I Lived in the Woods for Five Months. Here’s What I Learned About Beauty.

Girlhood felt reborn on the worn wooden benches lining the mirrors and shower caddy shelves of the bathhouse. We gathered there daily to discuss what was for lunch, trade clothes, and share glitter gels and curl creams for nighttime gatherings, once the river hair magic subsided. The products and mirrors we associated with the “real world” still had a place in our day-to-day lives, but we did not center our days around personal vanity.

The choices that went against a social norm were often the most celebrated. Whimsical mullet hairstyles, unshaven body hair, and hiking boots paired with silk dresses were frequent sights. Facilitating this culture of experimentation and contrarian styles was intentional language from counselors to their campers, teaching girls at a young age that everything on their faces and bodies was not just normal, but beautiful and interesting. The walls of the bathhouse are, fittingly, decorated with painted wooden plaques commemorating decades of women who learned to love themselves and their bodies in this same pocket of the woods.

So, for a while, I thought I had dismantled the tiring expectations surrounding appearances—not just escaped them. But I have more recently come to the conclusion that the beauty I observed still felt like an ideal to be emulated. Something to work towards. River-tousled hair, freckles, and an air of self-confidence were all measures of a low-maintenance kind of beauty—decievingly detached from social expectations.

There were no billboards in the woods advertising as much, as of course. Rather, it was human nature to see something in or on another person and want to mimic it myself—whether that be for personal or interpersonal benefit.

I can’t say that I became the kind of person who can ditch the mirror for good. I didn’t entirely remove myself from the status quo. The cares I gave up just transformed into a new set of self-improvements specific to the setting. The current cultural moment—the clean girl aesthetic and no-makeup-makeup looks—somehow still permeated our community miles and miles from cosmetic offerings. Anything can be a trend or become a norm, even what feels like square one.

So long as you surround yourself with other people, it is inevitable that social standards and expectations will form. From the city to the woods, people are people. You have to decide for yourself whether the new norms are helpful or harmful to you. I walked away with a community of people I will get to love and care for long after those two summers, and to me, that’s more important than escaping the status quo altogether. Whatever expectations of beauty I aim to defy now, I simply replace with ones I associate with a different community.

I’m now based in New York City, and I can admit that I was intimidated to put my new outlook on beauty to the ultimate test by living and working in a major metropolitan area. I’m taking baby steps: deciding that I can and should blow out my hair if I want to and dust my cheeks with blush if I’m in the mood. Or going bare-faced because I want to let my skin care have its own moment.

If you don’t have balance in how you approach beauty for yourself, you may end up seeing the return of the boomerang when you spit out expectations, like cherry pits. Let them bloom on the side of some road in Northern California, and let yourself grow and change, too.

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