The one without any makeup

"Finally we made you beautiful! At last we can actually go to a club with you and not feel embarrassed", my former boss at a modelling agency told me a few years ago after I had let them do my makeup, which meant an hour of work and what I can only assume litres worth of paint buckets.

I looked in the mirror and I did not recognise myself. I didn't like that. I only wanted to run to the bathroom to wash my face, to get cleaned up, to be me again.

I've always thought that everyone is at their prettiest without any makeup at all. I remember asking the "popular girls" already in elementary school why they even wore makeup, when they didn't need it at all.

I've always had this ideal image of myself in my head. The sea breeze brushes through my curls and I have freckles on my nose from being out in the sun and I'm laughing with a big, happy smile on my face, wrinkles in the corners of my eyes. No makeup.

But.

To be good enough, to be beautiful, the girl in my head needs to have thick, dark eyelashes framing her big, round eyes. Her eyes need to look more blue to contrast the much needed dark brow that only Cara Delevingne can rival. She needs a sexy pout instead of the small mouth with lips that are barely noticeable against her pale, but red face full of blackheads that must be made to glow in bronze tones. She needs to keep dying her hair dark brown, as it's what everyone has always told her should be her real colour, that's how well it suits her. Being someone else suits her best. That's what everyone else tells her.

So trying to look as natural as possible, I used all the products I could think of for years to try to achieve this abstract ideal I could never reach. Trying to learn how to love my natural face, while using all the best cosmetics to cover it up, waiting for a miracle that my face would just suddenly change into that.

This spring due to some health issues, I became highly interested in all the chemicals we get into our bodies, and especially the ones that we choose to put into them. While researching natural cosmetics from a scientific point of view, I also realised that as long as I do use makeup, I can't learn to love my face as it is, to prefer it in reality sans makeup. It's a strange thing, to learn how to do something, you actually need to do it. Or in this case not do it.

Now I have been without any traditional cosmetics (including skin care) for three months and finally feel most comfortable like this, if not most confident yet. And funny enough, after all the money I've spent on makeup and other cosmetics products to enhance the features I wanted the most, I have naturally started to get those features with my current organic routine.

So in the future I'll be sharing my tips and recipes concerning natural beauty, as well as covering issues concerning the diversity in beauty and the sustainability of the business side. Do you already have any organic favourites for your wellbeing?