This is kind of a personal story but one I'm interested in sharing, maybe in wondering if anyone had any similar experiences or different outcomes. Or maybe seeing if there's an effective way to tell little girls that beauty standards is a scam.

So I was thinking the other day when I saw my face at the bathroom at work. For some reason, my work has really good lighting for the bathroom mirrors, which I realized it's akin to a vanity mirror setup, and you can see every single "flaw" in high contrast and HD (the rest of my workplace lacks that lighting). And I was rather shocked to see how dark my upper lip hair was. That moment of "Oh jeez, I'm walking around like this?! And no one told me?!"

Of course, throughout the day I shrugged it off but it did make me think of the first time I was aware of what I call my "misstache."

I was around 11 and some classmates teased about it and I actually got self conscious, tale as old as time. Mainly because I started to notice in movies, tv shows, and anywhere public that there are no women with upper lip hair. Surely, I was indeed an abnormality to be such a hairy girl. I cried and tried to pluck it but it hurt too much to continue.

Then on the television, as if there was divine intervention involved, there was a commercial with extreme face close ups on the female models. I thought to myself "maybe... they have it too, just very light hair" and I went closer to the tv to see if I could find any thing to confirm or deny my "abnormality."

The timing really couldn't be more perfect.

"All new hair removal formula, for an irritant and hassle free smile."

I can't remember the words specifically. But I was shocked and my core was rattled when I saw what the commercial was about. It was literally addressing my insecurity. "You can remove that pesky hair that apparently all women have! You are not alone, it's common enough to have a product about it!"

And I hated it. I don't know why I didn't fall for it, nor why I felt disgust in that commercial, but in that moment, I made spiteful peace with my upper lip and all other body hair. Hell, any beauty insecurity. After all, prior to that, I was fine with it. Why would I change that neutrality? The thought of someone taking advantage of some made up insecurity that would only satisfy the voyeurism within me or the pleasures of other people was more repulsive than how anyone can ever look. My hair didn't bother me before because I was too busy living, not looking in the mirror.

So I accepted my dark hair misstache never looked back. Sometimes I bleached it for the sake of photos (if I remember) but I have never plucked (unless there's an unruly thick strand) or shaved it. Not an exciting story of self acceptance but it really did solidify something within me in that moment, some rebellion or filling a need to be a woman that I needed to see.

Which leads me back to that blasted manufactured mirror and that blasted artificial lighting. How I noticed it's appearing in every new bathroom and being sold to homes and girls. How many subject themselves to those mirrors and criticize their small deviations from the pure unattainable and, frankly boring, beauty standard that are only visible in that light? The real reason why I was caught off guard in that particular bathroom was because there is no other place in the world that has a mirror with that good lighting nor that lighting in general.

What fueled the need to write this down was when I was walking out of the bathroom another day, I heard one coworker mutter to herself as she was pulling out a makeup bag "ughh, this concealer doesn't cover shit." I saw her just a few minutes earlier, she looked fine and perfectly primped and groomed. Oh, how I wanted to shake her shoulders and scream "No one looks like they do in these mirrors! These mirrors lie!"