When you wake up, what’s the first thing you see when you look in the mirror?

Do you want to rip out your frizzy, cowlick-filled hair? Do your makeup-less eyes make your feel like you’re dull and fifty? What about your­self makes you feel beau­ti­ful? Is there any­thing?Maybe you wake up and don’t think these things. Perhaps instead you smile at your bright blue eyes or your deep, mys­te­ri­ous brown ones. Maybe you crawl out of bed and your hair looks fan­tas­tic. But being a girl and strug­gling with feel­ing less than beau­ti­ful myself, and talk­ing to many girls about these issues, I know many women sel­dom feel beau­ti­ful in their nat­ural state. Without makeup, some sort of hair care prod­uct, or even the right clothes, we tend to feel invis­i­ble, ugly, or plain. I’ve felt the same way too. Last year though, every­thing changed for me.

In my year­book class my senior year, the theme of our book was “Growing Up.” We often dis­cussed life issues, and one of our ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tions was the beauty fac­tor. We real­ized how often girls feel the need to be some­one else and to mea­sure up to cer­tain stan­dards. Whether it’s pres­sure from media, friends, guys, or even par­ents, cak­ing on makeup to meet stan­dards seems the only way to feel beau­ti­ful, or in some cases, even average.

Moved deeply by the issue, my class­mates and I took our advi­sor up on a chal­lenge: no make-up Monday. On Monday, we would all come to school with no mask, our bare faces for the world to see. I wouldn’t back down, but I was terrified.

We all showed up self-conscious at first. My whole first hour I tried not to look at any­one. I never wore a lot of makeup–just the basic mas­cara and eyeliner–but even those two things seemed to make a world of dif­fer­ence. I looked down at my desk and tried not to talk. At one point some­one said that I “looked tired,” and I shrugged it off, but once again felt hideous.

I finally arrived at my year­book class to be greeted by my friends. We all beamed at the sight of each other and gushed over how beau­ti­ful each girl was. Yet none of us felt beau­ti­ful our­selves. Why was that?

What I real­ized is that we are so crit­i­cal of how we look that we for­get the peo­ple that mat­ter always see us as beau­ti­ful. We know all our flaws and we con­stantly see oth­ers and how we wish we could be, and so we’re always look­ing for ways to improve and always notic­ing the things we hate.

Others, at least the peo­ple that mat­ter, don’t see that. They see what’s won­der­ful and beau­ti­ful, no mat­ter what we’re wear­ing or what we have on our faces, because they see the inner beauty radi­at­ing out­ward. It’s like when you’ve been dat­ing some­one for a while. Isn’t it funny how that per­son seems to become more attrac­tive the longer you date them and get to know them? It’s that inner beauty shin­ing out­ward. It actu­ally man­i­fests itself phys­i­cally too.

The more I began not wear­ing makeup the more I noticed other girls who did. I real­ized how thickly it was often caked on. The mas­cara was often ‘gob­bed’ on eye­lashes, crusty and flak­ing. I notice eye­liner as a thick arti­fi­cial line dis­tract­ing me from the nat­u­rally beau­ti­ful eyes of these girls. Faces looked cakey and fake, with thick, smudgy foun­da­tion smeared on. I tried to pic­ture these girls with no make up, and I couldn’t even do it because the mask was so thick. I knew they’d look like a totally dif­fer­ent per­son. What does that say?

When we let oth­ers tell us whether or not we are beau­ti­ful and allow makeup to rule our self-confidence, our beauty, we lose the bat­tle. We become pris­oner to bot­tled lies every time we gob foun­da­tion all over our face. We fall vic­tim to the emo­tional tor­tur­ing of mas­cara and eye­liner, telling us our eye­lashes aren’t long enough, aren’t dark enough, and that our eyes are never to be noticed.

When I decided to stand up to the lies of our soci­ety, that we are only beau­ti­ful a cer­tain way (other than the way we were made), the way I saw myself changed dras­ti­cally. The more I stopped wear­ing makeup, the more I gen­uinely felt beau­ti­ful. Instead of look­ing in the mir­ror and despis­ing my dull blue eyes, I smiled at the kind­ness I saw in them. Rather than wak­ing up to loath my stocky legs, I viewed them as strong and ath­letic. When you start to see your­self for who you really are with­out the mask and real­ize that our dif­fer­ences make life so much more inter­est­ing and beau­ti­ful, you’ll feel bet­ter about your­self. Now when I look in the mir­ror and feel ugly, it’s after I’ve been ugly inside.

Remember the peo­ple that really matter—not the movie stars or that per­son who’s always cut­ting you down that you’re try­ing to impress—will always see the best in you, and they want you to see it too. If they don’t then they’re not really worth hav­ing in your life.

I’m not against makeup at all. Some days I wear it to mix it up and other days I don’t. But what I don’t do is let it define me any longer. I know that I don’t need it to feel beau­ti­ful, and for me, though I still strug­gle some­times, the real­iza­tion of my own unique beauty is my great­est victory.

So try it. If you nor­mally don’t wear makeup and you feel beau­ti­ful, good for you. But if you do, give it a try. Start wak­ing up and focus not on your flaws, but on what you like about your­self. Remember that even the girls you wish you were prob­a­bly have some­thing they don’t like about them­selves either. Be encour­ag­ing, because there is too much neg­a­tiv­ity out there and too many peo­ple that feel less than beau­ti­ful. Prove them wrong, and prove your­self wrong too. n