the ugly truth about beauty standards + my insecurities

[Music] hey guys welcome to my bedroom and to my bare naked face scandalous I know so I have been meaning to film an everyday makeup tutorial for probably like three months now it's been on my to-do list for a hot second but every single time I think I'm ready to film the video I get my camera set up I get my makeup out and I look in the mirror and there's something about my face that I don't like that day whether it's like oh my cheeks are too chubby today or like I have acne scars that I'm still dealing with let me just wait until those go away and then I'll film this video later on and eventually it just occurred to me that it's so absurd that I am this person on the internet trying to view this like feminist empowering badass person yet I still barely have the courage to show my bare face on screen for like a split second feeling confident in yourself and battling insecurities is something so much easier said than done and it's still something that I deal with to this day so today while I do my makeup routine I wanted to talk to you guys about kind of my journey of an insecurity [ __ ] that I still deal with my thoughts on social media and marketing and the makeup industry and how it all affects how we perceive ourselves so yeah I've really been enjoying these like Girl Talk videos with you guys so yeah that is the the video that you're watching today let's jump into it okay so my first tip I feel like such a [ __ ] beauty guru my first step is this milk hydro primer I used to not be a primer person but I layer on so much blush that it does actually help when you have oily skin to have like a primer to lock it all down and make sure it doesn't slip totally optional though I don't do this every single day I know primers can be kind of expensive or something that seems to not do that much for your skin I grew up a very carefree tomboy type and high school was the first time that I really became self aware of how I looked high school also happened to be the time when I started getting really really bad acne I had like cystic acne pretty much my entire cheek area was always covered with sits for like four years of my life so I really started using makeup as something defensive almost every single day in high school whether I was going to school or work I had to put on foundation concealer eyebrows it was like this that I had to wear in order to become like a socially acceptable version of myself I literally felt like it would be offensive to other people if I went out with my bare skin and my acne and people had to see it I looked so different without makeup and with makeup on that I ended up having this almost like impostor syndrome for my own face if that makes sense I felt like I almost had two different faces there was my makeup face and there was the face that I woke up to every morning and I honestly didn't know which one I identified with more I would look at my super acne ridden face and I would say I don't feel like this I don't feel like this person but when I put makeup on I also felt like I was still faking people out because I knew what I looked like under the makeup this is the foundation I use by the way it is the milk sunshine skin tint it's basically like a tinted moisturizer I like it because it's super glowy and it also just has this cool like ball apparatus and I do love a good ball this is very much a side note but I honestly think if you ever feel insecure about how your vagina looks just to think about how weird guy's balls are like all genitals are [ __ ] weird so there's no point in being embarrassed about what yours look like anyway that was completely unrelated to this this whole face talk but I used to have insecurities about how my vagina looked as well so just saying one time in high school I think it was for my 17th birthday my friends came over for a little surprise birthday party gathering and my mom called me downstairs and I thought she was just calling me to like do dishes or have dinner or something like that so I came down in my sweatpants in my glasses without any makeup on and there I see all of my friends and I was so mortified because the vast majority of them had never seen me without makeup on before so I remember in this moment that was supposed to be something like really happy like oh my god that's so cool that all of my friends are here to celebrate my birthday I was just freaking out like trying to like cover up the sides of my face with my hair trying to figure out if everybody was judging me for the way that my skin looked I think that makeup can be empowering to people I think that some people really do find enjoyment and art in it but I think the sad thing nowadays is that women are expected to wear makeup so often then it becomes this barrier to actually living your life to the fullest as cheesy as that sounds it barrier to actually being spontaneous because we have this you know 20-30 minutes however long it takes you to get ready before we can hang out with people before we can go out before we can even [ __ ] go to a meeting this whole construct of beauty does really in a tangible way become a barrier to woman just like enjoying their lives sometimes I wonder how much more of my life I genuinely could have enjoyed if I wasn't worried about how I looked or whether my concealer was slipping off or whether my eyebrows looked alright or I had to run to the bathroom to fix my hair okay here is my face all Foundation DUP to cover any little spots that my foundation missed I have this concealer I've been using for ages from NARS I am looking for an alternative though that's cruelty free if you do happen to have any suggestions leave them down below so obviously I had insecurities about my acne when I was in high school but growing up in suburban Maryland I really was never insecure about the way that my face looked or the way that my body looked I never felt like I wasn't pretty enough I just knew that I didn't have clear skin and once I moved to LA for film school oh boy did that change LA is a whole new world of beauty standards when I came to college that was the first time that I really deeply felt insecure about the way that I looked and it was something that was on my mind every single day I knew that I shouldn't be comparing myself to other people but I literally couldn't help seeing in LA all of these beautiful beautiful girls with like model faces it made me feel worse about myself even though nobody else's beauty should Rob away from my feeling of beauty but like if we're being honest it [ __ ] does it's really hard to look at beautiful people and not feel less beautiful yourself la also has a very white and blonde standard of beauty in my high school there were a lot of Asian kids and there were also a lot of mixed kids that looked like me and I never felt like I was any less beautiful or attractive because of being half asian and half white and when I moved to LA that was the first time that I really felt like I would never fit into what people defined as beautiful because of my race and in LA it was also one of the first times that I became very like aware of how my race affected my everyday interactions my first-ever day in LA I was walking to my internship and a guy on the street yells at me hey you Chinese girl trying to be white I was like sir what what like comment on my ass but don't [ __ ] comment on my race in the street also realistically please don't comment on my ass either and this happened several times like when I was on a date with a white guy somebody yelled out of the car like hey white an agent loved that I was like like where I grew up it was super normal for there to be interracial dating because it's the [ __ ] 21st century and nobody should care anymore I never would have expected my race to be something that mattered more in LA that I did in [ __ ] suburban Maryland but it really did as a freshman I also gained probably like 10 or 15 pounds I felt very isolated I felt very lonely and it kind of turned into this self-perpetuating cycle of eating as like a comfort and then feeling shitty about myself because I was gaining weight and then eating more because of it I started hating things about my own face which had never happened before I hated the way my nose was kind of rounded and wasn't super pointy I wanted that cute little like tip of a nose that white girls have I hated my smile my parents growing up always said that I had a Wallace and from and smile because it's very like a rounded at the edges I would sit in my spare time and try to teach my face how to smile with like sharp corners at the edges of my mouth instead of these rounded corners and yeah never [ __ ] worked I still smile the way that I smile and most of all especially because this was the time on the Internet where like cheekbones and eyebrows were super in I hated how chubby my face was and I hated that I didn't have super sharp cheekbones weirdly I didn't even realize that all the things that I had hated the most about my own face were the things that were most Asian about my face until I was already like outlining this video a couple days ago and I realize like [ __ ] those are just all of my features that are the least Eurocentric sorry I'm getting distracted by talking and not actually doing my makeup um I'm gonna tackle my eyebrows now this is a very faded benefit brow gel situation I'm gonna smack that on these babies I think we're at a very interesting right now when it comes to diversity finally brands and Hollywood are accepting diversity a little bit more like finally in 2019 we have a movie with an Asian cast like that took forever but it's also awesome so I love that people are accepting the diversity more and more yet at the same time we have these snapchat and Instagram filters that impose hero centric features on your face essentially and create a narrower and narrower ideal of what Beauty should be I remember when that one beautifying snapchat filter first came out and it makes your eyes big and it makes your nose look super slim and pointy and it even makes your skin lighter I remember looking at it and being like [ __ ] like I look prettier with this filter in LA - you see all these girls like getting their lip fillers and nose jobs and I don't judge anybody for doing whatever cosmetic procedure they want their own face but I can't help feeling like sometimes we're all snitches like in that dr. Seuss book we saw like Kylie Jenner get her lip injections and she got the star and now we all want the star and now Kylie took out her lip injections then everybody's going back through the machine to get their star taken off I am hopeful though because I think that especially kind of with this like euphoria effect and with the next generation beauty and fashion are so unique and funky and expressive and diverse I [ __ ] love that so much I'm so over this like face tuned perfection like [ __ ] that that's boring I literally cannot multitask while I do my brows this is the one activity that takes my entire brainpower and more to do properly so I'm gonna shut up for a second while I do my brows and then we'll keep talking okay I think that's that's about right it's always an adventure with my eyebrows they're different every single day that's the saying actually life is like doing your eyebrows in the morning you never know what you're gonna get for my eyes I just do a really simple cover XS FX so okay let's talk about where I am today with my relationship with my own face you know today I have good days I have bad days when it comes to confidence but at least the thing that feels like a lot of progress to me is that even though I have like my flaws and my insecurities I wouldn't want to wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and see anybody but myself if that makes sense I think I've just gotten to the point where this is me and even if it's not perfect I like the fact that it's me sorry that sounded like some motivational poster [ __ ] I genuinely feel like at this point even if I could get free and perfect plastic surgery so that my face looked this ideal way I wouldn't want to wake up in the morning and not be able to recognize myself and that's a good [ __ ] feeling to have let's do a little bit of eyeliner this is one from the drugstore it is L'Oreal linear intense carbon black wire makeup names always so intense by the way makeup oh it sounds like a weapon or a sex toy there's no in-between again I require my full brain's effort for this part so I apologize for the awkward silence oops I'm gonna have to wipe this off and I'll be right back okay here is my eyeliner I touched it up in the bathroom because I am horrible at multitasking we got them to be like not twins but stepsisters and that is really the best that one could ask for although gaining confidence has been a very gradual process for me there was one trip in particular that really helped me change my perspective when I was 19 years old I went to Austin by myself I only packed one pair of contacts and I didn't pack my glasses and I lost my contacts on the plane so for my entire trip in Austin my vision was like slightly blurry but it was the first time in my entire life where I couldn't look in the mirror and pick apart like I have a little bit of acne my eyebrows look a little bit off or my concealer is a little bit cakey I could finally just enjoy myself in the moment I could head out of the house without basically bullying myself first that entire trip I felt so confident in the way that I looked and honestly for the first time I think I saw myself the way that other people see me other people aren't looking at my face from like a centimeter away trying to count my blackheads there looking at me as like a whole person this is probably TMI but I had some of the best [ __ ] sex on that trip because I finally wasn't self-conscious of how I looked and I wasn't like beating myself up I was just getting beat up by that sweet sweet dick no we're not gonna put that in the video are we it just made me realize how self-critical I am and how inspecting all of my little imperfections everyday doesn't make me any happier or any more confident the reasons that I'm insecure are completely in my head and it's not necessarily about how I look it's about how I perceive myself and how I talk to myself now it is time for blush which is my favorite part I literally use three different blushes so my first one is glossy err glossy a the French or screaming cloud paint this one is in dusk and then I'm gonna layer on top of that glossy a cloud painting storm because I am an extra ass [ __ ] but I swear to god they look better when there's two of them on top of each other it's like a gradient on your cheeks anyways ever since that experience I really made it a conscious goal to try to be more accepting of the way that I look and I've gone out and more and more without makeup on honestly on a day-to-day basis I don't wear makeup I mostly just wear makeup if I am going out on a date if I'm filming a video if I want to take instagram photos and I honestly really want to get to the point where I feel okay taking Instagram photos or shooting videos on the fly without makeup on that would be super cool so it's a work in progress but but she's coming along oh another thing that has been a good step of progress for me and this might this might sound stupid but you guys might relate to it I used to be so afraid of sleeping over at a guy's place because in the morning I would wake up with my makeup like a little bit smudged and then he'd be able to see a little bit of my acne or my eyebrows wouldn't be perfect that's in my sophomore year of college I would get like serious anxiety over it if I was sleeping over at a guy's place like I could not go to sleep properly so I would sleep for like a couple hours at a time and then like keep waking up and I would wake up at like 6:00 in the morning do my face all over again and then pretend to go back to sleep in the most like absurd marvelous mrs. Mazal type of way I was just so terrified of a guy seeing me in a less-than-perfect state even when I was in a relationship i weirdly felt like if my boyfriend like saw my acne that he would legitimately not want to be with me anymore which is absolutely not how love should work but that was just how I psyched myself out in my head and like I said before that was another way that Beauty created barriers between me and actually experiencing things that I wanted to experience and enjoying the moment and honestly like being a better partner girlfriend or date because I was so like anxious and like tense because I didn't want anybody to be able to see my imperfections but recently as I go out more and more without makeup on and I feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin this is gonna sound dumb but like for the first time sleeping over at a guy's place I was just like I'm gonna sleep I'm gonna wake up whatever my face looks like in the morning is what my [ __ ] face looks like in the morning and believe it or not it was fine he did not run screaming from his own room we still had breakfast together and it went well so sometimes it's a matter of just like putting yourself out there and proving to yourself that people can still love you and want to hang out with you when you don't necessarily look like this perfect dolled up version of yourself this all being said you shouldn't define like how attractive or how confident you feel in yourself based on how men treat you okay now time for my third blush this is the milk makeup it's like a giant blush stick which I actually really like this is what I use when I'm in a rush and I don't have time for like my full blush routine I'll just smack this onto my cheeks because it's a really big stick guy get your head out of the gutter Ashley they do a little bit on the nose too like the e girl that I am for highlighter I pop on a little bit of this milk makeup stick again it's just like super easy because you just go whoop whoop and then you rub it in a little bit I'm gonna do my collarbones too because I'm feeling fancy get a shoulder highlight like a [ __ ] Kardashian ooh I think a lot of people will watch this video and say of course it's [ __ ] easy for you to feel confident because your face looks like that it can feel like such a [ __ ] when people that you think are pretty tell you to be confident in yourself and preach empowerment and stuff because it seems so easy for them but having been through my own blow-up myself and kind of being on both sides of things I can tell you that getting prettier or putting on makeup it does change the way that people treat you and the way that people talk about you and how people perceive you on social media that's just the brutal truth of our superficial world but changing your appearance alone is not enough to make you love yourself there are some of the most beautiful models in this world who have the lowest self confidence and who absolutely despise the way they look and there are people who don't conform to this [ __ ] beauty standard and who have incredible confidence and who feel like the most beautiful people in the world because they genuinely love themselves I used to tell myself that once my skin was clear where I lost a certain amount of weight that I could be happy with myself and the truth is that once you reach those goals that's never enough to actually make you happy it doesn't make you feel any better about yourself because you just you just find another thing to hate about yourself if you hate yourself you know we're surrounded by messages every single day that there is something new wrong with us that's partly the beauty industry's fault they're always selling you a new problem about yourself people weren't worried about whether their teeth were white before they invented whitening toothpaste people weren't worried about blackheads they'd even know what that was until the industry invented blackhead poor strips nobody expected you to have a like size zero waste and a huge ass before the Kardashians like plastic surgery themselves into it no matter what you will never reach this beauty ideal because nobody can it's something we're designed to chase our entire lives with more and more products and for my inner corner I light I am using this crushed EXO palette that was sent to me but I also really really like the wet and wild one that costs like $3 I'll also link that down below I tragically shattered mine on my bathroom floor when I knocked it off the edge of my sink so the police are currently invest the crime scene but in the meantime I'm just using this one Michelle Phan taught me this from ages ago but you're supposed to put like a little doop-doop on your inner corner and it like lights up your eyes or whatever beauty guru say and I do this little new on my nose too to make it look like kind of pointed and like a white girl knows I don't know I think it looks cute I am NOT gonna think about that too much and then I do this little upper lip situation to Cupid's bow that's what it's called for lip balm I got this gourmet gourmet stuff calm with Carmex this is like by far the best lip balm I spent so much money on those yolks lip balms or like Burt's Bees as a kid this is way better and it's way cheaper there we go also on my lips I'm gonna use this crush EXO luscious gems lip gloss yes I am that visco girl who uses lip gloss but for some reason this is just a really good color for me I'm so over the matte lip trend it made my mouth look like a crusty butthole every time also I just talk and eat way too much to sustain a lifestyle of regular lipstick so this lip gloss is just like a little pop of color okay my final step which I only do sometimes is a little bit of powder I only use this on days where I'm particularly hot and sweaty but boy today is one of those days I've been literally sitting with an ice cube tray on my lab and it's melted completely honest I was gonna make a whole video about this but I went through a whole phase like a year and a half ago two years ago where I would face to him nearly all of my photos I'm super not proud of that this was when facetune was a lot more popular and I was a lot more insecure about my body but yeah I would take in my waist a tiny bit I would even like smoosh in my face so that it looks less round I would smooth out my skin I think I thought that I would get some sense of validation from it because I would get to look online like I wanted to look in my head but in reality it didn't make me any happier because it felt like the likes and the comments we're all fake because I knew them my face and my body online we're a little bit fake I think it just goes to show it's so easy to tell other people to accept themselves the way that they are but we all at the same time want to conform to this could be the ideal now being hot on Instagram it's kind of like reinterpreted has this new wave of women's empowerment which i think is a complicated thing to contend with I think it's a very fine line between feeling empowered in your looks and your body just like showing off how amazing you are to the world and kind of objectifying yourself and setting these new unrealistic standards for women I honestly I don't know where the in-between is because I know from personal experience it can be really cool if you feel kick-ass to post a picture of yourself or your body in whatever way that you want to post it but sometimes I worry that we don't ask enough like who the [ __ ] told us that the way to feel empowered is to put our bodies online why do I feel the need to look hot online as a way to empower myself as a woman why is that a sense of my self-worth to begin with to be honest I don't think that that comes from my inner feminist compass I think it largely ties into this girlboss kind of surface level feminism that a lot of companies and market to us nowadays you can be an amazing independent woman as long as you buy our fashion and makeup products and look a certain way it still is largely about women's bodies and I wish that I could find the same external validation that I do when I look cute and post it online as when I am feeling really [ __ ] smart or really motivated or really hard-working a certain day I know that's just how social media works it's a platform made up of pictures but our system of social rewards is so centered around looks nowadays I wish that it wasn't but I also recognize about same time like I I [ __ ] play into that system I make money off of that system I don't know how to contend with that I guess that's why I'm like making videos like these ones because it's at least a little way that I can deconstruct all this [ __ ] that I'm a part of anyways here is my finished makeup look this is what my face looks like now drink it in ladies I'm sorry I don't have like a resounding concluding note to this video because there really is no five-step program for how to gain self-confidence and I'm not even there yet I'm not like some self-help guru who has it all figured out but I hope it helped you guys to at least hear about my experiences and know that I struggle with the same things that everybody does I honestly hope that one day I'll be able to tell my grandkids or like the next-door neighbors that come to visit me and my cats as an old lady this story about how I felt so insecure about my appearance and I felt the need to wear makeup every day and girls in 2100 or whatever will think that that's absolutely crazy that women felt that way and that society made us feel this way but in the meantime self-confidence is slowly but surely coming along we're getting there I'm working on it and that's the best I can ask for for now so thank you guys so much for watching this video I have been having so much fun doing these like chatty Girl Talk videos I feel like I have so many thoughts in my brain other than like this is a cute outfit that I like want to get out there on the Internet and thank you for giving me the platform to do that and for hearing me out as always I would love to hear your guys's thoughts if you do have some keys to self-confidence or things that you struggled with yourself this is gonna sound so self congratulatory but we have a really cool comment section here and I really enjoy hearing like all of your guys's conversation down below okay anyways thank you guys so much for watching [ __ ] I need to stop doing the peace signs I'm 21 um I'll see you guys next week bye

Channel: bestdressed

Views: 2,230,942

Rating: 4.9837408 out of 5

Keywords: everyday makeup, my insecurities, my perfect imperfections, my imperfections, insecurity, struggle with insecurity, unrealistic beauty standards, facetune, snapchat dysmorphia, snapchat filters, my thoughts on social media, beauty standards, quitting social media, girl talk, girl talk insecurities, self confidence, how to be confident, how to be confident in yourself, my insecurities revealed, body image, talking about my insecurities, my deepest insecurities, self esteem

Id: u5-FA8tu5wE

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/hy_perion]

I adore Ashley. She's so relaxing to listen too, and has my kind of sense of humor. I also super love her DIY stuff, if anyone else is looking!

[u/larramalik]

my favourite youtuber at the moment!!!! so crazy seeing her channel grow so quick ! she’s so real and down to earth and i wish nothing but the best for her

[u/Lamingtons]

I love Ashley's channel, and thought this was a great video from her. The video is fairly long, but she discusses everything from growing up with acne, euro-centric beauty standards, the fact that she struggles with her own role in the realm of social media and looks, while making (mostly fashion, sometimes beauty) content, How she struggled with the idea of waking up with someone and having a bare face, and a whole lot of other introspective and well articulated things. While she talks beauty and insecurities, she applies makeup, and I really appreciated how clearly well loved the products were.

[u/bananasoymilk]

I discovered her after her UCLA video and find her to be very refreshing and down-to-earth. I love how candid she is in videos like these

[u/_someoneyeah_]

i relate to this so hard

[u/cameons]

By far my fave youtuber

[u/oookkkkkkk]

you can really tell she loves what she does and isn’t afraid to stand up for what she really believes in and doesn’t care too much if she gets demonetised for speaking out on taboo topics