It hasn't been a great week for women's self-esteem. (Then again, when is it ever?) First, we find out that women are less likely to use condoms the longer they're in college. And now, on a possibly related note, close to half of women dislike their faces without makeup.
The survey, conducted by The Renfrew Center Foundation, found nearly half of the women linked their "bare face" with being unattractive. 14% of women polled said they felt naked without makeup. And a quarter of women started wearing makeup between the ages of eleven and thirteen. Hey, ladies need to cover up those wrinkles early — the sooner you master the art of disliking your natural appearance, the quicker you can move onto a-husband-catchin.'
The Renfrew Center Foundation is an organization dedicated to fighting eating disorders, but has smartly made the link to non-weight-related image issues. The Foundation is going to sponsor a national campaign called "Barefaced & Beautiful, Without & Within." While the name's a little after-school-special, the idea is cool — as part of the campaign, they're encouraging women to post barefaced pictures of themselves on Facebook.
Oh, and by the way, when you start typing the word "celebrities" into Google images, the second suggestion is "celebrities without makeup." There's also many a website dedicated to the shaming of their bare if botoxed faces. Maybe this is an obsession we all need to work on, if only for the sake of the lipstick-wearing eleven-year-olds.