positivelyBLEAK Grinning back into the abyss.

Viking Treks & The Bare-​Faced Challenge

The view from the summit!

It feels like summer’s smacked Boston square across the face, so in the interest of indulging my inner bar­barian woodswoman, S. and I hauled our­selves out of bed and out to a hell of a hike at one of our local con­ser­va­tion areas. We wan­dered in the forest, spotted chip­munks and endan­gered orchids by the trail, and scaled a big rock face over the lake. Rampaging through the woods and climbing to the highest summit you can find leaves me with this feeling of gazing out over my domain — I am the master of these woods and all I want is a Viking helmet and broadsword to heft to the sky. It’s pretty awe­some. Coming home from taking own­er­ship of the wilder­ness and roasting about eight pounds of round eye roast with a bunch of root veg­eta­bles and a good beer is how I channel my inner Valkyrie. Feast!

Sunday, we went out for a big greasy-​spoon break­fast and wan­dered over to the musty old flea market in my neigh­bor­hood (where I scored the awe­some skull ring in my robo.to pro­file to the left — check it out!).

(I’ve had an account on robo.to for a while now, but I really only used it to occa­sion­ally spruce up my Tumblr — adding it to my sidebar seems to be the new Thing To Do now, so gaze in wonder at my goony visage and blurry videos of my cat!)

Anyway, on to the meat of my thinking this weekend: remember sneaking off with mom’s lip­stick, or get­ting your first play makeup set with glittery-​pink every­thing? Or when makeup was a “spe­cial occa­sion” thing? Do you get the same fun out of putting it on now?

Somewhere along the line, it turned into a chore for most of us. I still have fun with makeup, sure, but the small thrill of pulling out the eighties-​glam purple eye­liner or giving myself a loud pedi­cure is always crammed in between the drag of end­lessly blending the con­cealer into my undereye bags.

So far, I’ve spent the past four days without putting any­thing on my face beyond cleanser and sun­screen, and I’m thinking of con­tin­uing for a while. I skipped at first because I was out­side! hiking! and who’s going to go to the effort of applying makeup when it’s just going to sweat off in an hour at most. It con­tinued when I real­ized, at the market buying veg­eta­bles in my grubby hiking gear, that nobody noticed, I felt just as attrac­tive and com­fort­able with a fresh, bare face, and I wasn’t stuck with runny mas­cara after an impromptu climb in the hot sun.

Confession: this is prob­ably the most embarassing photo of me that I have on-​hand, you can see the stupid amounts of eye­liner and white­face caked on. (Check out the classy ratted death hawk, too!)

Altering your look and wearing your cre­ativity on your face is awe­some, but have you ever stopped and thought about why you’re doing it? What’s your moti­va­tion, and how much are you trying to hide from the world? For instance, when I was younger, I wore heavy foun­da­tion and very heavy goth-​chick eye­liner — it was my face’s equiv­a­lent of the big black baggy clothing that I was hiding my body behind. Are you hiding your fea­tures, or accen­tu­ating them?

Alt-​chick types are noto­rious for lay­ering on the dark, heavy eye makeup — I do it a lot, and it looks great, it really does! But does it lose some of its special-​ness for you after doing it every day for years and years? Part of me is already shirty over the fact that men aren’t expected to paint over their every spot or pock mark — women are usu­ally expected to carry the burden of “beau­ti­fying the world.” Another part of me is still nag­ging away at me — what if Anna Wintour sees, what would she say? (It takes a little bit of force to turn that con­cern over to the rational part of my brain, that real­izes that Ms. Wintour would not only never be in my gray sub­urban tech­nology office, but she’d have more nit­picks for me than showing up in public without foun­da­tion.) What if someone calls me out on a spot or a par­tic­u­larly unat­trac­tive freckle?

Who cares?

The few other women on my office’s floor wear makeup every day. Who are we trying to impress? I’m going to hit the snooze button one more time for the rest of the week instead of painting myself in the mirror. Sitting here on my lunch­break without having to worry about checking my mas­cara in the mirror is pretty stress-​free.

I’d love it if you’d join me, and weigh in on your experiences.