The Art of Getting Ready

Getting Ready

Getting ready is play, and I think I forgot that for a long time. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, I started treating it like a task, something functional that needed to be done quickly and efficiently before I could move on to more important things. But getting ready is not a task. It is one of the most direct ways I know how to reconnect with the version of myself who used to spin in princess dresses and click around the house in heels three sizes too big, who lined up every tube of lip gloss she could find and tried them all on in a row just to see which one made her feel the most magical.

Little me loved getting ready. She loved the ritual of it, the transformation of it, the way you could put on a dress and a pair of sparkly shoes and a swipe of shimmery pink across your lips and suddenly you were someone else entirely — a princess, a movie star, a version of yourself who was braver and more beautiful and more ready to take on the world than you felt two minutes ago. She did not need a reason to get dressed up. She did not need an event or an audience. She got ready for the sheer joy of it, because it was fun, because it made her feel good, because playing with beauty was one of the loveliest things she knew how to do.

And when I stand in front of the mirror now, brushes in hand, palettes open, trying to decide which version of myself I want to be today — I am doing the exact same thing she was doing all those years ago. I am playing. I am creating. I am reconnecting with the simplest, most joyful part of being a girl, the part that never needed getting ready to be serious or purposeful or justified by anything other than the fact that it feels good to make yourself beautiful just because you can.

The Same Game, Grown Up

Little girls play with makeup and dress-up because it is one of the first ways they learn to shape their own image, to try on different versions of who they might become, to experiment with color and texture and transformation in a way that feels safe and delightful and entirely theirs. It is not about vanity. It is not about meeting a standard. It is about the pure creative joy of making something beautiful out of what you have been given — your face, your body, the tools at your disposal — and seeing what happens when you change just one small thing.

I still do this. I am still that little girl, just with better products and a steadier hand. I still line things up on the counter the way I used to line up my lip glosses, trying to decide which one fits the day. I still try new colors just to see what they do, just to see if they make me feel different, braver, more like the version of myself I want to step into. I still look in the mirror and smile at my own reflection the way little Rory used to smile when she put on her favorite dress, delighted by the small transformation she created with her own hands.

Getting ready is not something I outgrew. It is something I returned to, and in returning to it, I found her again — the version of me who knew, without needing to be told, that beauty and play and creativity were not frivolous or shallow or less important than the serious work of being an adult. They were essential. They were joyful. They were one of the ways she practiced being alive in a body that could be adorned and loved and celebrated, and she never once apologized for it.

Reconnecting to Little You

When I put on makeup now, I am not just getting ready for the day. I am reaching back across the years and holding the hand of the little girl who loved this exact same thing, who found so much delight in the simple act of making herself feel beautiful. She is still here. She is still me. And every time I pick up a brush or swipe on a bold lip or try a new shade of blush just to see how it looks in the light, I am telling her that she was right — that this was never silly, that this was never a waste of time, that the joy she found in playing with beauty was real and good and worth carrying forward into every age of my life.

This is why getting ready matters to me in a way I cannot quite explain to people who do not feel it. It is not about looking a certain way. It is not about impressing anyone or meeting a standard or doing what I think I am supposed to do. It is about reconnecting with the simplest, most childlike form of play I know, the kind that asks nothing of me except that I show up and try things and enjoy the process of becoming, over and over again, a version of myself that feels right.

Little Rory would be so proud of the woman I am becoming, not because I have it all figured out, but because I still love the same things she loved, because I still find joy in the same rituals, because I never stopped believing that getting ready — really, truly taking the time to make myself feel beautiful — is one of the most worthwhile things I can do with my time.

So I keep playing. I keep experimenting. I keep standing in front of the mirror with my brushes and my palettes and my reflection smiling back at me, and I think about her — about little Rory in her princess dress and her too-big heels and her shimmery lip gloss — and I know that this, right here, is exactly what she would have wanted me to keep doing.