I’m pretty good at doing makeup, but that’s because I had the privilege of being able to fuck around and find out when I wore makeup as a teenager, which was a context in which being bad at doing the makeup wasn’t as high stakes as if I were learning as an adult. I only got this good by a heckton of experimentation.

Whilst that’s probably little comfort to all my trans sisters learning as adults, I’m sharing this sentiment because I consider the struggle to figure out how the hell to do one’s makeup well (and hard mode: doing it well, but also being able to use it to express one’s personality) is a potential source of feminine solidarity, because the vast majority of women who wear makeup have gone through this frustration.

Though I would also note that when I was learning as a teenager, it wasn’t just the daily makeup that gave me lots of practice, but also times where I would carve out some time to sit down and practice with more ambitious looks. Have makeup wipes on hand, because you’ll probably fuck it up a lot, but that’s part of the journey. It is emotionally intensive, because there will be so many times when you look in the mirror and hate how things turned out (that was something I struggled with a lot, and I didn’t have gender dysphoria adding to my distress), but the only way to get better is to grind that XP