The Minimalism Experiment W8: Beauty Break
I’ve made it! I’m finally in the last week of my Minimalism Experiment! I’ve decided to save the best (and hardest) for last and spend this week executing what I’ve decided to call a “Beauty Break”. This week is really important for me because it involves a lot of courage and self-realization. For my Beauty Break, I have decided to take a vacation from all of my make-up for the entire week and only use beauty products that are necessary for cleanliness and comfort.
Initially, when I started this week, I planned for it to be based on the idea of approaching beauty from a Minimalist perspective and minimizing the amount of time, effort and products that I choose to use daily. From this, I hoped to learn a lot about myself by confronting my insecurities and finding peace with my natural self. But this project took on even more meaning once I started diving into the products I use.
Below is a photo of all the beauty products that I would use on a typical day where I go to school and/or work. Out of these 30 products, I would consider 7 of them to be essential products that I need to use daily including moisturizer, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, soap and acne medication. This leaves behind 23 products that are not essential to my day to day life. For this experiment, I included a few more than 7 products because I feel I need them to be comfortable because of my skin condition (which you can read about here). Overall, I cut 19 out of the 30 products in the following photo over this week.
After cutting out these products and taking this photo, I started to wonder how many ingredients were in all of these products. The next photo shows a screen shot of all the ingredients from the products on the left. Even though you can't read the individual ingredients and what they are, the impact of seeing the image alone made me question how much I am putting on my body each day.
After seeing these two photos, this week became a lot more than simply learning to live with less makeup and embrace my natural skin. It seriously made me consider what I was putting on my body each day and how the concoction of all those ingredients cannot be good for my health.
Overall, I found this week to be the most impactful of all my Minimalist adventures over the last semester. Not only did I learn to tackle my insecurities which was a battle all on its own, but I also realized the sheer number of things I put onto my body each day. Moving forward, I hope to continue being comfortable in my skin as well as making more conscious choices about the products that I add to my routine and attempt to make it as minimal as I can.
