Spotlight (Effect) on a Naked Face

Tuesday marked the day of my first make-up-free first date, ever.

And he didn’t run away screaming.

For the most part, the consensus seems to be that men really don’t care about make up. I’ve had comments from this fellow, and a few male friends including, “it’s all just drawn on anyway”, “most of the time women don’t look that much different without it—given a few exceptions”, and even, “it’s the girl next door thing”. Men seem to really place little value in how flawless a woman’s facial canvas looks.

Beyond that, the gentleman I grabbed gelato with on Tuesday presented a good point that I think is important to embrace in my own personal life right now. The truth is, no one gives a sh*t.

Humans tend to suffer from something called “the spotlight effect”, which is essentially the feeling that people tend to notice us more than they actually do. This is precisely what I am dealing with during my naked-faced month.

Here’s the thing: I am a critical person. I don’t know that I would call myself judgmental, but certainly, yes, critical. I am the person who does notice what you’re wearing; the person who looks down at her classmates’ feet and realizes her friend is wearing one black and one white Ked’s tennis shoe; the girl who notices your hair cuts, and if you’ve just dyed the roots that were showing brown against the majority of bright red for a few weeks; the one who stares at the size 20 woman on the beach in a bikini.

But it isn’t at all from a mean-spirited space that I notice these things. Rather, it is from a self-critical standpoint than one critical of others.

I notice what you’re wearing because I think, “I could never pull that off.”

I look at my classmates’ feet to measure the state of my dirtied toes and chipping self-painted nail polish against feet that, even on the dirtiest of LA days, seem as if they’re fresh from the spa.

I look at that size 20 woman with admiration because she loves herself enough to feel good in her skin, when, between a size 6 and 8 and not as toned as I’d like, it is almost painful for me to go to the beach and slowly drop my shorts to the ground, bending over to place them nicely at the foot of my towel, showing tanned beach-goers that my white belly folds once at the navel and jiggles ever so slightly as I walk to the water.

And because I focus on others’ lives and bodies more than my own, I tend to feel that everyone else must do the same.They must notice me.

But the truth is that, according to social psychologists, we severely over-estimate ourselves. Chances are that no one else is thinking about you because we’re all too caught up thinking about ourselves. In short, again, no one gives a sh*t.

So far, the main lesson in not wearing make-up seems to be that true beauty comes from something within. Something I’m closer to but am still digging for.