Social Distancing Has Taught Francisca Lachapel a Few Things, and I’m Copying Her Approach

There is no right or wrong way to go about staying at home. The circumstances depend on the people, their situation, their mental state, and their support system. There's no one-size-fits-all rule for these times, and the most important thing is to know that you're doing what you can, and what you can is enough. For some people, that means pondering life's meaning while staring at an empty wall, for others it means cooking, for another group it means going at it with the workouts.

For Francisca Lachapel, this social distancing time has meant discovering new abilities, and working on them to get them right. As a TV personality, she was used to having a team behind her back, overseeing every detail from her hair to her nails, the perfect eyeshadow, the most flattering outfit, her best angles, and even the best way the light should hit her. Now that she's working from home, she's had to learn to do it herself.

"This distancing has been a great opportunity to learn," she wrote in Spanish, accompanying a carousel of photos on Instagram. "Look, I can say I'm more independent. I know how to do my makeup, do my hair on my own. I've learned about lighting and camera angles. I'm even much more focused!" she added.

While for some, these things might seem a little trivial, Francisca is a cohost at Univision's Despierta América, and looking presentable is part of her job. Being able to adapt to the new circumstances has been a challenge, but now she not only benefits from it for her professional life, but also her personal life.

As a Latina, I can relate. Beauty has been so engrained in our minds our whole lives, and beauty services were so readily available in Latinx communities, that I hadn't realized how much we depended on other people to get to look and feel our best. Beauty is not only about looking good. We indulge in it because it connects us to our past, as most of our mamás and abuelas have at one point shared a trick or two to bring your inner beauty to the outside.

It's also something we have control over. We decide how we want to look, and we know we're worth the time it takes us to get there. Most importantly: we indulge in beauty for ourselves, because we love that little extra boost of confidence.

However, most of us got extra comfortable with amazing professionals who are artists doing hair, nails, facials, waxing, and any other beauty service, and because of the global pandemic, we don't have access to them for the time being. While I'm not a TV personality like Francisca, I agree with her "learning approach," and every time I do something for myself that I relied on someone else for in the past, I'll take it as a learning experience.

Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to be able to go to the hair salon, nail salon, and my wax appointment, and be able to give all these professionals a big fat tip. But in the meantime, I'm thankful for having witnessed these people work their magic and learn a few things from them. And I'm thankful for being able to try these things at home — while definitely not at their level of expertise — to do something to help me boost my confidence and happiness.

Like Francisca added in her post, "In the middle of adversity, we can find many reasons to be thankful for."