Bobbi Brown Pretty Powerful & Giveaway

 

While I don’t feel worthy to enter the Bobbi Brown Pretty Powerful campaign, I know what makes me feel pretty powerful and who in my life I look up to as a pretty powerful woman. Let’s face it, I wake up feeling like a troll every morning, but give me mascara to darken my blonde lashes and some lip color, like the Powerful Lip Color I added from the Pretty Powerful Palette in the photo above, and of course, a six inch heel, I’m ready to go. I grew up watching my grandmother apply her make up and I remember being so excited to someday be able to wear a bold lip color that is my grandma’s signature look.
For my grandma, I think make up represents something more than adding color to a face, but a transformation from dependence and a lack of control to independence and determination. My grandma was sent to the Philippines as a child, far from her parents in Hawaii and grew up there, laboring on rice farms where luxuries like shoes or make up didn’t exist. Later in life, even when she married my grandpa she still had no control over her own life. It wasn’t until my grandma was widowed and raising three children as a single mother in a country she didn’t speak the language that she finally gained independence, as rough as it was. Despite the circumstances, my grandma learned English, began a stable career and provided for my dad and uncles. She didn’t have much of anything for a long time and when I see my grandma apply her lipstick and put on her favorite perfume, I see these small actions as giant leaps toward gaining her independence, control over her own life and that to me, is pretty powerful.