Okay, so we can all agree that the title of this article is ridiculous, right? Right???

Apparently not.

To start out, I want to say that this is not a pro-makeup or anti-makeup persuasive essay. This is me sharing what I think is an important message, with an audience that I believe needs to hear it one more time.

A few weeks ago, I was taking finals at my college, this was not the time to primp myself like I normally would, straightening my hair and winging my eyeliner to the heavens, you know the look. In lieu of the most horrible time of the year, I dropped the beauty routine to get in an extra hour of studying a day and to get to sleep earlier rather than spending the time wiping the goo off my face. As a result of finals week and the fact that I went straight from school one week to a full-time summer job the next, I haven't been as concerned with my looks as I usually am.

Through this little accidental cleanse, I discovered something important: I am not ugly.

When I used to take off my makeup at the end of the day or see myself without my hair done after a shower when it was dry, I used to not want to look at myself that much until I was "bettering" my looks with a flat iron or mascara wand. It's a rough thing to look in the mirror and not want to keep looking until you think that you will look better. Now, I am not saying that I thought I looked like the creature from the black lagoon, but I just wasn't all that comfortable with going out and being au naturale. I felt like I needed something to be done to make myself presentable. So I made a routine out of straightening my hair after I washed it and waking up half an hour earlier than needed just to do a full face of makeup.

After some time, this grew to be a bit tiresome. But I had become the girl known for her sharp winged liner and her "poppin'" highlight. I felt like if I gave this up, that people would either see me as a phony or that they would just think I was a little less interesting.

Herein lied the problem:

There was no explicit rule that said that I would have no friends and my boyfriend wouldn't love me if I stopped caring so much about how I looked, but for some reason I had it written in my head that maybe those things would happen if I did not keep everything up.

So how did I get rid of these thoughts?

I just stopped.

I faced the baseless fear and looked inward at why I was doing this. Did I really want to get up early to put some mascara on and contour my cheeks? Well, yes, I think makeup can be an art, and I liked making my face the canvas, it was really fun. However, this was not the deal 100% of the time. Sometimes I just wanted to sleep a little more, or maybe not rush as much before hanging out with people to make sure I was all "put together."

What I'm trying to say is, wearing makeup or not wearing makeup, should be a decision that is made by yourself, for yourself. Do what you want to do, and you'll look great doing it.