You Don’t Have to Try so Hard

Picture of Colbie Caillat from her Instagram @colbiecaillat

Colbie Caillat’s music video for the song “Try” has recently gone viral for all the right reasons. You’ve probably seen links to Buzzfeed articles on your Newsfeed titled things like “These women took off their makeup for a music video and you won’t BELIEVE what happens next!!” It’s not all that dramatic though, the women take off their makeup and Colbie takes out her weave and they looked like what every girl in the world looks like when she wakes up.

Through all forms of media we are bombarded with images of flawless looking women. If you scroll through your instagram feed I’m sure between all the pictures of scenery and delicious looking brunches there are bound to be women who appear to have huge hair, huge lashes, and flawless skin. When this glammed up image has become the norm, it’s hard to look at yourself fresh faced in the morning and like what you see. Hell, it’s hard to take a picture of yourself all glammed up and like it enough to post on Instagram because it always just seems not quite good enough. I have absolutely fallen into this trap. A few months ago I was bored and killing some time by putting all the makeup I own on my face and I decided to capture it for Insty:

Ugh I thought, where is all of my hair, am I bald??? I just put 10 coats of mascara on and it doesn’t even look like I have eyelashes??

So I dug around and found a full wig- bangs and all and made it into a pony tail and it looked awesome, but guess what? NO ONE’S hair actually looks like this!! It was fun playing dress up, but it reminded me the impact of all the photos I see everyday where everyone has 1000g of extensions in and is always wearing falsies. I had to remember that oh yeah, none of us woke up like this!

This is what Colbie is addressing in her music video- we don’t have to go totally broke and spend all of our time and energy trying to make ourselves perfect because it is IMPOSSIBLE. We can understand that on a logical level, but yet we still poke, pluck, inject, starve, laser, wax, and shoot water up our asses during colonics so that just maybe we can be a little bit closer to looking how we are supposed to or should look or how everyone expects us to look. You are not disgusting if you don’t have a manicure, gained a few pounds, have a pimple, don’t have a blow out, etc.

Don’t worry, this blog is not going to be me just preaching and talking about inner beauty I can’t wait to get into some more shallow stuff really soon. I just want to remind everyone that you are fine the way you are!! If you want to wear a Kim Zolciak wig and a cake face that’s cool too, but just remember if that’s not what makes you happy then you don’t have to try so hard!!

Be sure to check out Colbie’s video: