When traveling, you often run into some pretty amazing people. People who might challenge your views on the world and yourself and who can inspire you to consider an opinion to something you have already come to accept as your personal truth.

During my ten years of travelling, I have met a number of such people, the most recent one being a girl named Hope.

Hope lives in Austin and is a musician. She was introduced to me as a friend of a friend and as someone who is immensely popular with the boys. Although I did not need to be told, as it was pretty obvious right away that this girl had “fierce” written all over her. When she turned out to be super nice on top of that, I signed up for her fanclub. Something else I noticed about Hope, something that came as a suprise to me, was that she didnt wear any make-up.

It seemed unusual to me for someone as fashionable as her not to wear any. On top of that she was blonde – I know practically no blondes who don’t at least wear mascara. I asked her about this and she basically commented that she liked make-up, just didnt find time or ambition to put some on every day. This made quite an impression on me. Over the years I have become so used to seeing my face with black eyeliner and mascara, that I’ve become more comfortable with that being “my” face, while the make-up free version was just something that came out at night after a make-up removing wipe makes it appear.

That got me thinking and I decided that from now on I should make friends again with my natural face and not outlaw it under black eyeliner and lipstick. At least not always. Travelling is a good time to not wear any make-up, as not only are you free to rub your eyes, eat apples and put on shirts without fear of any foundation, mascara or lipstick smudging, you also won’t meet a lot of people who are likely to see you again, so this is a great introductory phase. If you notice all the advantages of going bare-faced, you might just do it more often. I, for one, quite enjoy it and will do it more often from now on.

This is me with absolutely no make-up on..

Not too shabby, right?

What about you guys? Are most of you comfortable with not wearing make-up? Or will you not be seen without when in public?