All Natural Friday Details

My mom and I all natural at the airport

This Friday, February 25, we will be celebrating All Natural Friday in my body image class at UNC-Charlotte (and around the world, wherever you are).  What is All Natural Friday?  A chance for all of us to become reacquainted with the skin we’re in. 

This Friday, I’d like all of you to go all natural from 6 am until 6 pm.  Yep, that’s right—twelve hours of just letting your skin breathe and projecting your natural self. 

Does the idea of this make you uncomfortable?  It probably does.  And that’s okay.  Part of this experiment is having you move through the discomfort to get to the other side where you realize that while enhancements can be temporary fun, they don’t have to define you, and you aren’t beholden to them. 

 So this Friday morning, feel free to take a shower, put on moisturizer (as long as it is not tinted or light-reflecting), brush your hair and your teeth but keep the primping to a minimum.

 Here are some things that should not be part of your All Natural Friday:

Contacts (yep, wear your glasses!)

Perfume/ Aftershave

Make-Up

Fake eyelashes

Weave or extensions (the clip in kind.  If it’s sewn in, you can keep it there!)

Aftershave

Hair products

Flat Ironing

Curling

Rollers

I am sure I’ve left something off the list so, here’s the deal, if anything feels like it could be an enhancement, it probably is so skip it.

And while it would be tempting to just throw on sweats (and pull your hair back if you have longer hair), I encourage you to get dressed as you normally would for the day- showing yourself that you don’t have to be dressed down in order to forego enhancements.    

Want to take the challenge one step further?  If you are on a social media site, change your profile picture to feature one of you without the enhancements and challenge your followers/ friends to go all natural, too.  If you do it, please send me a link or copy of the photo!

Here’s to loving the skin we’re in, as it is.