Maybe It's Maybelline
Until recently, it was definitely Maybelline. Or Covergirl or Revlon or basically whatever drug-store makeup I could get my hands on [I’ve been a makeup-wearer for a long time, but rarely a big makeup-spender]. So, I think you guys know where this is going...
In the middle of March, right at the beginning of social isolation, I decided to challenge myself to stop wearing makeup for thirty days. That’s not a totally arbitrary amount of time—I read in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that it takes thirty days to make or break a habit. With that in mind, I settled on a timeline: in one month, I would break my habit of getting up and putting on makeup every morning. So it began.
If you read my blog regularly, you might be thinking “hey, this is the part where she usually goes into too much detail with a long backstory.” And you’re right! Here I am, about to give you a hopefully-not-too-long history of my makeup-wearing years. While I definitely played dress-up and wore makeup for costumes’ sake with my friends when I was much younger, I think I started wearing makeup seriously and on a daily basis in middle school. I was a big consumer of Seventeen magazine, and so was inundated with ads for all different types of makeup, plus many fun quizzes to see what eye shadow palette matched my skin tone or which lipstick would make me look like an upstanding citizen and not a seventh-grade harlot!
So there I was in middle school, that wonderful time when everyone is experimenting with makeup and inevitably not doing it incredibly well. Because I was self-conscious about my skin, I wore heavy coverup and foundation, a well as sparkly eyeshadow and mascara. Every single day! My parents still had to bother me to wash my greasy hair on a daily basis, and yet I was all about slathering on some full-coverage liquid probably two shades too dark for my skin [guys, I thought it made me look tanner]. And that was the beginning of it all – I wore so much makeup that I began to dislike my face without it, and thought that I looked “sick” or “tired” when I went bare-faced. And so I didn’t! I wore a full face of makeup to lacrosse practice, to pool parties [hello, raccoon eyes], and even just lounging around my house on the weekend. It was like a second skin that I’d forgotten how to take off.
In high school, nothing changed much. I got a bit better at choosing my foundation shade, with a little help from some concerned friends of course. I upgraded from brown to black mascara, and I swapped out the sparkly eyeshadow for thick black eyeliner. It was liquid liner, and I shouldn’t have been using liquid liner because I did not know how to do it. This continued through probably sophomore year of college, although I did become more skilled in liquid liner at some point along the way.
Fast forward to a couple months ago, senior year of college. I still did my makeup every single morning. Heavy foundation had been subbed out for a lighter BB cream and some concealer, then mascara and a little bit of eyebrow gel followed by bronzer and highlighter. Apparently I diversified my makeup since high school. And it wasn’t super time consuming or anything – I probably devoted about fifteen minutes to my cosmetic routine each day. But I had to leave myself those fifteen minutes, or else I felt like I really couldn’t even leave the house. I felt so uncomfortable without makeup on, like I didn’t look like myself. It’s ironic, obviously, because I wasn’t born with a full face of makeup on.
When social isolation and lockdowns began, it seemed like the perfect time to try to break my makeup habit. I just want to clarify something first though: I’m not trying to say that wearing makeup in general is bad or wrong or means that you hate yourself. Really, I don’t believe that at all. In fact, I think that makeup can be super fun and also super empowering. If you have access to all these tools and products and they make you feel better about yourself or more like yourself, have at it! I can only speak to my personal experience anyway.
Here are my thoughts about my own no-makeup experience. Yes, putting makeup on every morning before I tried going without did make me feel good. It made me feel put-together and ready for the day. But I didn’t like how uncomfortable I had gotten with my own face. I didn’t want to depend on makeup to make me feel presentable or feel like myself. I wanted to be more flexible: I wanted to be able to roll out of bed in the morning, wash my face, and go. I didn’t want to be the person in a group who needed extra time to get ready in the morning and feel like I couldn’t do things without makeup on. So, I decided to make a change.
At first, it was definitely weird. I mean, I’d gotten used to seeing my made-up face in the mirror every morning for almost ten years. I couldn’t stop noticing all the things I didn’t like: my eyelashes seemed too blonde, my skin uneven and red, my laugh lines too prominent when left uncovered. But after a little while, I stopped noticing those things – and my skin also definitely benefitted, I think, from a little TLC and fewer products. I whittled my routine down to just Cetaphil and moisturizer in the morning and at night.
Two caveats: 1) I did cheat twice. Once, around halfway through my thirty days, I put on all of my makeup for a date night in with Dave. Honestly, it wasn’t worth it. By that point, I’d gotten so used to my face without makeup that I actually felt like I looked odd with it. I cheated again with just mascara on Easter. It happens. 2) I picked a relatively easy time to do this. Quarantine made it so I didn’t really have to see anyone in person, although I made plenty of appearances sans-makeup over Zoom. I will say that I did do many other date nights makeup-free and also an interview for Teach for America. For that last one, I was very close to putting on makeup, but a sweet message from a friend made me decide not to! She reminded me that my qualifications for that job had nothing to do with my appearance and everything to do with my brains and personality. So I held off, and I’m glad I did because I proved to myself that I didn’t need makeup to have a successful interview—and later land the job!
I may not have completed thirty days without makeup perfectly, but what I did accomplish was a huge deal for me. I’ve definitely not worn makeup that infrequently basically for the past decade of my life. My biggest realization was this: the habit I needed to break wasn’t putting on makeup each morning. In fact, I loved repurposing the fifteen minutes I saved from my regular routine. The habit to break was my habit of thinking I looked tired or sick or ugly in just my bare skin. And I did achieve that! Now when I wake up in the morning, before I’ve put any makeup on, I like the way I look. I think I look soft and pretty and fresh.
Now, I no longer feel tied to my cosmetic bag each morning. I can choose to wear all my makeup or not wear any—and often, I’ve been choosing to just wear some. I love spending days with no makeup at all, but I think my ideal situation is a little bit of concealer and mascara. So I’m not going to swear it off entirely, but I’m also going to try to hold on to the habit of going totally without some days. I don’t want to forget how beautiful my face is just the way it is!
One closing thought before I go! While I don’t think that wearing makeup makes you a bad person or a bad feminist or a bad self-lover, I do think that a lot of makeup advertising and the beauty industry in general profits immensely from perpetrating impossible beauty standards and making women (and all people who use makeup) feel insecure. So I don’t want to advocate for everyone just stopping all makeup use immediately, but I do want to ask you to ask yourself why you’re wearing it. Is it because it’s fun? Great! Because it makes you feel good? Okay, but why does it make you feel good? Just make sure that you’re comfortable with the answers you’re giving to these questions. As long as you’re comfortable with it, more power to you! I wasn’t, which is why I embarked on this experiment and have decided to use makeup more thoughtfully—which for me, means more sparingly!
Wherever you’re at with wearing makeup, I think we can at least agree on one thing: it’s definitely better than what you were doing in middle school!
