TEXTURED GROWTH: Brittany Faye Byrnes
on Breaking into Beauty

Womanhood, femininity, beauty — in our world, these phrases can be synonymous. When women walk through the world, there’s a certain expectation laid upon our presentation. The makeup. The hair. The outfits. For all our lives, we’ve been taught to look and act in order to be perceived in the most palatable way. We have to fit the mold. The aesthetics of it can mean both empowerment and a prison.

But when we reclaim the outward perception of ourselves — for ourselves — true magic ignites. And I see that magic in my friend, Brittany Faye Byrnes, the mind behind the ongoing journey that is Textured Growth.

I know Brittany through our studying theatre at Marquette University. Our college days were often spent ferrying between rehearsal and the nearest Taco Bell. She’s always a laugh to be around, spreading joy by just being herself. She’s a powerhouse performer in a petite frame, who has an innate understanding of language and empathy – with an excellent voice to boot. 

Since I know her through theatre, I asked her how she got into performing. She started pretty young and, like many of us, was hooked for life, choosing as early as middle school that she wanted to study the craft at a specialized school for the arts. While performing is truly a great passion of her life, theatre has never been just about being on stage.

“It taught me not to consider only my own view, but to go into the minds of others and their circumstances to see if I could understand where they are coming from.”

She said theatre introduced her to friends from of all walks of life. It taught her compassion for those that live differently, and seeing, feeling, and knowing these stories has changed her perspective of our whole world. For that mindset shift, she said, she is very grateful. Storytelling through the theatre is the basis of empathy from which many artists like Brittany and myself have learned and grown. It’s been our primary life force, in many ways. Our purpose there is filled to the brim with our blood, sweat, and tears.

But when the pandemic hit, theatre was hit hard. Everything shut down for a long time, and there were times it seemed like we’d never see the spotlight again. Ever the go-getter, though, Brittany found her way back into the Milwaukee theatre scene. I had the pleasure not too long ago of seeing her as Emilia in a production of Othetllo, but if you missed that one, and if you missed her most recently in Hamlet, you can catch her again: she will be starring as Elinor Dashwood in Sense & Sensibility with Acacia Theatre (which opens this week, and you can buy tickets here!)

Brittany is hands-down one of the greatest actors I’ve known and worked with in my time adventuring through the theatrical cosmos. I’ve learned so much from her grace and presence — and not to be dramatic, but I feel quite lucky to have befriended her all those years ago.

But Brittany is not just a dynamic actor. She’s always having fun and enjoying the finer things of life. She’s a continuous pop culture consumer and is always ready to talk to you about your favorite TV show, from Game of Thrones (about which she co-hosted a podcast called ‘Winter is Female’), to the Walking Dead (which is too spooky for me and I’ll never watch it matter how many times she tries to convince me otherwise), to the Vampire Diaries (…you know, I don’t ask about that one). I’ve heard her sing like an angel and rap like a gangster in the same breath. Brittany and I even did a photo shoot together recently, which was so fun and the pictures turned out great!

But get this: She’s also… a Proficient painter? 

She is not a painter in the way you think. Her brushes are the kind from Sephora, not Blick. This style of painting, using her face as a canvas, has certainly made this art just as remarkable and beautiful as anything you’d find in a gallery.

Some may not equate being a makeup artist to being a painter, but to them I say: you’re wrong. I mean, look at this. THIS is art. The blending of the eyeshadow. The steady graphic liner. The gore! The layers, the precision, the chaos! Come on, that is a gorgeous display of color theory and composition! Nobody can tell me this isn’t a form of art worth celebrating.

In the age of the social media stardom, however, there’s a bubbling toxicity around feminine beauty standards that are, as they have continually been, eurocentric, edited, and ultimately unattainable. A large part of Brittany’s path has been deconstructing and changing the narrative around those beliefs.

Through this shift, ‘Textured Growth’ was born.

It started for Brittany as a journey to leave her longstanding relationship with relaxers and return her hair to its natural curl pattern. The process of unlearning, re-learning, and healing that transition became the basis of her blog. She told me she started writing originally as a diary, telling me she often gets lost in her own head thought it was best to write things down, and went from there. She explained, “Before I was natural, I hated my natural hair — even though I knew absolutely nothing about it — and I wanted to share that vulnerability with people who might understand exactly how I was feeling.”

When we touched on those eurocentric standards that wreak havoc on self-love, on top of all the underlying misogynoir of the beauty world, I can see that Brittany knows her own power from having found it within:

“I wanted to prove that dark-skinned women could do the kind of makeup looks that I saw so many white women doing on the app. There were no tutorials, really, that helped me do the complicated looks that my peers were doing and I had to learn what things worked for my skin tone. Basically, I wanted to prove that we could do it too!” 

Self-taught, self-empowered, and self-made, Brittany told me she wants to give inspiration for those who share her features to believe in themselves, too. She wants to encourage women like her to go out and try before deciding they can’t do something. “We can wear bold colors. We can wear bold clothing. We can wear bold makeup. We can do anything we set our minds to do!” she said. Be bold, be brave, and embrace your beautiful, best self. Now there’s a message we can all get behind!

The Textured Growth blog has grown over the years from hair care to skin care to makeup, ending up in one penultimate lesson: taking care of yourself is the highest form of self-respect. You know what they say: when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change… and it still applies if that ‘thing’ is yourself! But the journey is ongoing and there have been ups and downs. Brittany decided to put it all out there: “I thought it was a good idea to share my triumphs and failures with those around me so people would know that they weren’t alone.”

Brittany went on to say something that piqued my interest as I’m diving into my own spiritual, artistic practice that I’d like to highlight it for you all. She told me that this blog, this journey, this art has become its own meditative practice. I’ve always thought of art as a healing thing, but since my form of art is primarily drawing, Brittany has expanded my beliefs once again. By using these self-care practices to turn herself into a work of art, she has become more grounded in herself than ever before and her life is on the rise.

“Taking the time to care for my hair, care for my skin, and my mental health helped me to center myself. And I found that picking up a spray bottle and working on my hair, or grabbing a makeup brush, or doing something I had never done before and getting awesome results helped build my self-esteem and mental fortitude,” she explained.

She has combined her theatrical talents with her meditative practice through video format, which are a performance unto themselves. Her transitions meet music right on cue, and she’s even done makeup to align with Shakespearean monologues. Her message has reached thousands of people, too: Brittany swiftly gained a 10k+ TikTok following. When I mentioned her and the word “influencer” in the same sentence though, she said she doesn’t see herself that way. Even while standing before that signature silver backdrop making herself into art for the world to see, she knows she’s just doing this whole thing for fun.

However, like everything theatre has taught her, Brittany is dedicated to diving into this craft as an integral new part of her everyday life, sharing her vision almost daily.

“In the words of my acting teachers through the years —
‘You must commit!’
So, I try and commit to everything.”

And committed she has! Brittany has set up her own stage, stepped into the spotlight, and found an audience of people who are right there by her side, learning to love themselves every step of the way. It’s been amazing to witness!

I asked her what she would say to someone watching who thought they couldn’t do what she’s doing, and she had a wise piece of advice: Everyone you have ever seen be successful at anything has been in the place that you are in now. She also said, “I have to remind myself of that so often.” I think we’ve all been there time and time again. You are not alone!

Choosing a creative path can take time, dedication, and practice. But you will look back one day and see how the tiny little steps — the posts, the transitions, the mistakes, the victories, the craft itself — all added up to where you are now. It’s so important to look back at how far you’ve come and acknowledge the growth in yourself. Once you decided to take the first leap of faith, a whole new journey began. And you never know where you might wind up — on the path to beauty branding, in leading roles on the stage, or, like Brittany, maybe even both.

There’s opportunity right around the corner. But you won’t know until you try!

If there’s one thing to learn from Brittany: please, keep having fun. Keep trying new things! And always keep reaching for your dreams no matter what — life will take you exactly where you need to go!

If you’re looking to follow along on Brittany’s journey and witness the glory of all her most majestic transitions, theatre productions, and makeup manifestations, you can find her on instagram at @texturedgrowth or on TikTok at @texturedgrowth1.

There’s also still time to catch her on stage this summer! Tickets for Sense and Sensibility with Acacia Theatre can be found here!

Remember, you are beautiful inside and out. Keep Glowing & Keep growing!