Makeup. Historically, it was a matter of girls using berries to add color to their lips and cheeks, but now we cake our faces with tons of chemicals to achieve a perceived idea of beauty. We get up early to put it on, making sure we have perfectly lined and contoured our faces. So many of us feel a need to put it on, like we are unattractive without it. In reality, this is what we believe, degrading ourselves to the idea that the only way we can achieve near perfection is to use light and shadow to change the shape of our faces.

I am one of the most guilty. No, I do not contour my face or cake on foundation, but I know that without a little bit of eyeliner I do not feel nearly as attractive. Moreover, personally, my skin has always been one of my biggest insecurities, so much so that I almost always feel the need to have powder with me. And honestly, thinking about my dependence on this bunch of chemicals to feel confident about showing my face makes me sad. Even more so, I hear how girls talk about themselves without makeup on — even in joking, they say how they look awful without it and let no one see behind the quite literal mask they wear.

I recently was talking to one of my best guy friends about makeup. He, and the others with us, told me how much they can’t stand it. They talked about how much they hate to see girls so insecure and dependent on makeup, when in reality being comfortable in our own skin is what really makes us attractive to males.

This is not to say that men don't like makeup — they do, but only to an extent. What these males stressed to me was to wear makeup for myself, because I love it; not because I need it to feel attractive.

They asked me this and now I will ask you: If a girl can’t respect herself for who she is, then how can we respect her? This question has really stuck with me the past week and I have started to notice more what girls say about themselves. Girls that I see as so pretty and gorgeous just hanging out in the dorms with no makeup talk about their undone faces with such cruelty, and I honestly did not recognize it before. I did not realize how much even I depend on makeup. I schedule time to put it on every day and I am not the only one. No, I may not look as photo perfect without makeup as I do with it, but to what extent is it allowable for me to want to wear it?

I probably won’t completely stop wearing makeup. Nor am I encouraging girls to stop wearing it. I am just asking us girls to look at ourselves and see if we feel we need it to be attractive. Do you find yourself talking to someone about the way you look today and not saying that we look like crap without makeup? Because if we feel that our source of beauty is from bottles and compacts, then really it is not us that is beautiful; it's the the way we arrange chemicals that is.

It makes me sad that I have let myself become so hooked on the way makeup makes me look. More than that, though, it breaks my heart to see girls I love and cherish talk about themselves as though they are not attractive unless they are in makeup. Then I think about my future daughters and nieces and so on. What if they feel how I do? That the only way I can go out — even with all girls — is when I have my makeup on?

I want so much for the women I love to be able to see the beauty that I see, that most males see, without makeup. I told my guy friends about my insecurity about my skin and what they told me is: so what? You may have pimples, but you still are beautiful. It is not the makeup that makes you beautiful; it is you. Wear makeup for yourself, to express yourself; not to complete who you think you ought to look like.