Going through a makeup master cleanse

Typing “no makeup” into Google leads to suggestion boxes completing the phrase as “no makeup challenge,” “no makeup selfie,” “no makeup makeup.”

Senior Sipan Nazaryan thinks that the natural look means “not having those dark things around your eyes, like no mascara.” This so-called “natural look” became pertinent at New York Fashion Week 2014, with the likes of Alexander Wang, Jason Wu, Rebecca Minkoff, rag & bone’s respective models wearing sporting a few products — Marc Jacobs models with completely bare faces. Celebrities like Demi Lovato post selfies tagged with #NoMakeupMonday, garnering hundreds of thousands of likes and subsequently spawning a trending hashtag. Kim Kardashian graced the cover of the Aug. 2015 issue Vogue España with only “moisturizer, lip balm, and curled lashes,” according to Kardashian’s personal makeup artist, Mario Dedivanovic.

Such heavy media coverage of stripped down faces is a heavy contrast to the glammed out side of the makeup spectrum. YouTube is home to over a million contouring videos, with methods ranging from “clown” to “henna”; strobing deemed as “contouring’s au naturale French cousin” by Marie Claire Magazine has racked up tens of thousands of tutorials on YouTube. Both are popular makeup practices that are meant to transform the face by utilizing shadows and light.

These makeup techniques have spawned new products to the market, both high-end makeup stores and drug stores carry contour kits or understated eyeshadows, discreetly named the Urban Decay “Naked Palette” or the Maybelline “Nudes Palette.” But before graduating to these more in-depth makeup products and techniques, I started out with shaky pencil eyeliner in the seventh grade.

Maybe uneven eyeliner wings are a rite of passage. I picked up my older sister’s pencil eyeliner one morning about six years ago not because I had a particular vision that I was trying to accomplish, but because other girls in my grade were starting to wear it.

Senior Tiffany Yemenian had similar cosmetics beginnings. “My family is full of girls, so I grew up watching them wear it and ever since I can remember I’d steal my mom’s, aunts’, cousins’ makeup and play with it,” said senior Tiffany Yemenian. “I have a problem with the freckles on my face, so I started using cover up, but I realized how fun it is and started to experiment more, and my passion just grew. I wear it now because I just love putting it on. It depends where I’m going and how much energy I feel like putting into it, but usually for school 15 – 20 minutes but for events and stuff it could take up to 45 minutes.”

For the past six years, my affinity for makeup has definitely grown. Beginning with basic pencil eyeliner and drugstore mascara as a middle schooler, I’ve developed a full-blown routine: primers, BB cream, concealer, bronzer, highlighter, eyeliner, mascara, and powder add up to about half an hour of my morning. Common misconceptions of makeup include that its users “wear makeup to impress others” or that “women feel insecure without it” — neither of which are bulletproof facts, but rather sweeping generalizations. “I was introduced to makeup a long time ago when my mom would play around and put small things like eyeshadow and blush on me, but I started wearing makeup around my sophomore year,” said freelance makeup artist Cianna del Rosario in an e-mail. “Back then I wore makeup to impress, it was always towards my insecurities, but now I wear it for myself. Now it’s my passion and another art form to me.”

I don’t solely wear makeup for its ability to hide physical flaws like discoloration or ubiquitous teenage acne. I wear makeup for the ritual of waking up a little bit earlier in the morning to take care of myself before having to deal with a stream of classmates for eight hours. An aftershock of this self-care is the physical aspect of it: the fuller eyebrows, glossier lips. I’ve been wearing makeup for so long that the concept of going a week without it didn’t appeal to me until my face broke out and going bare-faced seemed like the last resort.

The first day sans makeup, I went into a Sephora with my consumer lenses wiped clean to observe what I was missing. Roaming around the store, each product seemed to be aimed a little more sharply at the consumer. Often, whimsical packaging and punny names are enough to sway customers into looking at products like Two Faced’s Teddy Bear Hair or Benefit’s Watt’s Up! highlighter. But not everything is aimed to be pink and sparkly; companies like NARS and Makeup Forever use minimal, sharp designs to attract customers. Walking out of the store with only testing swatches on my hand instead of their signature black and white bag felt empowering, like being on a diet and walking away from the candy section of 7-Eleven. “A few years ago, I got into makeup to express myself. I see a lot of girls coming in with trying to imitate their older sisters or models in the ads. Each company has a different demographic,” said Sephora employee Carlos Roble in an e-mail. “Older women tend to look at classics Bobbi Brown, a lot of teenagers like Urban Decay for the Naked Palettes.”

Disrupting a six-year-old routine, even for a week, felt unnatural. Getting an extra half hour of sleep is definitely a plus, but my body clock tended to shake me awake. For lack of better wording, my face felt the way bareMinerals products aimed for — naked. Just minus the flawless finish that their cosmetics provide. I’ve been wearing it for so long that walking around without it felt like phantom limb syndrome.

I initially thought that wearing no makeup would be, well, noticeable. Aside from a few prolonged stares and comments along the lines of “You look tired,” nobody noticed my lack of makeup until I told them about the week-long challenge and then they would compensate with, “Well, you look fine.” The results of the week weren’t earth-shattering: abstaining didn’t clear up any acne, and if anything, any imperfections were more apparent without the BB cream and concealer to cover anything up.

My takeaway from a weeklong makeup detox: absence makes the heart grow fonder.