"I've been experimenting with the possibility that makeup does not have to be an artifice. That it can be a bold-faced statement. In the same way a shirt is. Nobody believes that the shirt is your skin."

Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. The

hardest thing for me about a public face is the difference

between artifice and grace, which sometimes feels like the

thinnest possible line. And sometimes it just feels like

lies and I don't like lies, they've never served me. Well, I

don't maintain a falsehood into the future. I can make up a

story on the fly, but I won't remember how it started by the

time it ends, much less long enough to carry it forward as

though we were friends. We're not friends, we're something

else. We're uncomfortable, awkward bedfellows. It's the

same with makeup. The thing I don't like is the thing where I

would be trying to pretend to look like something I'm not. It

just doesn't sit right fit right... leaves me feeling like

I can't breathe or touch my face. My hands end up smeared

with paint. I'm questioning why it is that I have to be

something different. And make myself so faint. I don't. I

don't want to be anybody but who I am. For you, for my clients.

For the world. I don't think the fake me has much good to say,

frankly. And I have so many words that are real. I have so

many thoughts that are real. I have so many everythings that

are real. Why would I waste time and energy putting forth

something that isn't? Now this isn't the same as fiction, where

we tell a story that has more truths than just the facts. And

sometimes costume is important. Because it opens doors. It makes

us believable as the people we know ourselves to be to the

people who have to believe us, in order for us to get into the

room. But recently, and by recently, I mean over the last

several years, maybe since 2017? I don't know. I've been

experimenting with the possibility that makeup does not

have to be an artifice. That it can be a bold-faced statement.

In the same way a shirt is. Nobody believes that the shirt

is your skin. We all know you put it on over the top to look a

certain way, to get a certain kind of environmental comfort,

because it's considered appropriate or necessary or

proper in that context; because you felt like it, because you

thought it would help you, because who knows why? But we

all know that it's not your skin and we don't expect it to be

your skin and we're kind of curious to see what skin you

would put on if you put a skin on over your skin and so we look

at the clothes you wear to find out a little bit about who you

are. And what if makeup could be like that? I started asking.

Looking at my phua, putting a bindi on her forehead. Looking

at my cousins putting on lipstick so bright you couldn't

possibly mistake it for homegrown. It was a weird moment

because they wanted me to dress up, to look a certain way to,

meet a certain standard that was culturally embedded. And I was

there for eight months. I was a guest in the culture but I was

also of the culture and I wanted to do it right and so I

acquiesced. I didn't fight the way that usually I would have at

24-years-old American-queer-feminist. Instead

I said "okay, but not too bold. I want it to look like me." And

so my aunt found me a lipstick the exact color of my lips. And

I wore these tiny tiny tiny red bindis. Clearly a bindi, but

nothing more than just a placeholder.

And then a few months in, I decided to pierce my nose, which

is an odd decision because I already knew that I was not a

girl. But I had found the part of me that liked flash and

ornament. That liked swirly skirts and bright colors. And I

didn't want to forget. I knew I was returning to a country where

the darker and more boring your clothes are, the more respect

you get. And I did not want to be that person anymore. I was

awakened to smells and colors and sounds and ways of being

that were part of my blood and that I had not had access to.

And so I pierced my nose. And I got a little sparkly pin for it.

And aside from having to let it heal and repierce it, I have

worn that nose pin since that trip in 1999. Because I did not

want to lose the part of me that was so easy to efface to make my

life easier. And it has become a part of me. It would be really

weird now if I didn't wear a nose pin, and I love it. And so

over the last few years, I have started to ask myself the

questions that that nose pin evokes. What if I could wear

stripes of bright color on my face? Ones that are so clearly

not me that they express a deliberate choice about me

instead of trying to present me as something that is not me. And

what if I were those along with a three-day scruff? What if I

wore those along with a button down shirt? What if I wore those

along with my 18th century men's clothing? Where are the lines

and why should they stop where they do?

And how do we use the tools that we have to be truly boldly who

we are in the public eye so that we can shift the conversation,

so that we can open different doors, so that we can move

through the world more freely and make the world more free for