Why I won't be posting a #nomakeupselfie

Something strange has been happening to my Facebook newsfeed over the past week. Women all over the country have been posting photos of themselves with an apparently controversial twist: they're not wearing make-up.

Here’s the idea. Women post their #nomakeupselfie on social media, encouraging their friends to donate to Cancer Research UK in response and nominating several others to post their own. It's not quite clear how it started, but it's raised £8m for charity in just six days.

I don't want to downplay that achievement, which, obviously, is an amazing thing. But I do have to question what's going on behind the #nomakeupselfie craze.

People often raise money for charity by taking on some kind of challenge—running a marathon, parachuting, shaving their head—and asking their friends for sponsorship, to donate a little in support. The #nomakeupselfie is presented as a similar kind of challenge. Messages I've seen posted along with the photos include "This takes courage" and "No chickening out." When my cousin was nominated a couple of days' ago she told me: "I knew it was only a matter of time before this happened, and my skin's really bad at the moment. What am I going to do? I really don't want to do it." She’s not the only person I’ve come across in the last few days who has expressed terror in anticipation of the inevitable nomination.

That showing their natural face is considered such a challenge by so many women is a sign of how much pressure there is for us to "improve" our appearance, and how much women (guided by society) feel that their value lies in how they look. Most of the photos I’ve seen have done their best to achieve the effects of make-up without actually using it, through carefully styled hair, favourable angles and flattering lighting. Nor is this the first time that removing make-up has been presented as a charitable sacrifice: Children In Need’s 2013 “Go BearFaced” campaign springs to mind.

In some ways, women appearing without make-up is “an act of rebellion,” Linda Gibson, a lecturer in public health at Nottingham Trent University, told the BBC. If that’s the case, and if all these make-up free pictures end up encouraging women to ditch it more frequently, to feel more comfortable in their own skin, then I’m all for it.

Still, it's a little worrying that a woman showing her actual face is considered to be making some kind of statement. As a former classmate of mine wrote on Facebook: "Is it just me, or is it quite weird and faintly depressing that pictures of women without make-up are apparently a novelty?"