By Ann Varner
I remember a time when I barely recognized my face without makeup. I thought “my eyes and lips look too small. My eyebrows look terrible. My color is so uneven…” on and on and on. I wouldn’t let anyone take a picture of me or even see me without my face made up, unless it was family or close friends. I have probably spent thousands of dollars on top quality makeup over the years. It made me feel beautiful, powerful, invincible, and, most of all, I didn’t have to look at the face I thought had everything wrong with it.
This past summer something changed in me. Maybe it’s that I entered my middle twenties and looks just didn’t matter. Maybe it was that I just stopped caring about dating and when that happened, all of the sudden I didn’t feel like I had to put makeup on. Maybe it was that I was so busy that I slowly started to care more about sleeping in than putting my face on. I’m not really sure to be honest. But something changed in me and now I never wear makeup.
Since June, I can think of three times I’ve applied makeup. Once to be in a wedding, once for the rehearsal dinner, and once because I couldn’t sleep and decided to cure boredom at 5 a.m. That’s it. All of the sudden I was sleeping in an extra 45 minutes and going bare-faced everywhere. My small eyes and lips, my eyebrows, and my uneven color dissipated before me and my face that was completely natural became beautiful to me.
I’m not advocating for you to not use makeup if you like it, because I still love makeup. I still love how I feel when I put it on. I’m saying if, at night, after you wash your makeup off, you can barely stand to look at your face because you believe you can not be gorgeous without the makeup, give your face a chance. Try not wearing makeup for a week and maybe you will learn to love both of your faces. It’s truly freeing to feel comfortable with how I look, whether I wear makeup or not, and I want that for you, too.
Believe in your beauty. It’s there, I promise.