A Month Without Makeup - Day 5 Recap

Friday, February 06, 2009 - Comments 1

Hey guys - after today I’m going to move to a weekly recap. Don’t worry, I’ll still include pics of every day, so you know I’m not cheating. But I’m getting into a groove on this and figure putting the top highlights into one blog each week instead of seven will be easier for all of us. Plus, I’m on deadline for my next book and frankly need to try and focus on that, so my agent doesn’t drop me.

Today was my first day to meet someone for the first time wearing no makeup. It was a meeting with Jeff and Liz from Food For the Hungry, who, as you know, we are partnering with on our true:shift effort. (To see faces from the village we’ve sponsored go to http://www.fh.org/trueshift and click “sponsor"). We talked a lot today about the trip Travis and I (and some of you!) will take to El Gade, Kenya next year. Let me tell you, girls, it’s gonna be a life changing trip! And we definitely will have more to worry about than makeup.

Anyway, normally when I’m meeting people for the first time I feel a need to look and dress just right, so they’ll think I’m a “relevant” voice to women - someone women will want to listen to. Which is terribly ironic, considering the subject matter I’m generally speaking on is that of making peace with food and our bodies. Why the need to look so good doing it?

Even weirder is that when I have interviewed other “voices” in the field, or just out there in music or other creative areas, I’m always a little suspicious of them if they look too perfectly made up. Which makes even more curious my own worries about trying to look perfect for others. And which explains why I could relate to Allison’s comment from Day 2.

Funny how we can so easily judge others on matters that we ourselves struggle with.

Places I went today:
1. Work (including meeting with Food for the Hungry)
2. Community Group (see below - the guy next to me is my husband AJ, my number one champion for being who I am)

Favorite comment of the day, from Mirandi (to my left, feeding her son), who noted that February is the shortest month of the year. Um, yes… I know.

But honestly, I could end this experiment today and feel I’d already learned a lot. Will be interesting to see how I feel after three more weeks…