On March 3, I had laser eye surgery. It went well, and my vision is slowly recovering, but post-op rules required that I wear no eye makeup for a week.
So, I took it upon myself to go the entire month of March without wearing makeup. I don’t wear a lot of makeup anyway, but I wanted to see how long I could go and if anyone would even notice (spoiler: nobody did).
Now, as the month is coming to a close and we honor Women’s History Month with a themed article, I wanted to reflect on my time going makeup-free.
In my adult life, I have never felt more confident. High school was a time of great insecurity for me, and I went to painstaking lengths to look my best every day.
Now, in college, I have the privilege and the freedom to look however I want. This could be due to a combination of factors—I know where I’m going in my life, I’ve lost some weight recently, and I’m in an amazing relationship—but I’d like to attribute it to feeling more at peace with my appearance.
I spend much less time getting ready in the morning and thinking about how other people might perceive me. I do what feels right for me, and that’s okay.
This is what it should be to be a woman.
We, as a gender, should not be basing our self-worth and confidence on how we feel others will react. Instead, we should be uplifting each other, regardless of our individual choices.
I get that we all have preferences—on how we present ourselves and with what we choose to wear and say and do—but respecting the autonomy of another woman’s choice is what it means to be a woman.
Women are still a marginal group. Wage gaps exist. Many period products are not being tested using real blood. A lot of popular movies fail the Bechdel test, including Ratatouille, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Avatar. Women’s sports are incredibly unappreciated.
In this world, all we have is each other, and it is our responsibility to respect and encourage all women. It doesn’t matter what that looks like, so long as it happens.
So, this month and for the rest of the year, I encourage you to be the kind, supportive woman the rest of us need. Happy women’s history month!!!