A moment that changed me: I applied mucous-tinted mascara – and loved the reaction

I wore makeup for the first time just after I turned 12: a tube of green mascara from a pound shop in my home town in south Wales. It was a frosted, mucous‑tinted green rather than a flattering emerald, and there was a reason it cost only a pound. I slicked it on with no real understanding of beauty but loved how it altered my face; teachers told me to take it off and girls looked at me with genuine repulsion, yet I’d reapply it in the toilets.

That was the first time I realised beauty didn’t have to be about looking “pretty” — it could be unfiltered self‑expression. Beauty felt political from early on. There wasn’t a foundation for my skin tone, just a spectrum from “porcelain” to “tan”, so I became a reluctant chemist, mixing pigments to try to make a colour that worked.

Summers were spent bleaching my hair and dyeing it pink, and I customised clothes with band lyrics and patches, not from a desire to rebel for its own sake but to resist boxes that didn’t fit.

United Kingdom, South Wales

green mascara, mucous tint, self expression, beauty politics, foundation shades, skin tone, bleaching hair, pink hair, customised clothes, band lyrics