Giving Up Make Up For Lent

I'm not the only giving up daft things for Lent; Lucy Sutton has given up (brace yourselves, ladies) wearing make up for Lent!

When I was on BBC WM on the first day of Lent talking about not interacting on social media, Lucy was also interviewed. I emailed her afterwards and asked if she'd like to share her experience on the blog...

You may be reading the title of this and thinking – WHAT?!

Yes you read right, I have decided to give up make up for Lent.

Now this wasn’t a decision I took lightly, I can assure you, I made sure that there weren’t going to be any BIG celebrations during the time of my make up abstinence, that I needed to put on my slap for and I think I definitely got the timing right!

I have many reasons for giving up make up for Lent and the main reason that I wanted to do it is to say to women – you don’t need make up to be beautiful, your beauty comes from within and you shouldn’t mask your inner beauty. I wear make up to hide my insecurities as a woman and I know a lot of women can relate to this and I want to show them that you can still be beautiful without make up on.

I had decided to give up make up a couple of weeks before Lent started and I thought I could ‘prep’ my skin before the day came to show my naked face. Now, during this time, I got all my skincare products out, not many might I add, just day and night moisturiser, face wash, exfoliator and sudocream. Typically, I hadn’t noticed much difference in my skin having used all these products, every morning and evening, and I was getting worried that I was going to be faced with dreadful skin for Lent. However, the last week of prepping my skin, I did notice that my redness, blotches and spots were going and thought to myself, ‘YES!!’ I can be content with the way my skin looked and be happy with it for the duration of Lent. Unbeknown to me, someone, somewhere decided that ‘Hey…I’m going to test Lucy even further by giving her spots overnight, the day before for the big reveal’ and guess what? I woke up the morning of Lent and there they were, SPOTS!!!

Oh how I wanted to have a big black hole and fall right into it….

First day came and I walked into work and found myself very exposed, vulnerable and a little bit scared.

I hadn’t told anyone that I was giving it up, apart from 1 person in another department, so I wasn’t really expecting much talk about it. I found that when I was speaking to people or listening to what others were saying, I would cover up the bottom half of my face (which is where I had my spots) just to hide them away and I kept my head down most times too. I couldn’t wait to finish work that day and just go back to the comfort of my own home and just hide away – my husband, family and friends knew about it and they’ve been giving me fantastic support throughout it so far. But all credit to my husband Luke, who’s had to put up with it!

I made the brave decision to post on Facebook and Twitter that I was giving up make up for Lent and the response I have had has just been incredible and a lot of women that I know couldn’t quite believe why I was doing it and also expressed their admiration for me showing off my ‘naked’ face on Facebook. For me, this was my way of just getting it out there and showing everybody that I’m doing this for me, not anyone else, not my husband or my family, but for me. I want to show everybody what I can achieve and at the end of it, I want to look back and say ‘Yes I gave up make up for Lent and proud of it’.

Everyone has been so supportive and a friend of mine put me onto a radio producer who was keen to chat to me on a late night radio show – I thought I aced it! It was definitely the proudest moment of my life so far and for me, it was a big deal as I’m not the most confident person and it has brought me out of my shell. I was proud to talk on the radio about my decision to give up make up and even the host couldn’t believe it either!

Since then, I have been positive and although I have had my low moments – I’ve perked myself up knowing that I will achieve something at the end of it.

I’ve had some funny questions and comments from various people regarding my ‘naked’ face, questions being:

1. You feeling ok?
2. You look really tired….(I do look tired without mascara – you can see my bags!)
3. Your eyes look red, you ok?

I’m currently on my second week of Lent and I can safely say I have embraced it with open arms, I’m still feeling up and down, but I know I will absolutely look back on my experience and say yes, I did it.

2 weeks down, another 4 to go….