My Beauty Journey with Lauren Moulding

Welcome to a brand new My Beauty Journey feature! ‘My Beauty Journey’ is about people empowering each other to ‘own their beauty’ by sharing their journey to self-acceptance, empowerment and ultimately, self-love. Meet Lauren Moulding, who runs a semi permanent make-up business Lolface and has a background in healthcare. 

I’ll paint a picture of how teenage Lauren looked.. 5″11, braces and glasses. I and my friend (who was also tall) referred to ourselves as awkward tall girls. Why awkward? Because we’d lean over, or crouch, stupidly (now I look back) trying to hide our height! So many people look at tall girls and say “wow, I wish I had your height” or “you should be a model”. I would cringe if anyone said this when I was young. Just because I’m tall it doesn’t make me beautiful, I’d think. I felt masculine when all I wanted was to be petite and cute like other girls.

NOW though, I absolutely love being tall! So I have to buy bigger shoes than your average girl? At least I usually catch them in the sale! So I struggle to get clothes in actual shops? I despise shopping, online shopping will always be my bag anyway (big up all the tall sections). “You’re tall already, why are you adding 5 inches to your height?” Because I like wearing heels!! I will wear what I want when I want, even if it does make me tower over everyone in the bar!

Another thing I think I struggled with growing up, was having my own style. “Fashion” in Geordieland was Adidas tracksuit bottoms and bootleg jeans. Of course, the bootleg jeans were difficult to get a hold of in 36″ length, so I’d usually opt for the trackies. Yet again, feeling like I was pushing myself into that masculine stereotype when I didn’t really want to. I think nowadays, fashion can be anything you want it to be, cool is being you. I have a 12-year-old nephew who I think is just the coolest kid I’ve ever met, he’s so unique and special, and that’s cool now!! Back when I was that age I would have been petrified to wear my ‘Saved by the Bell’ cardigan or crazy blanket pants. I still get comments from friends, but it’s all in good spirits, I love being myself! It took me a good 25 years to get to that point, but my nephew? He’s there now, at 12! Imagine!!

One thing that helped me get to this point of confidence, was around 5 years ago, I shaved my hair off for charity. I wasn’t expecting to love it, but I did!! I kept it for two years and dyed it so many different colours. I noticed I got looked at more, but I was proud of it. I wore my bright pink/blue/awful mottled green hair with pride! No one actually cares what you look like really. Our style is a way of expressing our personalities. Since then I’ve always said, if you suffer from confidence, shave your hair off! It does absolute wonders for the soul!

If there is one thing I’d to say to my younger self, it’s that I needed to actually look at who I was, and not shove myself into a “masculine” stereotype when that just wasn’t me. Tall = beautiful. Short = beautiful. Somewhere in between = beautiful! In my line of work of semi-permanent makeup, I never do the same set of eyebrows twice. We are all our own person, why should it be one size fits all?!

Do you really care what others look like? Probably not. So they don’t about you. Wear those crazy pants. Be you.

Lauren x

Lolface is a beauty business which was founded in 2018 by Lauren Moulding, who is a finalist for Health and Beauty Awards of the Year 2022 and have been recognised for their amazing semi permanent makeup treatments for the last three years. Lauren worked as a Senior Diagnostic Radiographer for over 7 years within a large teaching hospital the NHS. She was working her way up in the hospital sector but longed to be doing something creative & that’s when she fell in love with semi-permanent makeup and started doing this on the side of her job in healthcare. 

She left her healthcare role to pursue microblading full time but went back to healthcare during the pandemic and is still registered on the bank list to work within the healthcare sector. Her background and experience in the healthcare sector helps to build trust and credibility for her clients. 

Lauren wants to offer semi-permanent makeup eyebrow treatments for free to people who have lost their hair due to health issues such as undergoing chemotherapy or alopecia. She is currently raising funds to be able to offer semi-permanent make-up treatments for free for these clients to give them confidence in themselves again after going through so much trauma. Their goal is to raise £2300, which would pay for 10 people to get free microblading or tattoo eyebrows at LolFace. For every person that gets it paid for from the funding, she will offer another completely free.

Check out Lauren’s Semi-Permanent makeup business LolFace here and donate to her Just Giving page here.

Read more My Beauty Journey Features…