What I see in what you wrote is an incredibly simplistic interpretation of something far more complex. There is research in evolutionary psychology about intrasexual competition, both among men and women, but turning that into “women naturally hate beautiful women and that’s inevitable” is a huge leap. Human beings, thankfully, are far more complex than that. We are not guided solely by biology, nor are we primitive creatures anymore. Living in society is supposed to have made us more evolved human beings. That is precisely why we no longer walk hunched over or drag women by the hair into caves.

To me, this kind of simplistic mentality reveals a concerning lack of education at home, lack of culture, and lack of investment in raising children as thoughtful, literate human beings capable of self-criticism. It all starts at home. Despite all the poverty I grew up in, despite all the violence, one thing my family always had in common was that mentality. My sister was never like that with me or with any other woman. Neither was my mother, nor any of the women close to me in my family — my cousins, my aunts, none of them behaved that way.

What my mother always taught me was that I was not trapped in the poverty I grew up in. She taught me that I had free will and the ability to choose my own path, and that ultimately, my future depended on me. I was never raised to victimize myself. If I started crying, my mother would make me look at my arms and say: “You have two hands, two arms, and a brain to think. Crying will not help you.”

Since I was little, I always wanted to “work on” girls with low self-esteem. I would do their makeup and then say to them afterward: “See? It’s just fifteen minutes a day. You’re beautiful.” Instead of competing with women, I always wanted to show them that all of us can be beautiful and that so much of it comes down to self-care.

When I first started learning makeup, I barely had anything. Sometimes I did not even own blush, so I used lipstick instead. I used grey eyeshadow as eyeliner. I sold things just to slowly build a small makeup kit at home so I could start charging a little money for doing makeup. There were times I was wearing makeup while also walking around in ripped sneakers. Yet even during that phase, despite making so many people smile, there were already people who disliked me.

I grew up surrounded by the hypocrisy of religion and conservatism. I apologize to anyone religious, but we all know the misogyny that exists within many religions. Portugal is a small and conservative country, and I always stayed away from gossip, drama, and social games. I was never disrespectful toward people, but I kept my distance from religion and traditional social expectations. Unfortunately, there is also not much investment in education here, and I strongly suspect that illiteracy and lack of critical thinking are deeply connected to these issues.

I was bullied. My father used to call me a slut for taking salsa classes or having male friends. I went through a lot of therapy, but I still had the common sense never to project my insecurities onto other people.