#MAKEUPLESSMONDAY

This isn’t going to be a big campaign around campus. This isn’t going to be advertised or publicized on the napkin holders in the caf or a giant banner in the JC or any other annoying flyers painted over campus. This is me telling you, right here, right now about something I’m doing this year for each of you ladies. I would love for you to join me, so I’m extending the invitation.

I wish I could say I made this up on my own, but I can’t. I actually got the idea from a high school junior. Yeah, a junior in high school. I remember my own high school days. I actually didn’t start wearing make-up until I was a junior, and my mom would always, ALWAYS tell me—You don’t need it. You’re beautiful—to which I would always get so mad because I just wanted to feel pretty and look pretty and get noticed by someone. And that is exactly why this junior decided to make Mondays make-up-less.

I was worship leader for a Catholic high school’s orientation retreat the day that I met her. I don’t remember her name, but I wish I did. She was sassy and back-talking everything I said to her. She had better comebacks than I do, and she was 16. I sat down in her group of friends for lunch and was casually, subtly recruiting them to check out THE Franciscan University of Steubenville. She was transferring in for her junior year. I was joking around with her and her other friends when she commented on the freshmen girls:

“They are wearing SO much make-up, SO much."

I replied: “It’s freshman year of high school—everyone is trying to find their place.”

“I know, but you can see it.”

 “See what?”

She turns to her friends and exclaims: “We need to do something for them. On Mondays, we’re not wearing make-up. It’s gonna be Make-Up-Less Monday. We’re gonna offer that for each of the freshmen and sophomore girls so that they realize they’re good enough as they are.”

You can imagine the expression on my face when I heard those words come out of the mouth of a 16 year old girl. She’s right though.  I’m not saying make-up is bad, but should we really  value the frame more than the picture?

Every summer for the last five years, I’ve had a manual labor job. I’ve nicknamed it my #summermanjob. I worked on an all guys crew dragging tarps full of forty-sixty pounds of mulch.  It’s not the most common job for a lady nor the most flattering. I wear steel toe boots, work pants, a hat, safety sunglasses, and my faded lime green uniform shirt. I go all summer without wearing make-up. Every morning when I woke up, I looked at myself in the mirror and smiled—my eyes had a chance to breathe without mascara, eyeliner, and concealer suffocating them. I saw myself as I was, as I am…and it was good enough. It is good enough. I am good enough.  I am beautiful. I am feminine. And I am free.

I challenge you, I dare you, I invite you to join me, to join that 16 year old and all of her friends to sacrifice our frames for one day and let the true, beautiful, natural picture be displayed.  She offered it for the underclassmen women at her school. I’m offering it for each and every one of you ladies on campus. I’m not by any means comparing our campus to that high school. I’m just inviting each of you to be real and raw for one day—to offer it for your sister next to you in class, in the pew in front of you at Mass, washing her face in the sink next to you.  Offer it for freedom and embrace your own.

Do it once. Do it one step at a time—wear one less bit of make-up that day.  Do it every Monday.

Be-YOU-tiful.

You are beautiful. You are good enough. We are good enough.
For one day, be free.
For one day, let the world see the picture without the frame.

#makeuplessmonday

-Lacy

 

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Lacy Rogers is a senior nursing major from Denver, Colorado. She is a member of Regina Angelorum Household. She aspires to be a trauma nurse when she grows up. Her two loves are the Marian Virtues and the Denver Broncos. She tries to live her life by the motto "Totus tuus Maria, ad majorem Dei gloriam." Her favorite saints are St. Louis de Montfort and St. Maximilian Kolbe.