Instagrammer Posts Makeup-Free Selfie, Inspiring Others to Do Same

Michelle Elman, a body confidence coach, recently made an interesting point on social media by uploading a makeup-free image of herself.

Alongside the fresh-faced photo on her popular Instagram channel, mindsetforlifeltd, she discussed how she was spending time with a friend and wanted to get a new profile picture. Instead of having an impromptu photo shoot, she opted to have her friend take just one image, which she posted.

“When is the last time you took one photo? Not 3. Not 5. Not 20. One. It’s seriously liberating and it’s an exercise you should try,” she wrote alongside the image. “I hadn’t changed my profile pic in a year, so I passed the camera and I smiled and she took one. That’s it. It’s that simple. And I went to upload that. We continued messing around with the camera and laughing and chatting and snapping, but it wasn’t some arduous process.”

She wrote about the effort that many social media users put into perfecting their photos — particularly profile pics. “Profile pictures used to be a source of major concern. It used to be a symbol of popularity and beauty. How many likes you got mattered, it validated your place in the social hierarchy in school. So it needed to be perfect: makeup to perfection, hair to perfection, pose to perfection,” she wrote.

Elman took notice of this just from observing other people’s picture-taking habits in public. “People would take forever to capture the perfect photo and even then it’s not deemed good enough,” she tells Yahoo Beauty. “It’s almost become a routine when photos are taken, that when the individual sees the photo the first thing they will do is critique their face — ‘I hate my eye,’ or ‘My smile looks weird.’ This perfection in photos isn’t necessary, and photos should be used to capture the moment — not your body or face.”

This reality became especially evident to her while traveling. “I would notice that people spend more time making sure the photo taken in front of the landmark or monument was perfect than actually looking at the landmark itself. Back when I was a child, we took photos with film so we didn’t have the opportunity to take 30 and choose between them. We took one, simply so we could remember the day!” she says.

In the image Elman posted, she also happens to be makeup-free, which brought her to make another important point alongside the post.

“The irony is that when I asked her to take a photo, it only occurred to me after that I was makeup-free after it was taken,” she wrote. She then asked her followers, “When is the last time you took a photo makeup-free?” before explaining her mantra when it comes to being fresh-faced in photos.

“Being makeup-free is my norm now. I’m more often makeup-free than not,” she wrote. “I don’t see myself as less beautiful without it. Its just different and I like both. It’s why half my profile pictures are makeup-free. Hell even half of my photos on my dating profiles are makeup-free.”

Elman shared that many of her followers didn’t even realize that the majority of her posts were makeup-free until recently. “It was only when I started doing my daily midday reminders on my Instagram Stories did I start getting comments on my ability to go makeup-free,” she says. “I usually do them straight out of the gym, so I’m usually sweaty and with my spots completely on show. That’s when my DMs were flooded with people saying they were so shocked to see a person so comfortable with putting their natural skin on show. That’s when I started talking about it more and making people aware that the photos I post are usually makeup-free. I love makeup as much as the next person, but I don’t believe we should be reliant on it or told that we ‘need’ it. Even in a business environment, I will go to meetings makeup-free if I want to, because my appearance doesn’t affect my performance.”

On the post, she asked her followers when the last time was that they posted something without looking at the likes on the post — before explaining how inconsequential that number is. “Likes don’t indicate s***. Not your beauty, not your popularity, not your worth. What and when you post should be dictated by how much YOU like the photo. Posting based on likes is the social media equivalent of caring what others think,” she wrote.

“In high schools and primary schools, there is an obsession with the number of likes you can get on your profile picture,” she tells Yahoo Beauty. “It was a largely undiscussed thing, but it would become apparent when your friends upload their profile pictures because they would ask you to like their photo for them. With the introduction of social media, we are starting to see younger generations measure their worth by their popularity online — most of which is not real and fabricated through editing and Photoshop — and these elaborate drawn-out photo shoots to get that one perfect photo.”

In order to combat this unhealthy trend, Elman urged her followers to follow suit and upload their own photo in one take.

“Let’s rebel against that. Join me, take one photo, right now, no matter what you look like, upload it, don’t care about the likes! Tag me and hashtag #OneTakeBeauty so I can see them all,” she wrote. A number of her followers shared their own images and wrote about what a powerful influence she is in their captions.

Elman didn’t realize how much her message would resonate with people.

“The response was overwhelming, with many people telling me they were unaware of how much time and energy they waste trying to capture one photo,” she says. “I started the hashtag as a slight joke because I already have my own campaign #ScarredNotScared, so when people started tagging me in their unfiltered, makeup-free selfies, I was filled with joy.”

To those who are hesitant to post their own unfiltered images, Elman has some advice.

“Some people are blessed with perfect skin, and some people are not, and how your skin is naturally is not a reflection of your worth,” she says. “When I first started on YouTube, I was told that I needed to start wearing more makeup in my videos to look more professional, but I always found it counterintuitive. Why was I being told to apply makeup to make a video about body positivity? Body positivity isn’t just about embracing your body, but your face as well, and if I happen to be makeup-free that day then so be it — so start somewhere, put a little less makeup on the next time you take a selfie, or edit it slightly less. It’s all about baby steps and one day, uploading makeup-free and filter free will be normal to you — like it is to me!”

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