Happy December everyone, and welcome to this addition of “What Grinds My Gears,” my monthly column where I rant about something that drives me nuts even though you didn’t ask!

This week’s topic came to me while going through my nightly skin care routine (which involves five different face masks in case you were wondering; this glow doesn’t just happen naturally). Once I was finished applying my fourth mask of the night, I was just sort of reorganizing my makeup desk (yes, you read that right I have an entire desk dedicated to beauty products in my room…and I LOVE IT!).

For those who know me you understand that I have a borderline obsession with buying/owning makeup, but you also know that I don’t feel the need to wear makeup everyday and often I don’t. But as I was looking through all of my makeup I was brought back to when I first started to want to wear makeup and those reasons are actually the driving force behind this month’s column.

When I was in middle school, I used to beg my mother to let me wear makeup to school but she would always say no while reiterating the family rule of no makeup until you are in high school. But still I persisted everyday about wanting to wear makeup like all the other girls at school.

Finally the summer before high school came and I was finally allowed to start wearing makeup. I spent literally all my time on YouTube watching videos on how to apply flawless makeup. So by the time the first day of high school came around, I woke at an ungodly hour and started applying my makeup and by the time I was finished and ready to go to school, I looked into the mirror and saw I person who looked nothing like me… The problem was I thought that this was okay.

I spent so much time in high school changing the way I looked to try and please other people simply because that’s what I thought I was supposed to do.

Now I know what you are thinking… “Jazmine be rational here, no one ever told you to wear all that makeup in high school.”

And you know what, you’re right, no one ever said it out loud to me, but here’s the thing about the beauty industry: it emphasizes on women being feminine and perfect through using models who we all now realize are obviously Photoshopped to look the way they do in commercials and in magazines.

They push this unrealistic image of perfection so you have young girls all over the world that think if they look differently than the models on TV, then it must mean they are ugly and need to do whatever they need to change so they can look more like the idea of beauty that is presented in this society… And that really sucks.

The beauty industry telling women and young girls everywhere what to do and what to buy to look beautiful. You turn on the TV or open a magazine and you see advertisements for products that will change just about everything about you – whether it be to add volume to your lashes, make your skin appear more smooth, make your lips look plumper or a plethora of other things.

This is a huge issue for young girls that I can attest to personally. I went through middle school, high school and even parts of college thinking I wasn’t good enough naturally so I altered my appearance every single day.

This issue is detrimental to young girls especially because it drives them to spend all their time thinking about what’s wrong with them instead of embracing everything that makes them unique. This drives me nuts now that I am older because after I got to college, I started to realize that wearing makeup everyday didn’t matter because even those models I idealized didn’t look that way.

Yet day after day I still see these advertisements that are setting false beauty standards for young girls, and I am heartbroken about how many of them are feeling that they aren’t good enough because of current beauty standards set forth in today’s society.

I think we are well past the time to finally accept as a society that these types of advertisements and beauty standards set forth by the media are doing more harm than they are good, so we should really just start encouraging everyone to express themselves however they want to, whether it be with lots of makeup or none at all.

The best advice I can give to people on beauty standards is this … In the end, just do what makes you feel beautiful and confident and screw everyone else.

… And that’s what grinds my gears …