Hey, i’m Maddie, and I have a problem with today’s society. A big one. Society says that a truly beautiful woman is one with no flaws. A beautiful woman is thin, with big boobs, big hair, giant eyes, and wrinkle- and blemish-free, youthful face. Something like this:

Now, clearly we aren’t all blessed with J-Lo’s perfect completion, olive skin-tone, and hourglass figure. Fortunately for the average women, like myself, there are products out there that promise to alter our appearances so that we, too, may be beautiful.

We are literally bombarded with advertisements promising that through the use of their products, we can look like that hot movie star, actress, or model that we idolize in the media.

It’s almost as if the less natural we are, the more beautiful we become. In my Women’s Studies class at Weber State University, we discussed how these advertisements display women’s bodies as a series of flaws in need of fixing, and then offer us a “solution” to these flaws.

The problem I have with this is that it doesn’t have to be this way. The media tells us what is beautiful, and we blindly obey and then conform ourselves so that society will accept us as beautiful. But enough is enough. I am sick and tired of being told that I should hate my body the way it is and that the only way for me to be beautiful is through the alteration and modification of my natural features by the use of cosmetics.

This is why I’ve decided to conduct my Anti-Makeup experiment. I am throwing down my mascara wand for one week. That’s right, NO MAKEUP for seven days. During this week, I am going to pay close attention to any changes in the way people interact with me- this includes number of “check-outs” (yes, boys, it is that obvious), comments such as “are you not feeling well?”, and also my own self-talk. I will be posting my findings here, so stay with me as we find out just how much value society places on “beauty.”