Breaking Up...with Make-up

This summer was one heat wave after another which can start to be exhausting. I so look forward to summer, winter being my least favorite month but I feel nothing was accomplished this summer as it was too hot to work outside in the gardens. We had so little rain, the lawns and gardens were parched, they are just now starting to get somewhat revived.

With going in the pool as much as three times a day the only lotion that went on my face, arms and legs was sun tan products. I've never worn make-up around home and don't use it very liberally when I go shopping or out to restaurants although there are those who probably think I should!

I haven't purchased a bottle of perfume for twenty years at least, have received some as gifts but when one lives in Muskoka where black flies greet you each spring and love perfume, one tends not to use it much if it all..plus my husband isn't fond of it. He also wouldn't care if I never saw the inside of a lipstick tube either..If he sees I'm wearing lipstick he tends to shy away from kissing me..he prefers me in other words with no make-up and no perfume..

I decided this summer to be "very" brave and not wear any make-up even for our Friday night date nights, for shopping, for days out with girlfriends. Believe it or not I'm starting to get used to myself without any added foundation dabbed here and there, like on the dark areas under my eyes, or eye liner, lipstick or powder..

When we are teenagers we don't usually like anything about ourselves..everytime I'd look in a mirror I'd pick out lots of things I didn't like..my thick dark hair, my nose, my eye lids like my mothers, with too much skin, making my eyes look smaller. Well after looking at myself every day, 365 days a year for sixty plus years I've begun to make peace with this face..the alternative would be for some surgery and I've thought how nice that extra skin on my eyelids would be if it was gone but then maybe I'd have this wide-eyed surprised look all the time..eye shadow is wasted on me..

A new nose would be awesome but then this is the face God gave me and He must have had a reason to combine my features this way so why mess with it? Besides I have better places to spend my money. A little under eye liner, some blush, a dab of foundation here and there, a great lipstick and I've shed at least 6 months off my age..well okay, maybe a week!

I find lipstick never last anyways, by the time I get to my destination, it's gone..has anyone noticed how heavy compacts, lipsticks etc., make your purse? How freeing to not have to lug a big make-up bag all over, my shoulders will thank me..We are going to a wedding in Victoria, B.C. in a couple of weeks and I'm wondering if I'm brave enough to do without the eye liner, blush, lipstick etc..when hubby's daughter got married in Cuba in 2010 I forgot my eye liner and actually survived..not one person said: "you have a naked look about you!"

No one told me to take hair spray there either, I don't even own any and when the wind played havoc with my hair I survived that also..even when my sister-in-law said: "your hair looks good with wings"...good grief....Wings!!! I ran to the nearest mirror..

It's so freeing to finally accept the face that looks back at me in the mirror now, it's not so bad after all, I've earned all the worry lines, the grey hair and yes, I now wish it was thicker like in my youth but at least I still have some..I've accepted my eyes without eyeliner, a dark pencil line drawn from the outside in, but just half way in order not to make my small eyes look even smaller..without the blush and who knows how to make it look natural anyways..and what about those emails telling us that some lipsticks are dangerous for us..do we read all the labels on everything and if we did, do we know what all the chemicals mean..I sure don't..don't even know what's in half my boxed foods..

My brother says if we can't pronounce it, we shouldn't be eating it..I digress, but then I always do..my husband said I can bring up a dozen topics in one conversation..I just say that's what makes me more intertesting, ha, ha...so as the wedding packing day approaches, I will be wrestling with myself, do I take make-up or don't I? Perhaps my summer tan will suffice. It will be a very brave move if I can manage it, going to a wedding with my face as the canvas the way God made it.....