Lipstick and Loving Yourself: How to be Confident without Makeup

If you search on the Internet, or even on this website, you are bound to find articles and posts giving you reasons as to why people wear makeup. You are also bound to find articles and posts teaching you how to be confident without makeup. So here I am, adding my two pence to the debate.
This is coming from someone who doesn’t wear a lot of makeup and never has done. I do eyeliner and mascara daily but I could do so much more. Why don’t I? Honestly, I’m too lazy to and I’m not the best at doing makeup anyway. I can do basics but I’m no James Charles or Zoella. So you may be thinking ‘how can you give advice on feeling comfortable without makeup if you aren’t used to wearing makeup?’ That’s a good question and the answer is experience. While I may not have direct experience, I have friends who I’ve spoken to and they have told me their thoughts on this.

So now I’m going to share some of them with you and give you some ideas on how to ‘wean’ yourself off makeup, you could say, and how to feel confident and comfortable once you’re past that stage.

The first stage is weaning yourself off makeup. There’s two ways to do this. You can either reduce the amount of makeup you wear or how regularly you wear it. You could go from wearing make up everyday to only wearing it for special occasions – a bit like going cold turkey if you’re a drug addict. That’s likely to be more difficult than reducing the amount of makeup you wear daily. Say you stop wearing eyeshadow. A subtle difference but it means that you’re not covering up as much. Then another day you stop wearing concealer. Once you’re confident like that, you take off your foundation. There’s no particular order in which you need to do it but just reduce your makeup use gradually so you’re more used to wearing less and then if you want to, reduce how often you wear it. You choose what works best for you.

So now you’ve weaned yourself – what now? You’re naked and feel vulnerable. This is going to sound cliché but hear me out: embrace your insecurities or what you perceive as flaws. You aren’t the only person with acne or zits or blotchy skin, plus no one is perfect – not even gods and goddesses. At a Chicago MOMA art exhibition, there was a statue of Aphrodite on display. Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty. So she’s thought to be beautiful – perfect even. But what did this statue have?

​Body rolls. Even Aphrodite – the goddess of beauty and perfection - isn’t perfect. Even she has body rolls so it’s okay for you to have acne or blotchy skin. If there is a statue of her which immortalises her body rolls, you can own those insecurities.

Finally, address your insecurities in whatever way you feel appropriate. If you feel talking about them helps then organise a sleepover or a meal with your best friend and talk to them about how you feel. If you feel that looking in a mirror and telling yourself some affirmations helps then make sure to look in the mirror every morning and tell yourself that you are gorgeous, that your acne is what makes you unique. Do whatever you need to do to be confident.

Believe what you want, but you better believe that you are beautiful and deserving of confidence and love – because you are, regardless what you think when you look in the mirror and regardless of what you think other people see.

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