“For a long time, makeup was my security blanket – it was what I hid behind to feel confident and beautiful,” says Becca Lee Brewer. She was born with both a blue nevus – a bluish birthmark, a bit like a bruise – and a port wine stain, a vascular birthmark in which swollen blood vessels create a reddish-purplish discolouration of the skin.
Her journey to self-love, she admits, has been a long process as she struggled to meet unrealistic beauty standards. “My idea of beauty has greatly affected my relationship with my birthmark," she tells GLAMOUR. "Previously I would have thought of beauty by societal standards and only in the physical sense. But it's so much more than skin deep. When I began to embrace what makes me different I started to see my birthmark as beautiful.”
Becca, who was born in South Korea and adopted when she was eight months old, grew up in a small town in Northern Minnesota, USA. By the time she was 12 years old, she had undergone over 25 laser treatments on her birthmark. This made finding body positivity, which is already hard for teenage girls, even more difficult. “As a child I hated my birthmark and was extremely shy and introverted because of it," she recalls. “I remember other children staring and pointing at me. The worst time was after I had laser treatment because I would have dark purple spots all over my face. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. As a child I hated looking and feeling different and out of place.”
The older she got, the more self-conscious she became of her birthmark. “Mentally, I was hyper aware of my body, and my face especially,” Becca says. "I was always incredibly worried about what other people would think of me. It made it more difficult for me to put myself out there.”
At the age of 12, Becca discovered makeup. “Makeup for birthmarks is extremely thick and cakey,” she says. “When beauty Youtube began to get big, I thought there had to be a better way to do my cover-up makeup. So I started looking into makeup tutorials and products to be able to do it more efficiently and with better results. From there it became a creative outlet and I wanted to help others to feel more confident and beautiful.”
The biggest turning point, however, came in 2017 when she decided to share a picture on Facebook of half her face with makeup and half without, after taking the Power of Makeup Challenge by Nikkie Tutorials. Becca says, “I saw the amazing support I had from my friends and family and it helped me be more confident in sharing that with the world. It was my first big step to embracing myself and my skin.”
She has now channelled her growing self-love into a career as a makeup artist. She admits, though, that social media can be both a positive and a negative experience. “Overall, I think it’s really distorted our perception of beauty," she says. "I see this a lot as a working makeup artist. So many of my clients have unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved with makeup due to the filters and editing of photos and videos they see on social media.”
For this reason, Becca believes it's important to really look at the social media we are consuming and how toxic comparison culture can be. “I want to use my platform to send a message of positivity and self-love,” she notes. “I want people to know there’s beauty in being different and to embrace those differences. I also want people to know it’s OK to love yourself in more than one way. We can love ourselves both with and without makeup, they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”
She's also a big believer in the mantra ‘fake it till you make it’. “That was a big thing for me when I was finding my self-confidence,” says Becca. “When I first started going out in public again without makeup I was super nervous and would just tell myself over and over again in my head that I was confident. After a while I really just started believing it and realising I cared less and less what other people were thinking. There is power in having a positive mindset and speaking positively about myself.”
Self-care is another aspect of self-love that Becca practices because it is important to make sure her birthmark stays healthy. “Since it’s a vascular birthmark, it’s a progressive lesion,” she explains. “It can grow and change over time and it’s important to keep up with treatments in order to keep it healthy.”
A solid skincare routine is an indicator of this, as well as taking time to unwind. “It’s relaxing to be able to use different masks and products that make my skin healthy and glowy," she notes. "I also love sitting down and doing my makeup. There’s something therapeutic for me about the entire process. It’s also important to spend time offline for my mental health, especially when I have posts that go viral and get on the negative side of social media."
Becca admits that she still has her ups and downs when it comes to self-acceptance. “I think that’s an important thing to recognise – that I'm not going to be my most strong, confident self every day and that’s OK,” she says, adding that she would love to see more birthmarks in mainstream media as this would normalise them.
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Her biggest challenge has been to stop worrying about what other people think. Becca says, “It’s silly to let things like your physical appearance stop you from doing things in life, or showing up how you want to in the world. I think others struggle to accept my beauty because it’s so unique. People look at me and can’t understand how I could be so confident and love myself and the way I look. I think that usually comes from a place of insecurity. I don’t think you can understand true confidence until you’ve experienced it yourself.”
Ultimately, Becca would like “people to know I am so much more than just a birthmark”, but she also recognises that her skin has taught her more empathy and understanding. “I think because of my birthmark I have become more aware of how others may be feeling. I find a lot of people can relate to me because everyone has insecurities."
For more from Fiona Embleton, GLAMOUR's Associate Beauty Director, follow her on @fiembleton.
