How To Feel “Pretty” Without Makeup

Oct 3, 2022

MGU 385 | Feel Pretty Without Makeup

 

What is social media telling you about yourself? Why do you keep worrying about other people’s opinions about you? The truth is you should stop seeking approval from them. You are unique and special. Don’t let social media tell you what you are and are not. Listen to your host Whitney Lauritsen as she shares deep insights into how you can boost confidence and feel pretty even without makeup. She emphasizes that true beauty is already within you, and you just have to recognize it. She also explains why you need to remind yourself of your value constantly. Tune in to learn how you can recognize your worthiness and live a life with fulfillment and joy.

This episode is sponsored by Athletic Greens and Zencastr.

  • Get a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs of AG1 (episode sponsor) at athleticgreens.com/WELLEVATR.
  • Visit zencastr.com/pricing and enter promo code “wellevatr” to get 30% off your first three months.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

How To Feel “Pretty” Without Makeup

This episode is inspired by a message I got on Instagram. As I say at the end of many of my episodes, I love hearing from people who read the blog or who I have met through social media. Even though I’m not very active on there anymore, I still connect with people for the first time that maybe have been part of my online journey for many years.

That’s the only thing I like about using social media for my personal life, and I say that because I work as a consultant in social media, helping entrepreneurs and small businesses with their marketing. It’s so fascinating to look at the differences between how I feel about social media as a whole versus how I feel about social media for myself on that personal level.

I don’t use it very much now because it doesn’t feel important, I suppose. It doesn’t nourish me. I don’t feel a lot of motivation to post. The only thing that I consistently feel good about is talking to people like exchanging direct messages through platforms like Instagram. That’s my favorite part of Instagram. It’s almost like I don’t know what to post or say on there. A lot of it feels too contrived.

We are in this interesting time with social media where I know I’m not the only one who experienced that, and a huge trend over the last few years has been authenticity, but now, people are doing performative authenticity, and so it’s hard to even know when somebody is real. There’s this newer app called BeReal. From my current understanding, without having deeply studied it yet was designed to make it hard for someone to be performative because, with the app, you take a picture.

You only have two minutes. There’s a timer as soon as you open it up. It gives you two minutes to take a still image, and then immediately after you take that still image, it switches to the front-facing camera to take a picture of your face, and you can’t preview it. You don’t know what you look like. It’s interesting because I often feel uncomfortable with that. I like the challenge but I’m at the stage where I feel uncomfortable trying to do myself up and look “pretty,” but I also feel uncomfortable with the way that I look when I’m not done up.

That’s something I have wanted to dress a lot, and going back to this Instagram direct message I got. Somebody reached out to me in response to a story I posted. It’s very rare for me because I’m not on there very much aside to communicate with people. I don’t post that much. Let me clarify. Somebody reposted a clip of me speaking on a podcast, and that somebody is Brad Powell. He has a website called Awesome Videomakers and a podcast that used to be called the Live Stream Show but is now called The Standout CEO Show.

I was on the show, I want to say 2020 or 2021, and that episode is titled Get Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable. We talked a lot about this show and why I’m drawn to be uncomfortable but it seems like the biggest impact that I made on Brad was talking about how I rarely wear makeup at all. I rarely wear makeup in meetings, in recordings, and my videos anymore. I also stopped using social media filters for the most part.

Authenticity

That makes me uncomfortable but I would rather be uncomfortable and authentic than comfortable and inauthentic because it doesn’t feel good to me. I mean truly authentic, not this performative authenticity but myself. Over the years, I have been trying to better understand who I am because I have been so influenced by social media like most people, and influenced by mass media. We see people like the Kardashians who are easy to point our fingers at but they certainly have impacted people. In general, women, are people who are female presenting, who identify as being women, and somebody who feels the desire to be perceived in the way that somebody like the Kardashians or many famous people are.

I felt this tug of discomfort with trying to be like them. I spent so much time trying to manage my weight. I’m in a stage of doing a lot of intuitive eating, if not mostly. I still notice the way that I eat. I still lean towards eating a low-carb diet because I feel good eating higher fats and protein. I don’t feel that great eating sugary carbohydrate foods.

Intuitive Eating

I also have a ton of food sensitivities, and that’s worth mentioning because I have a flare-up in which I’m sniffling and sneezing, and my stomach is upset, which sucks. A lot of my food choices are driven by my desire to avoid feeling physically uncomfortable. A deeper understanding of intuitive eating versus constantly measuring what I’m eating and not allowing myself to eat certain foods that I want but denying myself them because I’m afraid I’m going to gain weight.

MGU 385 | Feel Pretty Without Makeup

Feel Pretty Without Makeup: We need constant reminders of our worthiness.

 

It’s interesting because since I started practicing more of this intuitive eating, I have found balance in my body. I don’t know how much I weigh. I feel very triggered by knowing my weight, so I don’t weigh myself. My body now, the shape of it, has been very stable, and I’m heavier than I think I want to be. I’m heavier than I feel comfortable.

When I sit down in front of this camera or when I look back at footage of videos that I shoot for this show or for other things, I often feel like, “I wish I looked a little slimmer. I wish I looked less inflamed. I wish my arms were smaller, my face was thinner, and my stomach were less round.” That discomfort and those desires don’t feel like they are part of me. I feel like somebody else imposed those thoughts onto me.

When I don’t look at myself on camera, I don’t have those thoughts. I have started avoiding looking in the mirror because I can find it triggering. When I don’t look in the mirror, I feel this neutrality. I feel comfort and at ease. If I’m not sneezing or in an uncomfortable version of being bloated with gastrointestinal issues, if those aren’t there if I don’t have inflammation or anything, I can find a sense of ease. It’s one of the first times in my life I have ever felt that because I spent so much of my life controlling food. I also feel senses of joy and pleasure around food in a wonderful way.

It’s tricky for me, specifically with my food sensitivities. This is very specific to my experience. I don’t know how many other people go through this. I’m at my parent’s house in Massachusetts and have been eating very intuitively, and something set off my food sensitivities, and that’s why I’m sneezing, sniffling, blowing my nose, and my ears feel itchy. I feel tired. It’s awful, and that’s where it feels frustrating. It’s like, “I felt like I was eating intuitively, and yet somehow it’s still not the harmony, the balance, the right thing for me.” That I wonder too, how much is the result of all these old choices? How much of that could be ripple effects?

When I was struggling with disordered eating, I would read how there were long-term impacts of purging. There were long-term impacts of not eating like starving yourself. At the time, it didn’t matter because I thought, “I’m getting the results that I want now,” and that’s what’s important to me. All these years later, I wonder, “Did I mess up my gut biome?” I have tried to rebalance it.

The way that I feel now has inspired me to be better about taking Athletic Greens, the AG1 powder that they are sponsoring the show. One of the things I love about that product is that it has probiotics and all these other things. I went through ingredient by ingredient to make sure nothing was going to set off my food sensitivities, and to my knowledge, it’s not.

As I have mentioned in the ads for it, there are 75 ingredients in it, and that’s tricky for me because any one of those could be a trigger. Right before I started recording this episode, I was thinking, “I’m going to walk my talk, and I’m going to get back on track with taking my AG1 because maybe that will help balance me out.

Inspiration

My aim in this episode is to be incredibly transparent about my experience and also to give some perspective to you as well. As I mentioned that this episode was inspired by somebody who reached out to me on Instagram after seeing this clip from the other podcast I was on. This person asked me a question which was, “Any tips on how to feel “pretty” with no makeup?”

I was driving at the time. I was on my road trip. I sent a voice memo back to this person and asked for some more specifics, and I haven’t listened to their response yet. They also sent me back a response. I’m not going to share it publicly. I’m going to keep their name and words private but I’m going to pause this recording to listen to what they said, and then I’m going to come back and give you the response that I would give directly to them but also, I thought I might as well give that to you too. Let me take listen to it.

I finished listening to these voice memos and feel very moved by them. I felt incredibly moved to get that first text-based question about, “How to feel pretty without wearing makeup,” because most people don’t ask these types of questions. They might listen to a podcast episode or see something on social media and think about it but it’s hard to be vulnerable and ask somebody for advice like this. I felt an energetic draw to this person and gratitude. It got me thinking. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I don’t still don’t feel like I have all the answers.

I would rather be uncomfortable and authentic than comfortable and inauthentic. Share on X

Worthiness

I am going to share a little bit more about what I heard from this message. I’m going to share perspectives of my own experiences, and then I’m also going to share some resources that I believe I have shared in other episodes but I couldn’t share enough because I almost feel like we, as human beings, in this society now need constant reminders of our worthiness.

This came up in an episode with Lena Winslow. I highly recommend it because worthiness is a huge theme. To hear Lena talk about worthiness amongst everything she has gone through in her life up until that time, where we recorded that, is remarkable and humbling. It’s a great reminder of how many people don’t feel worthy, and that is the core of so much of this, that not enoughness or that comparison trap that we get into over and over again.

This message on Instagram is related to this makeup and how this person said that they wear makeup mostly when they are with friends, even though their friends don’t wear makeup. This person’s friends have said that they don’t feel the need to wear makeup but this person still feels the need to wear makeup around them. This person believes that these feelings stem from their mother, who makes comments about them looking prettier with makeup, compliments them a lot when they are wearing makeup, and says that this person looks better with makeup.

I want to acknowledge anybody who can have a level of self-awareness like this. This is beautiful, and I use the word beautiful in a very different context than prettiness. Beautiful in this deep honorable way. I can’t relate to this person’s exact experience. What I can relate to is looking back on my life in terms of how I look as a woman and my experience of presenting myself as a woman, and a lot of the feelings I had about my body, my size, and my image.

I believe I have been impacted by the way that my mother has talked about me, much like this person on Instagram, as well as how my mother has talked about herself. This takes a lot of self-awareness because it took me a long time to make these connections. I have noticed a lot on this trip, spending time with my mother. I have noticed that over the last few years, hearing how my mother talks about herself. A lot of times, very negatively, and the pressure that she puts on herself. I have wondered how much she did that throughout my life. Has she always been that way?

The first time I learned about makeup was through my mom. I remember she would bring back from the city where she worked. She would come home from a work day and have a bag of makeup. I tried it on, and how that felt cool and empowering. A lot of little girls go through that. Maybe boys do or some boys yearn for that but are not socially allowed to experiment with makeup.

Anyone who’s drawn to it seems intriguing, depending on when you grew up. I didn’t grow up with social media. I can’t imagine what it’s like these days because you have young teenagers doing makeup tutorials. I didn’t have that growing up but I had magazines, TV shows, and various forms of media where I would see women presented in a certain way.

I remember Britney Spears. I felt so enamored by her. I would try to do my hair the same way that she did it and my makeup. I would try to copy her moves in her music videos. That happens for many girls. It’s a very common thing. With makeup, I remember buying this one foundation, it’s probably CoverGirl or something. My mom bought it for me, and I experimented with it, and it wasn’t the right shade for my skin. I’m fairly certain. It didn’t look right.

I would buy cheap makeup in high school and probably college. They would sell makeup for a few dollars or something, so it was accessible. My friends and I would try things out and wear them a lot. I remember in my mid to late teens. At some point, I lost a lot of interest, and now the only times that I wear makeup is if I go to a meeting. I have a big meeting coming up in New York City, and I’m going to wear makeup for that because I feel more confident, which is an interesting thing to examine. This is something that came up in this message I got on social media.

I also feel like it’s the standard and settings like that, which is interesting because also like this person shared with me on Instagram, I don’t wear a ton of makeup. I have the smallest little pouch of it. My makeup fits in my hand. I have a little bit more. It’s probably expired. Sometime last time, I replenish my makeup kit and got the basics, which were mascara, foundation, and bronzer. I liked bronzer for some reason.

MGU 385 | Feel Pretty Without Makeup

Feel Pretty Without Makeup: If you can eat the way you just enjoy, that’s probably the most sustainable way to go. But then you have to develop a confident relationship with your body, and that’s the hardest part.

 

This eye shadow my friend gave me, which is subtle. It’s shimmering. It’s a highlighter. Not technically an eye shadow. I have an eye pencil, which is my least favorite. I feel like I don’t fully understand how to put it on. An eyeliner can make or break your look because if you put it on the wrong way, it can be very unflattering, in my opinion. That might be it. Basically, highlight parts of my face but I have noticed that when I put on makeup, I don’t feel like myself anymore. It’s interesting that I think about the confidence side of things, “If I don’t feel like myself, then why am I more confident? Does that mean that I don’t feel confident when I’m myself?” That wouldn’t be a surprise that wouldn’t be a stretch, would it?

I have another event coming up. I might wear makeup for that. I usually curl my hair. I started wearing my hair up almost all the time. A few years ago, every once in a while, I stopped and thought about that. I don’t like wearing my hair down, and I don’t feel confident about it because I rarely brush my hair. I only wash my hair maybe once a week, and that’s recommended by hairdressers but I will wash my hair If I’m going out. I will wash my hair if I need to take it down from a bun.

If I’m by myself and have nothing business-related, I’m doing video stuff. I will wear my hair up and no makeup. That’s comfortable to me. When I go out to conferences, meetings, special occasions or maybe sometimes with my friends, I will put on some makeup, take down my hair, wash it, brush it, and maybe curl it. Curling my hair is the ultimate confident thing for me, which is interesting. I don’t like the way my hair looks down and straight brushed, especially if I haven’t gotten it cut. I get my hair cut every 6 to 9 months on average because I don’t like taking care of my hair.

Going back to the mother connection. My mother doesn’t wear a lot of makeup frequently, and I don’t have many memories of her commenting. If I were to wear makeup more often, I also don’t see my mom that much. Usually, it’s when I visit out here, which is once a year. I imagine that it would have to be the whole picture for my mom to comment on me. If I was wearing my casual clothing with my hair up and I put on my natural makeup, she probably wouldn’t know the difference. If I did my hair and changed my clothing, then she would notice and comment on it.

I don’t know if she would say that I looked prettier. She would like to emphasize how nice I looked. She has a fixation on hair, which is interesting to me. I remembered many years ago, I did this video and was excited about the opportunity I had to do this video project. I sent it to her, and she started pointing out my hair, how long it was, and how it looked raggy, and she was laughing at me.

Diet

That’s my experience with my mom. She doesn’t hold back. She somehow feels extremely comfortable making fun of my appearance. My weight has been the biggest thing that she’s commented on, though, and that has been challenging. This is where I identify with this Instagram message because my weight has fluctuated so much throughout my life, and it’s probably fluctuated because I have tried dieting so much.

Statistically, people gain the weight back shortly after dieting and oftentimes gain more weight. I could be wrong about that. I know people will gain weight back after dieting. It’s hard to keep weight off unless perhaps surgery intervenes or if you are able to keep up the diet long-term. I remember reading about this when I did my ketogenic cookbook. I was researching objections to the keto diet and struggles with the keto diet, and it’s something that I addressed in the Q&A section of my book that it was hard to maintain eating keto.

I found that interesting at the time because when I wrote the book, I had maintained the keto diet for at least a year, and my body maintained the weight loss. Once I stopped doing it, I put the weight back on. I don’t know if it’s the diet, that would be hard. For those that are curious, like I said, I still feel very drawn to that way of eating because my body feels good, not because of weight loss but it’s the inflammation.

I have noticed about my body that generally, a lot of the weight that I carry is from inflammation from certain foods. It’s tough because I like some of the foods that inflame my body. It’s a juggle. I struggle with vegan keto food options, and I’m very particular about textures and specific tastes. There are a lot of vegan keto foods that I’m repulsed by, or they mess with my stomach. It has been hard for me to maintain vegan keto because of that.

That has been my experience with it but I bring this up because if you look at something like keto as a weight loss diet versus a diet that makes you feel good, those are two different things. Weight loss from research is so hard to maintain, and that’s why intuitive eating feels appealing because if you can eat the way you enjoy, that’s probably the most sustainable way to go but then you have to develop a confident relationship with your body, and that’s the hardest part. That’s where I am now.

Practice more intuitive eating and you’ll find balance in your body. Share on X

Sadly, we don’t get comments from family members. We get comments from strangers these days. I imagine I’m not the only one that fears that. Sometimes I think about how I don’t post that much on social media. I haven’t uploaded videos from these episodes to the Wellevatr YouTube channel over the years.

That is, in my belief, due to time and energy. Although I mentioned another sponsor of the show, Zencastr has made it a lot easier. I’m working my way towards uploading all the videos to get up to date and start consistently posting the videos on YouTube but it does feel vulnerable and scary because I wonder if the people who used to watch me when I had the Eco-Vegan Gal, YouTube channel are going to come over to this channel and think I gained weight, and that’s a fear in my mind.

There are ways in which I can hide that. For instance, if I do my hair in a more flattering way, I feel like it makes my face look different than now my hair has been truly messy bun. It hasn’t been washed yet, so it looks a little greasy. I have gray hair now. Not that much yet, but I have gray hair. I am wearing a shirt that shows some skin underneath my armpits. If I close it, it looks like an extra skin. My arms, I haven’t worked out in a little bit. I could go on and on but all the things that I’m afraid of people noticing about myself. If I’m able to do that exercise, as I did, if I take the time to be aware of that, I can ask myself, “Why does it matter? Truly, who cares?”

I hope that you reflecting on this in real-time with me because who cares? Even with my mom. Let’s go back to that because I know this was a big challenge for this Instagram comment or a Messenger. This is a challenge for a lot of people, mothers, fathers, parent figures, friends or whoever. Anyone in your life that you can think of being critical of your appearance.

Think about them. One of the huge benefits of being an adult, although you could do this at any age, is having the perspective to say to yourself, “It doesn’t matter.” You have to understand that their comments towards you usually have nothing to do with you. That’s very simple as a phrase but if you stop and meditate on that, think about it.

For me, with my mother, it was threatening most of my life. I still have some work to do around this. Something I want to address in therapy now that I’m seeing a therapist again and asking myself, “Why does her opinion matter to me?” I wonder if it matters because I’m used to it mattering because a mother, for me, was somebody who I was dependent on to take care of me, who was giving me love. Saying those things to me made her love feel conditional because it was this pressure to get her approval.

If she was commenting on those things, I worried that I would lose her approval, lose her care, and that’s very threatening to you. Any parental figure in your life, as a child, you are depending on them as a teenager in many cases. It depends on your dynamic but that feels like a big threat. It feels like in our best interest to change ourselves to win their love. That same dynamic can play out in our romantic relationships for any gender or lack of gender, sexuality or whoever you are, it is very common to feel like you need to look a certain way to get the love from another person.

I think that not only is this repeated in our family lives and our friendships, because what can be very tricky is there’s the self-work that you can do on your awareness, self-love, and confidence. At the second you step into a social situation with family, friends or romantic partners, you are faced with another battle because now you are in the midst of their opinions about themselves and how you look.

I wonder now, as an adult, how hard that was and how often I would hear messages as I said about my mother not liking the way that she looked and thinking to myself, “She seems to be critical of me. She’s critical of herself.” I would hear her talking to this day. She talks about other people all the time. My mother is deeply concerned about appearance.

No wonder I’m hard on myself. No wonder I feel almost rebellious and not wearing makeup, intuitive eating, and allowing my body to get softer. No wonder, despite that feeling comfortable for me privately when I’m around other people, I feel uncomfortable. When I’m on camera, I feel uncomfortable. I’m able to push through that discomfort because my comfort is of utmost importance but it feels a little bit rebellious.

MGU 385 | Feel Pretty Without Makeup

Feel Pretty Without Makeup: When you put so much makeup on your face, you’ll feel like you’re not yourself anymore. It’s interesting that you feel more confident when you’re not being your true self.

 

I don’t want to forget to share this little eye-opener, which I saw in a TikTok video. I saved it to my devices because I thought it was so insightful. A lot of people are assuming. I’m going back to the Kardashians. There’s an assumption that thinness is going to be the next trend because we see the Kardashians either removing or reducing their BBLs, which has never made sense to me. I have never felt even an inkling of that.

I didn’t want to figure out an exercise that could make my butt look rounder. I have a very flat butt, and so I was like, “All these girls are talking about squats.” I would think about that when I was doing squats or various exercises. I was into bar classes, hot yoga, HIT, and all that stuff for a while, and my ass never changed. I gave up on that as I probably would need surgery to get a rounder behind. I’m not interested in raise but a lot of people are or were.

Now the Kardashians switched things around, and some people speculate that they are constantly changing their appearance to stay in a place of status. For a while, BBLs were so expensive and invasive surgically that only a small percentage of people were able to afford to do it, and then they became more accessible as they became more popular, and people were willing to go to all sorts of lengths to get surgery like that.

Once they became more common, the Kardashians were no longer interested in them, and now they seem to be going the opposite trend. People are starting to suspect that they are creating a new trend of thinness, much like we had in the ‘90s. A lot of people are afraid of that because the thinness we had in the ‘90s amongst celebrities was hard to achieve.

I’m drawn to things like this because that makes sense. I’m going to have some resources for you. Those will all be at Wellevatr.com. This girl, I think her account is @Umnia_. My recollection with the main point of this woman’s video is that looking like you don’t care about your appearance is going to become the new trend, and that is because it’s a privilege not to be able to care.

That video has been sitting with me because I find myself all the time not wanting to care and priding myself sometimes like feeling a little better than, to be honest, like, “If I can get to the point where I don’t care what other people think.” My gray hair was a big element of this because when my gray hair first started coming in prevalently, I used to pluck it out 1 by 1.

Every day I looked in the mirror, pluck out my gray hair, and that was because I didn’t want to dye my hair. I don’t like dyeing my hair, and it’s so expensive. I thought I was going to keep plucking it out, and then I wondered, “Maybe this isn’t so good to be plucking hair out but it wasn’t coming in that fast.” At a certain point, I let it go. I have a couple of pieces at the very top of my hairline that drives me nuts because they are short until they spring out or stick out. I have strands. They are almost as if they are highlights in my hair. Very subtle.

At some point, it will go completely gray. I don’t know how long that will take. I don’t know what it’s going to look like but I’m curious. This was a big shift for me because most people that I know, including my mother, dyed their hair so that they didn’t show their grays. I have to ask the question myself, “why? Why are women so concerned when it seems that men can very freely show their grays?” Not all men. I have met men that are self-conscious about their gray hair but it seems more culturally acceptable for men to have that salt and pepper hair and then to eventually go all gray, and it’s deemed as being attractive. Whereas it seemed rare for gray hair to look cool.

Kim Kardashian comes up again because she is purposely dyed her hair all gray or a shade similar to gray in the past. I thought it looked cool. I found myself noticing that every time a woman had not dyed her hair and allowed it to be the natural color, I thought that it looked amazing. Especially all gray hair on a woman who’s in her 40s or 50s or under this “old standard.” I don’t even know what age is socially acceptable for women to go gray. Probably 70s or 80s.

I would rather risk men finding me attractive and women thinking I didn’t look very good to them. I would rather that because I don’t want to play pretend. I don’t want to perform. If I perform, I want it to be a performance that is a deep nourishing creative act but I don’t want my personal life to be a performance. I don’t want social media to be a performance. However, that in itself is a privilege because this TikTok video was saying that some people feel like they have to perform. They have to fit into societal norms. They have to please people visually.

We don't just get comments from family members. We get comments from strangers these days because of social media. Share on X

She even pointed out how some women have the luxury and the privilege to be single because they have enough money to pay for their lives. I thought that was interesting. I’m not married, so I have that privilege. I make my own money. Maybe that in itself is something worth considering if we do get to the point where it seems socially acceptable and trendy to have messy hair, gray hair, and not seem like you care about your clothes or whatever else.

The things that I naturally do may become trendy, which sounds appealing to me because then I will be socially acceptable. However, if that’s associated with privilege and status, that’s concerning to me because then I almost feel like I will be uncomfortable with that. I don’t want people to perceive me as being better than them.

To me, that has been the benefit of not wearing makeup or doing my hair. It’s associated with being down-to-earth, and it’s associated with not trying to fit in and not trying to look like the prettiest woman in the room. There’s a power associated with being pretty, and that goes back to this big topic. To answer this person’s question, you have to examine what pretty means to you.

You’ve already done a great job starting with acknowledging the roots of the pressure that your mother put on you and the validation you got from your mother by wearing makeup. Perhaps validation is the connection that when you wear makeup, you can get the validation you deeply crave when you wear certain clothes, do your hair or dye your hair, whatever it is. When you lose weight, a lot of that is associated with approval personally and professionally but there’s nothing wrong with that.

That’s the other big key. If you want to wear makeup or if you feel more confident wearing makeup, that’s not a weakness. That may be survival. The big point of this TikTok video is that maybe you wear makeup to survive with your mother because you still associate her with survival. Maybe you wear makeup around your friends, even if they don’t wear makeup because being confident feels like survival or maybe feeling confident socially helps you make it through the conversations.

My awareness of introversion, neurodivergence, and the struggles that people have with social anxiety has painted this whole picture as I do whatever it takes to get by. That’s okay. Confidence is important because when we don’t feel confident, it can feel incredibly stressful. It can wane on us. Social anxiety is not in the moment socially. It’s the ripple effects that have on you beyond that social situation. You might be thinking about that night that you didn’t feel confident for days, weeks, months or even years, and that’s not great for your mental health.

There is so much at play here. This is not an easy thing. My relationship with makeup has changed a lot. I still wear it sometimes. I’m not anti-makeup. I understand why I wear it, and I try not to feel shame with or without makeup. That’s also the big key here. Makeup is a tool. Makeup is something I use with intention, and it may change over time.

As beauty trends change, our relationships with everything can change. My relationship with my hair could change. I might decide to dye my hair and not have gray hair at a certain point. That’s okay. All of this is okay. Even my discomfort with my body is okay because that in itself is natural and human. The answer here for the reader, for the person who messaged me on Instagram, all of that is okay.

It’s reflection. It’s about coming down to what’s important to you, understanding your whys, looking at the roots, examining it, and determining what’s best for you and not being attached to that in the long run. What are your values? I would ask. For me, my value is authenticity, kindness, love, compassion, and intelligence. I value those ways more than appearance.

I feel like society is the other way around, though, for women at least, and this could be a gender issue too. Women have been conditioned into placing so much importance on their appearance. Some people think that that’s a power play to keep women more focused on their appearance than their intelligence. That’s where some of this rebelliousness comes in and the feminist side of things.

MGU 385 | Feel Pretty Without Makeup

Feel Pretty Without Makeup: If you look at something like keto as a weight loss diet versus a diet that makes you feel good. Those are two different things. Weight loss from research is just so hard to maintain.

 

It may think, “I was so much rather read a book, make a show, and take care of myself than sit in front of the mirror for an hour, prepping myself to look a certain way because that hour is precious to me. I value time and effort. I know that I don’t always have a lot of energy, so why would I spend my time and energy on something? It doesn’t matter to me. It matters more to the other people, so I value myself and my needs.”

That’s how I have developed more confidence. It’s not fully confident but it’s more confident and it’s growing confidence. It has been a journey based on what matters to me. That would be my advice to you is to continue down this journey of the roots of your feelings, the experiences that you’ve had, the way that you feel in these situations, and the way that makeup makes you feel.

Do your best to remove the judgment, shame, and the shoulds from it, and go with what makes you feel your best on a deep level as much as you possibly can. Know that it’s a journey and that you have plenty of time to continue experimenting with this and noticing how you feel based on the scenarios that you are in and the actions that you take.

I did mention some resources that I want to share with you. First and foremost, Jessica DeFino. She has an incredible newsletter. I had wished that I had sat down and binge-read her newsletters because she is so good at articulating a lot of the things that I have discussed. I am going to go through my library of books that have impacted me. A lot of them are directed toward women but if you are not a woman, if you don’t identify as a woman, let’s not make this a gender issue.

You still can find value even if they are using gender-specific language. I hope that you will still give them a try because they make some great points. The authors may not have been as aware or as prioritized around gender but I don’t believe this to be a strict gender issue. A lot of resources for you. If you have more, let me know, and I can add them.

I would love to build upon this. If you have more questions that I can address in another part of this episode or if you have something unrelated that you would love me to explore on the show, I would love to hear from you truly. Send me a direct message or email, or come to my community, Beyond Measure. This community was developed largely in part to the topic of this episode, which was that I wanted to create a place where I could talk to people without judgment.

As best as I possibly could, I wanted to create a safe place for other people to go and feel like they weren’t being judged based on their appearance or their status. I wanted to honor people beyond any type of measurement of age, money, weight, and whatever else comes into play when it comes to measurements. That’s what Beyond Measure means to me.

I developed a membership. It’s private and protected. It’s full of amazing people. It’s free. Probably won’t always be free because there are costs involved that I would like to offset. One day, I imagine I will charge for it or it might not. I don’t know yet but regardless, you are welcome to join to try it out. We meet every single week. We discuss all different topics. We work on our well-being together and connect with each other as human beings.

You don’t even have to show up with your voice or video. You can sit there and be present. You can sit there and chat with us through the comments like you can make it whatever you would like. If you want to find a safe, nourishing place, come join me there. It’s also a great way to chat with me more often. I’m going to link to Beyond Measure at Wellevatr.com. I’m wishing you the very best with your journey, wherever it may be now. I hope that this has given you some direction, comfort or insight so that you can continue down this path of self-discovery. Until next time. Thanks for reading.

 

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