Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Cassie was a bright seventeen-year-old who not once has dated a boy, worn makeup or smoked cigarettes. Her lips have never tasted the sweetness of alcohol, as she was voted in high school the most likely to succeed. She had a very bright future in front of her. She never had a real good relationship with her mother but admired the way she carried herself and the image she portrayed. She was a very beautiful woman.

One night, Cassie sat with her mother while she got herself ready for a charity function to attend with Cassie’s father. She helped her mother pick out her dress, her shoes and her accessories. She was very good when it came to fashion and hoped one day to become a fashion designer.

She sat next to her mother at her makeup table and watched as she placed soft makeup across her face. Her mother’s skin was smooth and looked almost like that of a china doll. Her mother had not one blemish on her skin and that is what brought about the question of why she wore makeup?

Her mother’s skin was beautiful, and Cassie wished to have been blessed with her mother’s skin, but she wasn’t. Cassie had a few blemishes and a couple of scars from when she was a child. She began questioning herself about wearing makeup to cover up her scars and pimples?

Her mother informed her that she was too young to be worried about wearing makeup. A girl her age wearing makeup only tells boys that she will do dirty things for him. Cassie just laughed at her mother’s remark and took it lightly, because while her mother was gone with her father to the charity function, she went back into her mother’s room and began experimenting with her makeup.

She had watched her mother often and knew what way or order to put the makeup on. The one thing that her mother never taught her was the color coordination scheme of things. Cassie began trying different colors to see what would look better on her. A few color schemes were hideous on her complexion and she quickly washed them off.

She finally came up with one that she really liked because it brought out her eyes and lips, but she had no knowledge of what everyone at school would think. Would they like her wearing makeup or her new look? Or, would they make fun of her and call her names?

She took some of her mother’s makeup back to her room to wear in the morning to school. When she got up for school the next morning, she took her time and placed the makeup on her face the way she did the night before and thought that it looked good. She then headed out the door and made her way to school.

Upon arriving on school grounds, Cassie found everyone looking at her strange and some even smirking. She tried to keep her head up about her new look, but it was getting harder as the day went on. A few boys had even approached her asking her out. She thought that it was a good thing, until she heard stories all over campus how she accepted their invitations back to their houses.

She became distraught knowing that everyone hated her new look and decided to go into the bathroom to remove it from her face. She scrubbed it off as she cried in the bathroom. She could not believe how everyone treated her because she wanted to wear makeup.

She remembered what her mother told her that night as she sat watching her mother apply makeup to her face and then it hit her. She didn’t need makeup to be beautiful. Her beauty was on the inside and that is what everyone at school liked about her. She didn’t have to dress up like a clown to impress anyone. She felt so bad for going against what her mother said that after school she went right home and told her what happened. Her mother was sad that she had to find out that way, but happy that she has learned her lesson and now knows that beauty comes from the inside.