I can't deal with make-up. The only make-up that I can truly stand behind is chap stick, because of its mystifying healing powers, and I don't think that even qualifies. Make-up, overall, is the worst.

First of all, I don't know how to use it. I distinctly remember a night, just a week after I turned 16, when I knew the boy I liked was about to ask me out and I wanted to look especially pretty. So, after adding jewelry and some semi-fancy hair bobby pins to my normal high school teenager look, I turned to make-up.

I tried to apply some liquid foundation that probably didn't match my skin tone, I smudged my pink lip gloss around the corners of my mouth and on my teeth, I applied way more blush to one side of my face than to the other and, to top it all off, I somehow managed to smudge my eye liner along the tops of my cheeks in stripes. Ultimately, I looked more like a football player prepping for the homecoming game than a girl trying to get a guy to find her attractive. In the last five years, my skills haven't really improved much.

It's not that I haven't tried either. I've watched make-up tutorials; I've glanced over at my friends applying theirs in the dressing room before performances with the theatre; I've even asked others to do mine for me while I watched the process. I went to Mary Kay events with one of my friends! I guess I don't have a steady hand, or the hand-eye coordination, or the patience. Whatever the reason is, it just does not work for me.

My lack of confidence in my applying abilities drastically hinders my motivation to wear it. My average is probably about once a week, and even then it's mostly limited to mascara and lip gloss. The eye shadow has proven to not really be my friend either, so that's generally out.

So that's the biggest issue. A smaller side issue is that make up can be expensive and we have to replace it maybe once a year, but the biggest issue for me is how it makes me feel.

Sure, when I first put it on, if successful, my eyelashes are fuller, my skin looks cleaner, and my lips look brighter. There's a sense of accomplishment. Then, I think to myself or someone else tells me: I look prettier with make-up.

I don't like that. I don't like feeling like I have to use a combination of expensive powders and liquids to improve the way I look. I want to be beautiful without it. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and feel pretty without all that. Men don't have to wear makeup to fit into societal norms. People don't generally tell a man they have to add some blush before a big interview to get the job or add some lip color for a formal event to impress their date.

Who decided that in order to be beautiful we have to enhance our features? Why can't we be beautiful the way we look without an obligation to alter our facial features?

I have a friend who recently told me she contours her chin to make herself feel less self-conscious about it. My friend is stunning, but some commercial or TV show or perhaps even friend along the way made her feel as if she had to correct herself. Someone gave her the impression that she is not good enough naturally, and her face needs to be fixed somehow.

Ladies, listen to me. You are beautiful the way you look right now. If you are reading this after a nap or right before jetting out the door to meet a foreign dignitary, you are beautiful. If makeup makes you feel better about yourself, then use it. But if you're wearing it because you feel you have to, then I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry the world tells us we need it. Our little imperfections and blemishes are what make us unique.

As I am typing this, I am wearing make-up. And I hate that. I am not at my prettiest when my face is caked with cover up and eye shadow and all that other stuff.

I am prettiest when I am laughing. I am prettiest when I am surrounded by people who make me happy or when I am doing what I love. I am prettiest when I am running around the backyard with my dog or spending my afternoon baking with my sister.

I don't want anyone to tell me I need makeup to be pretty, because I don't. You don't either.