Do you remember the Facebook challenge where one woman would nominate another to post a photo of herself devoid of makeup and hairstyling? The purpose of this exercise, if I understand it, was to celebrate the natural beauty of all women and to recognize that what’s on the inside is what makes a woman truly beautiful.
I started wearing makeup when I was two, the time I resourcefully pulled out Mom’s dresser drawers to form a ladder to its surface, where her Avon awaited. My guardian angels must have been keeping that dresser from falling over on me. When questioned about my clown face, I proudly escorted Mom to the bedroom to show her how I’d reached the forbidden but irresistible powder and lipstick.
After a 12-year hiatus, I began using makeup again as a sophisticated eighth grader and never looked back. This puts me at a disadvantage on those rare occasions when I venture out in public without my Maybelline. People tend to look at me with concern. “Are you feeling all right? You look tired.”
I never know whether to milk it for the sympathy or to admit I’m fine, this is just my face. It makes me regret ever starting with the cosmetics.
On the flip side, women who don’t usually wear makeup look especially awesome on those rare occasions when they do. My advice to young girls? Don’t start! The best cosmetic you can ever wear is a genuine smile.
In her book, Do You Think I’m Beautiful? Angela Thomas maintains this is the question attached to the soul of every woman; that inside each of us lives a skirt-twirling little girl who secretly aches for a fairy godmother to wave a wand and transform her into the princess she has always longed to be. To make her beautiful. Captivating. Adored.
I believe beauty and the appreciation of it were placed in us by our Maker, that true beauty is an essence given to every woman at her creation. But, like so many gifts, this fallen world has distorted beauty into something so twisted people are willing to mutilate themselves in its pursuit. Meanwhile, our hearts cry out for a love that comes only from the One who made us. The One who first saw us as beautiful, and the One who always will.
In my new novel, Even if We Cry, Nina’s little sister Hazel gets in trouble when she experiments with makeup belonging to their older foster sister, Carol. That scene was one I enjoyed writing immensely.
Did you do anything similar when you were a kid?
Terrie Todd is a Canadian author of seven historical and split-time novels and one nonfiction book. Her work has earned numerous Word Awards from The Word Guild, the 2018 Janette Oke Award from Inscribe Christian Writers Fellowship, and the 2022 Braun Book Award. She is also a Carol Award Finalist. Since 2010, she has written a “Faith and Humor” column for her hometown newspaper, and since 2021, a monthly column for the Heroes, Heroines, and History blog. She also teaches a Creative Writing course for a local community college.
Terrie lives with her husband, Jon, in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, where they raised their three children. They are grandparents to five boys. Her first MBI novel, Even If We Cry, releases in December 2024.
Nina’s one task is to keep her family together while a world war threatens to rip them apart.
Warned they “mustn’t cry,” British teenager Nina Gabriel and her two young siblings board a ship bound for Canada as part of the WWII child evacuee program in 1940. Nina’s mischievous brother and seasick sister test her limits on the long voyage—but her burden of responsibility grows still heavier in Canada.
Determined to fulfill her promise to her parents, Nina battles to keep the siblings together through what they all hoped would be no more than one school term. Months turn into years. Unfamiliar Canadian customs, a foster sister who resents them, the mysterious deaths of their host family’s other children, and the birth of a new brother back in England complicate Nina’s world. It doesn’t help when David, the boy she’s grown to love, enlists in the air force with no end to the war in sight.
When a telegram arrives after a London bombing, will Nina find a way to fulfill her promise for the brother she’s never met? Will the Gabriel siblings learn that each of them is loved, even if they cry?
