Ten years ago, I started to play with my mother’s makeup. My first attempt came short of its original intent to make one look beautiful due to my clumsy inexperience. This innocent event was only the beginning of a decade-long infatuation with everything cosmetics-related: from listening to self-taught beauty gurus to watching professional Vogue YouTube videos and even making my own tutorials (all evidence hidden in the depths of my own computer, of course). What was a simple fascination with the magic of enhancing natural beauty, slowly fell out of focus as my attention and the attention of all my peers turned to a teenager’s worst nightmare: puberty. I criticized every feature on my face, learning tutorials to manipulate the small imperfections to become more eurocentric and “popular.” Unhappy with my monolids, I used every trick and method known to mankind to give myself some type of crease (see Google results page 86 purple line). All through middle school and until my freshman year, my makeup box became my Pandora’s box to reject and resent every feature that came from my Chinese heritage. In my freshman year, my grandpa suddenly fell ill, leaving me emotionally distraught over the fact that I was oceans away with no way of visiting. I was expected to continue going through daily normalities when all I wanted was to go see my sick grandpa, my childhood best friend. When my relatives made the hard decision to stop medical treatment, I saw my father cry for the first time in my life. This jarring loss made me realize how much I had lost touch with my family and heritage. I felt embarrassed that my last conversation with my grandfather consisted of me relaying the briefest of messages through my parents. The language I had once spoken almost fluently had been reduced to a mere “hello” and “I love you.” I threw myself into learning the Chinese language, thus my vocabulary growing tremendously. Thanks to my deep dive into Chinese media and culture, I came to the sudden realization that the features I had once used makeup to hide away were being admired, praised, and showcased; pale skin, monolids, and round faces--everything I possessed was being recognized for the beauty I had once believed I lacked. All of a sudden, makeup became not an impersonal disconnect, but rather an artful enhancement of the features that connect me back to my heritage. My interest in makeup blossomed into a thirst for knowledge of cosmetic science; in the process of joining the market, both makeup and medicine must be biologically manufactured, tested, and FDA approved. Intrigued by this world and its collision with my own passions, in my junior year I participated in a research project focusing on drug discovery and computer-aided drug design- led by a teacher who had a background in the pharmaceutical industry- using a computer program to design fragments based on a Covid-19 compound in hopes of discovering a fragment that could be used to create an antiviral. In the methodology of using the components of a problem to create the source of a solution, I couldn’t help but relate to my nearly viral childhood insecurities. Right in front of me in Youtube tutorials and google searches, in Asian culture and the Chinese language sat the fragment of a cure: makeup. With my lifelong love for makeup, newfound knowledge in medicinal chemistry, and immovable confidence in the culture I shared with my grandfather, I found myself playing with my mother’s makeup again; only this time making plans for my own future makeup company.

Ten years ago, I started to play with my mother’s makeup. My first attempt came short of its original intent to make one look beautiful due to my clumsy inexperience. This innocent event was only the beginning of a decade-long infatuation with everything cosmetics-related: from listening to self-taught beauty gurus to watching professional Vogue YouTube videos and even making my own tutorials (all evidence hidden in the depths of my own computer, of course). What was a simple fascination with the magic of enhancing natural beauty, slowly fell out of focus as my attention and the attention of all my peers turned to a teenager’s worst nightmare: puberty. I criticized every feature on my face, learning tutorials to manipulate the small imperfections to become more eurocentric and “popular.” Unhappy with my monolids, I used every trick and method known to mankind to give myself some type of crease (see Google results page 86 purple line). All through middle school and until my freshman year, my makeup box became my Pandora’s box to reject and resent every feature that came from my Chinese heritage. In my freshman year, my grandpa suddenly fell ill, leaving me emotionally distraught over the fact that I was oceans away with no way of visiting. I was expected to continue going through daily normalities when all I wanted was to go see my sick grandpa, my childhood best friend. When my relatives made the hard decision to stop medical treatment, I saw my father cry for the first time in my life. This jarring loss made me realize how much I had lost touch with my family and heritage. I felt embarrassed that my last conversation with my grandfather consisted of me relaying the briefest of messages through my parents. The language I had once spoken almost fluently had been reduced to a mere “hello” and “I love you.” I threw myself into learning the Chinese language, thus my vocabulary growing tremendously. Thanks to my deep dive into Chinese media and culture, I came to the sudden realization that the features I had once used makeup to hide away were being admired, praised, and showcased; pale skin, monolids, and round faces--everything I possessed was being recognized for the beauty I had once believed I lacked. All of a sudden, makeup became not an impersonal disconnect, but rather an artful enhancement of the features that connect me back to my heritage. My interest in makeup blossomed into a thirst for knowledge of cosmetic science; in the process of joining the market, both makeup and medicine must be biologically manufactured, tested, and FDA approved. Intrigued by this world and its collision with my own passions, in my junior year I participated in a research project focusing on drug discovery and computer-aided drug design- led by a teacher who had a background in the pharmaceutical industry- using a computer program to design fragments based on a Covid-19 compound in hopes of discovering a fragment that could be used to create an antiviral. In the methodology of using the components of a problem to create the source of a solution, I couldn’t help but relate to my nearly viral childhood insecurities. Right in front of me in Youtube tutorials and google searches, in Asian culture and the Chinese language sat the fragment of a cure: makeup. With my lifelong love for makeup, newfound knowledge in medicinal chemistry, and immovable confidence in the culture I shared with my grandfather, I found myself playing with my mother’s makeup again; only this time making plans for my own future makeup company.