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I don't wear the stuff for three reasons:
1. Money
2. Laziness. It's not the putting it on that annoys me- it's the time it takes to get it off.
3. Allergies (which is why #1 is a factor for me- I cannot wear most brands of make-up, and I don't like experimenting with products that really irritate my skin.
Frankly, I look much, much better with it on. It evens out some very uneven skin tones. But I just don't do it much- weddings, mostly. Not much else.
I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with wearing make-up, although there is a point that is Just Too Much. Of course, we all agree about that, but we disagree about what that point is. I also wonder, not in bitter, resentful way, but just out of curiosity, why it is that our culture imposes things like make-up and shaved legs on females, but men have no such cultural impositions on their physical appearance. It seems odd to me.
And it also seems odd to me how disbelieving some of the commenters are on this post by a woman who decided to go a month without make-up and see what happened. Her experiment started because her husband didn't particularly think she needed make-up and he wondered why she did it.
The next day I embarked on a 30-day experiment. Without telling a soul, I committed to wearing no make-up to see what kind of reaction I’d receive from the people in my life. I was sure coworkers would look at me and either judge my unfinished appearance with disapproval—maybe even disgust—or they’d ask me if I was feeling sick.
The first week was the hardest. I avoided making eye contact with people. Every time I saw myself in a mirror, I instinctively reacted with disgust. “You’re ugly,” I said disgustedly to myself on more than one occasion. I felt so unattractive.
To make up for my insecurity, I decided to go on the offensive. I started to concentrate on smiling as much as I could and initiating conversations with people so I could learn more about them as a way of taking the focus off of me. I desperately wanted to get comfortable in my own skin. But how could I when I felt so ugly?
Somewhere during week two, I began to realize that how I look has nothing to do with me. I had nothing to say in the matter. At conception, God knit me together, weaving the DNA from my mom and dad into a little girl with brown hair and blue eyes. My chin comes from my grandma, unchiseled and prone to doubling, and my nose might be a bit too big for my face. At what point had I started to judge these facts as good or bad? Who convinced me that my looks make me less than enough? And why had I allowed this faulty thinking to continue for most of my life?
"Tom" says: Don't feel ashamed to wear make-up, it brings out the best in your face. ...If you like wearing make-up, stick with it! You look great! He also said that his experience was the opposite of the authors, he thought most girls didn't want to wear make-up (thus implying that most guys like it and that's why the girls do something they don't want to do). In MY experience, way back when I was playing the field and dating just about anything that shaved its face, guys always said 'you don't need to wear make-up, you're pretty enough without it.' But if you left off the make-up and didn't tell them they would say things like, "Are you feeling okay? You look tired."
Lea says, I am skeptical about your husband's motives. I wonder if he wanted you to not wear makeup so that you would be less attractive to other men.
Janet quotes her aged Grandmother who said every old barn looked better for a coat of paint.
And Sue says Well let's face it ladies - we who wear makeup do so because it makes us look better, period. And when we look better we "feel" better.
I may look better with make-up (no 'may' about it- I do), but I don't feel better with it. I feel a bit gunky. I prefer the fresh-faced feeling of clean, bare, skin. But I am not a visual person. I am altogether too much like the person the Apostle Paul talked about who looks into the mirror and then forgets what he looked like.
What about you?
