Why One Woman Stopped Wearing Makeup for an Entire Year — and Has No Plans to Restart
The no makeup look is getting a new face. Tracey Spicer, an Australian television personality, gave up primping products a year ago and isn’t looking back — in fact, she’s removing even more layers.
After spending 30 years in the TV industry, the news anchor felt that she had become the archetypal women that she actually despised, a “painted doll” who doled out almost $200 each week and spent hours everyday making herself what others deemed presentable.
In an editorial on dailylife.com.au, the 40-year-old revealed that her beauty routing involved “straightening serum, blow-dry, hairspray, moisturizer, eye cream, primer, foundation, powder, concealer, blusher, eyeliner, eye shadow, brow brush, lash curler, mascara, lip liner, lip stick, lip gloss, and body bronzer.” Additionally, she would wear high heels to work that she described as “vertiginous” that caused bunions and osteoarthritis and remove hair. All of these processes she would undergo while chanting the mantra “beauty is pain; beauty is pain.”
So instead of enduring one more day of primping, preening, waxing, and definitely not relaxing, she decided to shun it all. After delivering a viral TED talk in which she begins her what has now been a yearlong commitment to not conforming to the societal standards of what women are supposed to look like.
“I’ve felt exposed. But I battle on, without my armor, because I want this to be the new norm,” she wrote, exactly 365 days later. Spicer has progressively thrown more products in the trash throughout the past 12 months, and just a few weeks ago, she stopped shaving her armpits. Next up? The legs, and at that point she says she’ll truly be able to call herself a “hairy-legged feminist.”
The one thing though that Spicer admits she’ll never be able to give up is dying her hair. “Sadly, I don’t have the confidence to tackle that one yet,” she confessed.
Spicer isn’t the only one to embrace the au naturel look and make a big splash saying that she’s done so. Leandra Medine, the woman behind the popular fashion blog Man Repeller, wrote a poignant essay, aptly titled “Why I Don’t Wear Makeup” on her website about why she chooses to post #iwokeuplikethis — even hours after she’s gotten out of bed — for her hundreds of thousands of followers to see. “I’m not making a statement. I’m not trying to act like the most extreme, hyper-literal and violent version of a man repeller,” she wrote. “So the reason I don’t wear makeup is because I am lazy. … More important than that though, I am comfortable with how I look. I don’t hate what I see when I look in the mirror. Even if legions of others don’t agree. I have accepted the reflection that reliably bounces back at me for its perks and its flaws.”
Similarly, the anchors of NBC’s Today show didn’t get any touchups for one day on while appearing on hi-def live television and Colbie Caillat’s music video for “Try” featured makeup-free selfies and those of her famous friends Miranda Lambert, Sheryl Crow, and Sara Bareilles as well.
But while these efforts from major media personalities to break from the strict standards society places on women to present themselves in a particular way are admirable, the day that doing so isn’t a gimmick for attention is when progress has really been made.
