How I beat overwhelm: I quit using makeup – and faced the world as I really am
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The average woman in the UK will spend 474 days applying makeup. Without it, I have more time for a life well spent. I am not sure when I gave up wearing makeup. I was never particularly good at it. As a student, I was thrown into an early 2000s performance of femininity that involved thick eyeliner flicks, dyed hair, doll-like blusher and bright pink lips. I felt the pressure of magazines, adverts and other women’s faces pressing me towards cosmetics like a hockey player being clapped into drinking beer out of their own shoe.
![[Nell Frizzell]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/09/Nell-Frizzell,-L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The fact that I never had the patience or the money to pull it off didn’t seem to matter. I wore makeup to work and even more makeup to sweat off on the dancefloor when I wasn’t at work. As my 20s slid into my 30s, I still wore mascara most days. I still owned lipsticks and liquid eyeliners and a vintage powder compact. I could still slap it on in the office toilet mirrors, under the arctic glare of a unisex lightbulb.
But now, at the grand young age of 39, I rarely wear makeup at all. Weeks go by – at my desk, on video calls, at meetings, in cafes and at the school gates – where I bare my bare face to the world without ever thinking about it. Last week, I danced for two crowded, sweaty, heart-thumping hours with nothing on my face but a smear of tinted lip balm. I went for birthday drinks this week after slapping on nothing but a shiny coat of Astral moisturiser. I got my photo taken for an ID pass wearing nothing but clothes.
In fact, here follows an exhaustive inventory of my makeup bag: one mascara (14 months old), two lipsticks (four years old, at least); a tube of £6.99 foundation (bought for my wedding two and a half years ago); and a lip stain (given to me by my mother well before the first lockdown).
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