On International Women's Day 2026. | Kyoko Tominaga

Until I can make beauty my own.

I have been working with fashion magazines for a few years now. After I appeared on a TV show, an editor-in-chief saw my outfit and asked me to contribute, and I have since appeared in them quite often. Since these are mediums that introduce "beautiful" things, the people and items that appear there are all beautiful. Confronted with this, I am stunned by how difficult it is to convince oneself that one is "beautiful."

The same holds true for my appearances on television and web programs; to this day, I feel bewildered when my own face, made up to be reasonably beautiful, is shown in a close-up on screen. It is only natural to be made up beautifully when you are going to be seen by so many people, but my self-consciousness is fragile—or perhaps twisted, or at any rate, not straightforward—to the extent that I feel inhibited about being in a beautiful state or thinking of myself as beautiful.

On the other hand, what surprised me was the sharpness and precision of the aesthetic sense of the people who appear in the media. Stylists and makeup artists finish our looks by asking a series of questions, from how to curl our hair to the exact angle of our eyelashes. Everyone in the makeup room knows their own best features well, and they can all give extremely detailed instructions on the face or hairstyle they want to achieve. It is surely too late to realize this at 39, but having run away from concepts like beauty and cuteness, I learned for the first time that "cute" and "beautiful" are so incredibly detailed, and that self-consciousness is broken down into such fine segments. My own vocabulary for discussing beauty—thin, big eyes, etc.—is no different from that of a grade-schooler; or perhaps even worse than a grade-schooler.

I realized something else as well. I had assumed that people who appear in the media were purely objects to be looked at—or, to put it harshly, beings whose appearance is merely consumed. I was surprised to hear an actor sitting next to me laugh and say, "Ultimately, I want to look perfect, with a flawless E-line, even if no one is watching." I had foolishly assumed that beauty was only for the sake of being seen and evaluated by others. Contrary to my mediocre assumptions, they are dedicated to perfecting the version of themselves that they find beautiful.

I don't think this aesthetic sense and self-consciousness are unique to those who appear in public. Even without a TV insert, opportunities to check one's own appearance have likely increased dramatically through moments on Instagram Stories or BeReal. As that happens, what becomes important is no longer how one is seen by others, but rather how one sees oneself, and one's dedication to beauty will likely become much more granular than a lowest common denominator like simply being thin or having big eyes.

I also think these things can easily be dismissed by the clichés I have heard repeatedly and used myself: "dancing to the tune of a consumer society," "lookism," "the internalization of the external gaze." In reality, the "perfect E-line" may be a standard set by plastic surgery clinics, and the version of oneself that one loves might not be much different from the representations considered beautiful by the lowest common denominator of Japanese society.

However, the fresh surprise I felt from the various things I experienced in the makeup room—the difference in impressions created by the subtle nuance between "burgundy" and "Bordeaux," the way the stylist's hands create "wave curls"—is far too rich to be dismissed by such old clichés. For someone like me, who has spent nearly 40 years avoiding self-comparison, distancing myself from descriptors like "cute" or "beautiful," and intentionally refusing to engage with those standards, the sight of them striving to be beautiful even if they were the only person left on earth with a camera is dazzling and noble. Their new self-consciousness and approach to beauty had long ago leaped over the conflicts of my own outdated self.