What could possibly be more humbling than realizing that your entire beauty routine had been reduced to whatever you can apply without needing to leave the couch?
Mascara? Too ambitious.
A full skincare routine? Try again tomorrow.
Lip gloss? Now we’re talking.
When life becomes physically or emotionally overwhelming, self-care often gets smaller. There isn’t quite as much energy for an hour-long bath, an elaborate routine, or a perfectly planned morning. Sometimes, taking care of yourself can be as simple as brushing your hair, putting on something that makes you feel good, or adding a touch of color to your lips before facing the rest of the day.
Sometimes, the smaller acts carry the most meaning.
For Erica Bigger, beauty became a lot more personal during her pregnancy. During this time, she experienced hyperemesis gravidarum, which is a severe pregnancy condition that brought significant physical and emotional challenges. Pregnancy is often portrayed as a time of anticipation and excitement; for someone experiencing hyperemesis gravidarum, however, simply getting through the day can become the more immediate concern.
Somewhere in the middle of this difficulty, something as simple as a lip gloss gave her the opportunity to reconnect with herself.. This is not to say that a beauty product could change what she was dealing with. Instead, it gave her a small opportunity to remember that she was still a woman, she was still herself, and she was worthy of genuine care.
A Vegan Gloss, a Deep Breath, and a Little Bit of You
Imagine having a morning where your main goal is not productivity. The goal isn’t about getting dressed to perfection, looking perfectly polished, or checking things off your to-do list. The goal is simply to get through the day.
Now imagine reaching for a small product that can help you feel like yourself again. Perhaps it’s your favorite lipstick, your favorite scent, a moisturizer that makes your skin glow, or even a necklace that you haven’t worn in months.
There is something very interesting about small routines that coexist with difficult circumstances without pretending that the hard times aren’t there. You can be extremely exhausted and still put on a lip gloss. You can be completely overwhelmed and still choose to wear a color that complements you. You can be having one of the hardest weeks of your life and still decide that a few minutes can be dedicated to self-love.
WhollyGloss was founded by Erica Bigger in 2018. This is a faith-rooted beauty company that was created from her own personal experience and her changing understanding of beauty, self-care, and identity. She has a background that spans fashion merchandising and design, advertising, marketing, communications, styling, modeling, retail, and creative direction. With this extensive background, she fully understands the visual side of beauty. Her experience with HG also gave her a much more personal understanding of what beauty and self-care could mean.
She doesn’t believe that beauty is something that exists simply to make women feel as though they’re not enough. Instead, she follows a different path. A path where beauty serves as an opportunity to slow down, care for yourself, and remember who you are.
Can We Make Self-Care a Little Easier?
“Self-care” is a phrase that is commonly tossed around in the beauty landscape these days. It’s associated with scheduled downtime, meditation, exercise, meal prep, journaling, and getting a good eight hours of sleep. Somewhere, while we were trying to become more balanced, we ended up with an even longer list of things to accomplish.
But the truth is, meaningful self-care doesn’t need to be elaborate.
Research has started to explore the potential relationship between personal care routines and well-being. A 2024 randomized controlled study of adult women who did not frequently use makeup found that encouraging regular makeup use was associated with improvements in self-image and a reduction in reported depressive symptoms. The findings are interesting, but they do not mean that makeup should be considered a treatment for depression or other mental health conditions.
The value of these studies is less about the cosmetics themselves and more about what the actual routine represents.
Sometimes, those few minutes between waking up and rushing into the day are enough to create a little breathing room. Applying something can serve as a cue to slow down. Choosing a shade allows you to make creative decisions. And looking in the mirror serves as a reminder that your appearance is not something that demands perfection in order for you to feel good about yourself.
A Nude, a Pink, and Everything In Between
This idea made its way into the products themselves. Instead of presenting a lip color as a necessity for beauty, this collection focuses on comfortable everyday wear, nourishing-feeling ingredients, pigmentation, and creating an enjoyable routine with a product that feels good on the lips.
Then there are the shades, because apparently even a difficult day can benefit from a little wardrobe change for your lips. Nude Nature (Vegan) is the quiet one in the group, a soft, shimmer-free nude pink that doesn’t need to make a fuss, with aloe, Moroccan-grown argan oil, castor seed oil, soybean oil, and vitamins C and E bringing a smooth, conditioning feel along for the ride. Rain is the easygoing friend who somehow works with everything and asks absolutely nothing of you. Cacao-Milk & Honey leans warmer, offering a light tan nude with a neutral undertone and the same comforting blend of aloe, argan oil, castor seed oil, soybean oil, and vitamins C and E. And then there’s Pink Flower, the raspberry pink that clearly didn’t get the memo about keeping things subtle, arriving with a little shimmer and that same ingredient lineup. Four moods, essentially: quiet, effortless, warm, and “actually, let’s make an entrance.”
There is also a great emphasis on the formulas. They are created without ingredients such as parabens, phthalates, silicones, and gluten-containing grains, with vegan formulas identified when needed.
A Little Care Goes a Long Way
For Erica, beauty became more meaningful in the season when getting through the day left her feeling like a challenge all on its own. What started out as a small moment of self-care eventually grew into a broader vision for women’s wellness, restoration, community, and faith through WhollyGloss and the developing WG House of Care.
Bigger came to understand that a difficult season didn’t mean that she had to forget all the things that brought joy to her life.
Self-care shouldn’t be presented as something elaborate like an uninterrupted afternoon, a perfectly balanced meal plan, or a large supplement regimen that needs to all fit into one day. This is not the way that real life works.
More often than not, real life is less serene than the self-care lists would have us believe. The baby is crying, work is waiting, laundry has somehow multiplied overnight, and you’re standing in front of the mirror wondering where the last eight hours went.
Maybe that’s precisely why the little things matter.
A swipe of gloss won’t fix a difficult day. It doesn’t need to. Sometimes it is simply a tiny, familiar ritual that reminds you that you’re still there beneath everything else. You don’t always need a complete reset. Sometimes you just need a minute, a mirror, and a little bit of yourself.
