I don’t know about the rest of the world, but at my high school, there were two kinds of boys: boys that didn’t mind girls who wore makeup and boys who prefer girls who don’t wear makeup and thought that wearing makeup meant that girls were ashamed of themselves or didn’t have very high self-esteem.

Well, that’s likely to help their self-esteem, obviously. As a girl who doesn’t wear makeup, has perfectly fine self-esteem, and a really horrible complexion; I would like to address guys of the second type.

First of all, I agree with you in one aspect, girls who don’t wear a ton of makeup AND are confident tend to look perfectly fine, but it isn’t like there are only the girls who wear tons of makeup and those who wear none at all. A lot of girls wear a minimal amount of makeup and look almost like they aren’t wearing any at all, which means, guys, when you’re insulting girls who wear makeup, you may end up insulting the girls you’re trying to compliment.

It may be a mystery to you, but there is a good reason why girls wear makeup. Most of them just want to look nice. Yeah, makeup extremes can be off-putting, but it isn’t like they’re doing it to make you hate them. They’re trying just as desperately to impress you as you probably are to impress them.

You probably wake up every morning and put on some clean clothes that you think look good on you. You put on shoes, brush your teeth (please, please, please brush your teeth every morning), put on deodorant (hopefully), and comb your hair. Are you doing this because it makes you feel more comfortable? The answer to that is yes. Yes, it feels better to be clean and to smell good, but it also feels better when you know there are less things for other people to hate you for.

You gain social comfort. No matter how much you claim you don’t care about what people think of you, you do care and you should be making it easier for people to think well of you. I tell people all the time that I don’t care what people think of me and I like to think that I don’t care, however, I brush my teeth and shower regularly anyway. It isn’t because I want to gain social stature, it’s because life is more comfortable when you have social acceptance. I don’t mean all that crap about changing yourself to fit what society thinks you should be, I mean making yourself presentable so that people don’t decide who you are by how you groom yourself.

If people are going to hate you, let them hate you because they don’t like the person you are, not because they don’t like what you look like. I would prefer that over anything.

So, guys, instead of applying your personal preference to the world to decide who you will like and who you will hate, look at individuals. This isn’t a search engine; you don’t need sort through your options mechanically, throwing out everyone who has one characteristic or habit and only choosing those who fit your perfect idea of a person. I guarantee that when you meet your special someone, they’re going to have a feature that you never thought you could live with, but you will (or at least, you should) accept them for who they are and you’ll hopefully be really happy together.

Quit looking at these things so specifically and let everything happen naturally. You can’t decide to fall in love with someone just because they meet all the right criteria, it’s going to happen without your conscious help.

And yes, I admit that you can tell a lot about a person by how much they try to fit into society and be accepted by the people around them, but remember that everyone is an individual and they all have different reasons for doing things.

I have to go to work now. Bye, bye.