National No Make-Up Day: curse or blessing?

On Thursday the 24th of March, it will be National No Makeup Day. Whilst this is a wonderful chance for women (and a few men of my acquaintance) to ditch the lavish trowellings of the stuff that many of us daily apply to our faces, and bare our natural beauty to the world, I can’t help but be filled with a vague sense of unease at the prospect.

Firstly, why do we need a day for this? Do the organisers fully condone us all wandering around covered in makeup the rest of the year? Are we all so hideous that there’s only one day in the year where we can take it off and walk around in public? …Well, probably not. But I can’t help feeling that it’s a bit like the old Valentine’s day problem: Surely romance (or embracing our faces as they really look) should be all the year round, not just for one day.

Secondly, it’s worrying that enough women are addicted to wearing make-up to make this day necessary in the first place. I count myself among the ranks of women who wouldn’t leave the house without applying the warpaint and making my face look presentable. On the rare occasions I venture out without any my friends and even my family tend to assume that I’m tired, ill or, most demoralisingly of all, that I’ve just been crying. But is this because I look fundamentally unattractive without makeup on, or because we’re all so used to ever more beautiful women being paraded in front of us on the television and in magazines?

Normal girls seem to be driven to wear more and more make-up in an attempt to look more like this unattainable ideal, but to make us think twice some rather terrifying statistics have been floating around- apparently the average woman spends over £30,000 on cosmetics in their lifetime, and women in the UK get through 8,000 pints of foundation a year. Scary stuff.

So, going without the slap, even if only for a day could be a great way for us to stop focusing on exteriors, stop worrying about what we’re told to look like by the media and to start appreciating what’s on the inside. And on a lighter note, it’ll also shave about 20 minutes from the morning routine (well, mine at least), which I fully intend to spend having a lie-in. Putting aside my reluctance to go barefaced for a day, perhaps this could be a great opportunity to step back and think about our attachment to makeup, and confront some of those indefinable fears of what would happen if we go without it.

Who knows, perhaps National No Makeup Day will be a blessing in disguise for women everywhere.

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