Why MakeuplessMonday?
Oct 10, 2019Why Makeupless Monday?
This question keeps coming up across the community, and I love it!
So why did you create #makeuplessmonday?
I had to think about it for a while, because for so many years I have been sharing this thought process privately with clients. I had only really recently thought about going beyond my inner circle and clients since Fall of last year. Have you ever thought, “If only I could __________, then that might help other people that I will never have the chance to meet?” I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. Maybe you see something that you feel needs to be addressed, but you aren’t quite sure that what you have to say will make an impact. Maybe your heart will just end up out there in the vast abyss of knowledge that is available? The first #makeuplessmonday video that I shared was just 9 weeks ago, and my honest intention with the first post was the accumulated passion of years with working in makeup and image branding. I just needed to “come clean” so to speak. We all have imperfections, and for the first few years of my career it was highly popluar to seek out imperfections and fix them. Fix them with makeup. Fix them in photoshop. Fix them through filters. But definitely fix them, don’t just leave them there, because no one wants to see that or be distracted by it. Covering up imperfections is such an easy trap to fall into. I mean, myself included. It’s not that makeup itself is dangerous. It is a tool. A beautiful, wonderful, glorious tool that has helped myself and many others create an income and a particular lifestyle that keeps a calendar unlike any other. I don’t sit in an office all day. Makeup is about 25% of what I actually do with clients, but that 25% is the key to the other 75%. If I can truly help someone through a series of makeup trainings, learn to love themselves with or without makeup, then they win. I mean really win. Once you gain what I consider to be a core competency for personal branding in television, film, social media you gain a confidence that can not be broken. My clients are truly the face of their own brand.
The main concept to grasp here is not how I specifically train clients to execute a proper makeup application wether I am applying their makeup or not. That specific process relies on exactly what the client wants to accomplish with their brand and therefore, is tailor made.. The main concept has been and always will be confidence. Learning to be confident without makeup comes easy for some, not for most. Most of us grew up in an environment where perfection was put on a pedestal. I still remember sitting at a Merle Norman makeup counter when I was 14 years old for my first makeover. My life was forever changed by the knowledge of what an eyebrow pencil could do for me. It was glorious. I no longer had to look like “pain level 6,” on the intake sheet in the emergency room. (For those of you who have seen it, you know that is the wincing smiley face caricature. I literally have check marks for brows.) Anyway, that brow pencil changed my life. I had flipped through so many Seventeen magazines and saw that women were supposed to have full eyebrows. At least, the women who were good enough to be in the pictures did. I started using that brow pencil immediately and my confidence rose. This went on for a few years until I found that if I ran low on my brow pencil, sometimes I wouldn’t even want to leave the house. I was in High School. Seriously, HIGH SCHOOL. You would think I wouldn’t leave the house for fear of a big test, or even fear of being bullied. No, no, no, no, no…..I didn’t want to leave the house without proper eyebrows. So I was no longer confident without them. I relay this story with every one of my makeup clients. All of them, male or female. So some of you have heard this eyebrow tale before.
My time spent with clients is typically the inverse of what they initially think going into the relationship. For many of my clients, I am not the first consultant that has worked with them. Many other consultants will walk in, and start with the list of things that need to be changed, and say, “See ya next quarter!” I am not there to fix fix them. I am not annoyed by imperfections, in fact, I celebrate them. If it bothers you, I will help you see what you need to see in the mirror to be confident for a time. My main goal, though, is to get you to a place where that imperfection no longer controls a portion of your mental energy or effort. If you spend an extra 3 minutes on your application to contour away your pain, and then another 5 minutes touching that up through a photo shoot or show set, you have 8 minutes of physical application. Now that does not seem like a lot of time does it? We aren’t done. I you are truly bothered by the imperfection there are more items to consider. How many minutes did you worry about that initial application looking right? I mean you did add things to your face that are not naturally there, so will it look right? How many minutes were you thinking about makeup in general? How many minutes were you thinking about your makeup application while you were performing your on camera duties? How often were you checking the monitor, or photo relay feedback, were you constantly looking in the mirror? Did you make sure to show up with a full length mirror? What were you supposed to be doing instead of constantly checking that counter on your nose? Acting? Dancing? Story telling? How much confidence do you think escaped like a vapor during all of that worry? You would be wrong if you thought that it didn’t show through in your performance. I know, because that is what I am looking for.
So why am I telling you all of this? Because I know that 75% of your confidence is waiting for you to mend the brokenness of that first 25%. Gaining the confidence of that first 25% is the hardest paradigm to shift through. For some, it is only a matter of 6 weeks, but for others it takes years. I was one that took years. I can not stress this enough, when you learn to become confident without makeup, you no longer lose any of that time or mental energy with worry. You get that energy back. What may have accumulated to 30 minutes of distractions, is now zero minutes plus pure confidence. You know you look incredible without makeup, so now makeup is only a tool to enhance who you truly are, not a means of covering yourself up. Only then will you have the ability to work on the other 75% of your confidence, your brand, your image, your self image, your story telling, your campaign, your social media. What ever you want to call it, the reason that you came here today, that matters to you. What can you do with that 30 minutes to hone your craft?
So why Makeupless Monday? I was not intentionally trying to create a movement, I was just being real. I think that we are all craving REAL right now. I feel like it is something that we have needed as a society for a very long time. REAL me does not have a full brow. REAL me has a gap in my teeth, and a scar that spans three quarters of my face. REAL me wants to see you love the REAL you. Don’t you long to be real? Not just with makeup, but with your clothing, your hair, your life. You know who your friends are that you can just be REAL with. I could write a whole book on that subject. I just may someday. I have a real voice with real thoughts. I have a message. I love photo shoots and professional videos and beautiful images of people. I get crazy geeked out when I see or create a perfectly well thought out and executed branding message. But more importantly, I wanted all of you to know the real me. The one that doesn’t care if I have eyebrows or not. The one that doesn’t care if I have a scar, or a gap in my teeth. After the first post in the TIME OUT series went viral, I wanted to make sure that everyone got used to seeing me both with and without makeup. I have 2 photoshoots coming up, and you better believe that one of them will be sans makeup. I don’t need to be perfect to help you. I need to be real, otherwise you will never hear what I have to share with you. Much the same as the entirety of my career, It is not about me, it is about you. So what can I help you with?
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