cook with PMS.

There are scars, there are blemishes, it's uncomfortable. Sometimes my makeup sticks to it in such a way that it actually looks worse, concealer paints on in such a way as to look like I have a raised white dot of paint on my face here and there instead of a raised pink dot on my face here or there. There are places where there are flat red and purple splotches where long ago there was a blemish that one way or another was disturbed and left a scar. Those ones cannot be covered, they are part of my skin tone that will always show through. Without meaning to I will self-consciously brush my fingers over them to feel how bumpy I am, how dried out and flaky the medicine has made the bumps (and as such, my makeup), succeeding only in rubbing off what little I could cover and drawing eyes to it further.

I also don't talk about it much, but I am an art model. Not just "I sit for an art class", but "I work for artists, photographers and sculptors individually in their basements and studios for fairly reasonable monetary compensation". How the skin on my face and the skin on my body can match up so poorly is beyond me, and how they manage to capture what they want through the veil of blemished distraction is well beyond my comprehension.

But, what I do know is this, a 3rd thing I don't talk about very often (specifically in my blog): My breasts are amazing. While I can't understand how the artists can get what they need from my face through the blemish, i can understand completely how my face can be gotten past in general when I've got these bad babies to... ahem... draw the eye.

And tonight, I'm going to a show in a bar located inside of Notre Dame University-- where the girls are all well under 30, clear skinned, childless and perfect. And in honor of this, in order to take a cue form may smart artists, I'm wearing an exceptionally low cut shirt to keep the eyes away from my cheeks. And what is more, I've made a special trip to Sephora for some brand new extra sparkly eyeshadow (Midnight Cowboy Rides Again by Urban Decay if you were wondering). Because even if there is some looking at my face, I want them to see my eyes... not my dots. And while I am at it, I am going to be dusting a little bot over my cleveage as well.

Tonight, I will feel pretty. Tonight I will not worry about what people see on my face because I'm going to say it frankly-- I'm discouraging people from looking at me from the neck up. Tonight there will be breasts, there will be eyeshadow... there will be glitter. And somewhere nestled between the sparkling scoops of flesh and the shimmering twinkling blinkers will be a woman who is completely comfortable in her own skin.

Because she knows no one will be looking at it.