My Glow Up Story: How I Embraced Femininity

It took me a long time to finally look and feel the way I do today. This is what I used to look like at 21 years old before my glow up. I truly believe that the main reason for my glow up is my decision to dress modestly and my discovery of femininity. 

21 years old

Growing up, I’ve always had issues with self-confidence and I believe that part of it stemmed from my appearance. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money to buy clothes or makeup. My mom was busy working and she didn’t have time to teach me about beauty, clothes and femininity. I also loved junk food. I was a chubby kid.

12 years old

My glow up journey began with weight loss. When I started high school I decided to take care of my weight. Actually, it was until someone called me fat in school that I decided to put a stop to this madness, change and loose weight. I lost a lot of weight through diet, exercise and puberty. But gained some of it back ever since. 

14 years old

Even though I lost the weight, I still didn’t know anything about maintaining my appearance. I looked like I was a tomboy even though I didn’t play any sports or have any interest whatsoever in sports. And that is how I lived my life for years. My style inspiration was Alex Russo from Wizards of Waverly Place. I didn’t ever pull it off and I had a different body shape than Selena Gomez.

I'm seated at the far left

A few years later, I started to my straighten my hair and apply mascara and eyeliner and I finally started to feel pretty and attractive. It was at that point that I started receiving compliments on my appearance. I was enhancing my natural and feminine features. 

I'm at the far right

I didn’t look horrible but I could look better. It was in college that I was in a really dark mental place. I realized that I could never be truly happy in this world but only in the next. I decided that my main focus in life was to love God and try to live a life worthy of Heaven. I’m still working on that by the way. It’s pretty hard. Not gonna lie. 

It was at that point that I decided to begin to learn more about my Catholic faith, the Catholic catechism and Traditional Catholicism. I decided that for my soul and the souls of men I need to dress modestly. I accepted that immodesty in dress is an occasion of sin. I learned that to love God is to put His Will above mine. Even if that means not wearing what I liked. Which at the time was jeans and hoodies. 

So I decided to stop wearing skin tight pants, shorts, low cut shirts and other immodest clothes in general. In 2014, I began my journey to dressing modestly. I wore skirts, dresses and covered my shoulders. I still looked bad though. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t do my makeup, hair, nails or facial hair. 

I went though a scrupulous phase and thought that doing all those things was vain. I thought that if I wanted to be a saint I could not care about material things like my appearance. All I did was shower.

The thing is that I didn’t realize that not taking care of myself made me feel insecure. I always felt below everyone. And I don’t mean that as in humility. I felt ashamed of my appearance and embarrassed when I would talk to other people. I always compared myself to other people and never felt good enough. It was bad. That’s not how we are supposed to live. 

I didn’t like taking pictures because I felt ugly. Which is why I don’t have many pictures of myself during that time. I didn’t like the way I looked. At that point I decided to work on my appearance and experiment. I wanted to feel better about myself.

I learned that taking care of yourself is important because it represents the order within yourself. That one must strive to looking clean, neat and simple. Not only should our clothing be modest but also our hair, nails, makeup, etc. My goal was to look put-together. I wanted to represent Traditional Catholics as normal people. 

I began to look for advice on the internet to fix my appearance. I started to search for lookbooks and modest outfit ideas on Pinterest. I took ideas from those posts and videos and started to change my wardrobe. I started buying clothing pieces that were more feminine, better quality and stylish. 

At that point I started to learn more about femininity and the differences between in men and women. Undeniably, God has designed women to be feminine. 

As I began to incorporate more feminine pieces in my wardrobe I started to complement my femininity and started to look much more put-together. My appearance started to make sense. I wore clothing items that complimented my figure and made me look better.   

As I began to learn about the importance of maintaining good hygiene I began to take care of my body by grooming it properly. That means not just showering but by improving my shower routine, clearing up my skin from breakouts, taking care of my not-so-feminine moustache and moisturizing my skin so that its not dry and flaky.

Also, I started to wear contacts. I literally look like a different person when I don’t have my glasses on. Many people don’t even recognize me if I put on my glasses. I don’t know why. 

I began to do my makeup. I started small with blush and bronzer but the more I wear it the more I experiment and find what works well for my complexion. I wear natural makeup that enhances my beauty. I have a natural makeup post on my blog if you wanna check it out. 

One things that really made a difference for me was doing my hair. My natural hair is very wavy and puffy. I learned how to blowout my hair, curl it and straighten it properly so that it doesn’t look puffy. It made a huge difference in my appearance. 

This was really a process that involved research, time, effort and discipline. It also took money. Remember that I started with nothing so once I started to make money from my job I made a list of all the drugstore products I wanted to buy and the essential clothing items that I needed to revamp my wardrobe. 

What matters the most is that now I feel confident about the way I look. I can talk to other people comfortably and I feel much better about myself. I keep things simple. I know that I’m not the prettiest person in the world. There will always be someone prettier and I know that I have other things to work on like my posture and vocabulary but I know that I am capable of doing something. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do on this earth, maybe ill be a mother, wife, work, but I’m gonna look good and feel good doing it. 

There is so much more that I can talk about but this is it for now. If you have any glow up tips let me know in the comments down below. Thank you for reading this post and God bless!

- Beverly  💕