If you’re like me, you probably are never not wearing an eyeliner-mascara combo. Like many other college girls on campus, I rock my winged liner to class daily, complete with enough mascara to give me jumbo eyelashes. Maybe I’ll wear some eyeshadow here and there – maybe. Today I decided that my eyes should go naked for a change and that change was quite pleasant! I took on the day’s challenges without my Maybelline Mega Plush mascara. Here are some perks for when you are able to breathe easy without your eye makeup on.
1. You can touch your eyes freely
This is a major plus if it’s allergy season and your eyes are itching like crazy! Throughout the day if I felt the need to rub my eye, I didn’t have to worry about smudging my eyeliner because I wasn’t wearing any! We’ve probably all been there at some point during our makeup journeys – we have to touch our eyes for whatever reason but we have to be extra cautious (and extra annoyed) with it because we don’t want to ruin our eye makeup. Not today!
2. You don’t waste time making sure your mascara doesn’t clump
Mascara can trick us all from time to time. One day you might get the perfect application, complete with the right amounts of length, volume, and curl and then somedays you might mess up slightly and end up with clumpy eyelashes. I doubt most girls are a fan of their mascara making their eyelashes look like giant spider legs and de-clumping can be a real pain. You also get to save yourself from making this face for a day:
3. You don’t get mascara smudges on your glasses
It’s so annoying to take off your glasses and see black streaks on the lenses. This can happen when you wear glasses but the mascara makes your eyelashes super long. Then you’d have to curl them so they’re less likely to touch the lenses. That’s literally double the work!
4. You don’t end up with overly-smoky eyes
Yes, there IS such a thing as an overly-smoky eye! It’s not intentional of course, but sometimes we just go a little overboard – especially if we’re a bit heavy handed. Smoky eyes can sometimes be tricky to get the hang of, anyway. Luckily, if you’re taking the day off from eye makeup, it won’t matter if you usually fail at smoky eyes (like I do!) Ahhh, a breath of fresh air!
5. You don’t under-blend your eyeshadow
Ever try to recreate colorfully gorgeous eyeshadow from Tumblr or Pinterest except when you do it it’s just sections of blue, green, yellow, and purple sitting on your eyelids rather than a harmonious blend of the shadows resting gracefully on your eyelids? Yeah. So have I. If you don’t make a grab for the eyeshadow you run the risk of not accidentally making yourself look like a clown! Don’t get me wrong, clowns are cute, too – when they’re at the circus and people know they’re makeup is done that way on purpose.
6. Not having to worry about getting that Pinterest eyes make up look
And you wasted a good fifteen minutes from your morning routine to hopefully nail it! When this happens to me I always shake my head in annoyance and ultimately decide to remove it if it looks far off from what I was trying to achieve. Sigh, all that work for nothing. Here’s a Pinterest look that looks gorgeous and best of all anyone can create it: the no-makeup face!
7. You save yourself from the danger of getting stabbed in the eyeball
We’ve all gone through that stage when we were first figuring out the eyeliner application process. It was like some sort of “initiation” before we became good at putting on eyeliner. We probably look back at our naive high school eyeliner days and laugh but it’s not impossible for it to happen to us again. If you’re planning to skip the eyeliner for the day then I promise you, you will also skip that slightly-painful-for-ten-seconds poke in the eye.
8. You don’t have to deal with an uneven eyeliner application
The secret is not wearing eyeliner! Have you ever had those mornings where you do perfect eyeliner on one eye and try to recreate that perfection on the other eye and it just doesn’t work? One eye has more eyeliner than the other; one eyeliner wing is longer than the other; one wing is shorter than the other – I could go on and on about the numerous ways in which we mess up on our eyeliner. Opting to not wear eyeliner takes away the eyeliner mistakes for the day. I didn’t have to spend time attempting to fix any of my eyeliner mistakes because there were none to make!
9. Eyeliner doesn’t get to relocate to other parts of your face
Your eyeliner decided to pull a “Dora the Explorer” on you and is now somewhere by your eyebrow. Stop being so adventurous, eyeliner, I’m trying to look like I know how to apply makeup! It’s a blessed day indeed when you apply your eyeliner in the morning, attend class all day, and return to your room after 10p.m. to find that your eyeliner stayed right where you left it.
10. You don’t have to rush your morning routine
Eye makeup application can potentially take up a good chunk of your morning routine. We all wish that we can snap our fingers three times and have the world’s most perfect eyeliner sitting on our eyelids, however, that kind of sorcery doesn’t exist in our world. Getting breakfast with a friend but you’re running late because you’re trying to perfectly wing your eyeliner will very likely earn you a few irritated texts. Without eye makeup you can drastically cut your morning routine by a good fifteen to twenty minutes.
11. You don’t feel “overly made-up”
Sometimes it can be really easy for us to feel like we applied a little too much makeup this morning. Eyeliner and mascara might look great today but tomorrow we might look in the mirror and say that the eyeliner is a bit too much. Don’t ask why we do this, it’s probably just a weird girl thing. This feeling doesn’t exist when you give the eyeliner and mascara a break and truth be told, the feeling of freedom is sweet.
12. The water works can flow freely
Maybe you’re a crier – it’s not your fault you’re so in touch with your emotions so why does your makeup have to punish you for it? Maybe you’re like me and you laugh so hard that you have two mini waterfalls coming out of your eyes. Either way, mascara and/or eyeliner can be your worst enemy when the water works come on. You don’t even want to think about how bad it is when you don’t have spare tissue in your pockets!
13. People don’t give you weird looks at the gym
I’ll admit it, I’m sometimes that girl at the gym who wears eyeliner and mascara while she works out. I sometimes get raised eyebrows in my direction as people wonder why I’m wearing so much makeup when I’m just going to sweat through it all and ruin it. It can sometimes be annoying but it’s nothing a little eye-roll can’t fix. As Taylor Swift once said, “shake it off,” but for the record it’s also a cool day when you aren’t being silently judged for winged eyeliner at the gym. Also when you sweat with no makeup on, it’s better for your skin and you are less likely to get break outs which is a win.
14. You save yourself the stress from trying to apply perfect eye makeup
Applying eye makeup when you’re frustrated with it should just be a fire hazard. Just stop, drop the eyeliner, and roll on off to class. Save yourself what little patience you have left and just let your eyelids breathe for the day. You’ll thank yourself tomorrow when you’re in a better mood!
Winged eyeliner, smoky eyes, colorful eyeshadow, gigantic lashes, and things of the nature are all super pretty but no eye makeup is ALSO pretty! For those days where you throw up your hands in annoyance because you can’t get the winged liner right, or you angrily storm away from your mascara tube because your eyelashes refuse to de-clump, now you have 14 reasons to feel great about skipping the makeup routine for a day and still be beautiful!