TIME TO break up WITH makeup?

She's been wearing a full face of makeup since age 12 — so what prompted therapist Kate Beckwith to dare to bare?

- Kate Beckwith

As a therapist working with children and young people, authenticity is at the heart of everything I do. I want my clients to feel safe, to see me as real, and to know that they can show up just as they are. Part of this commitment to authenticity is a decision I made years ago: I don't wear makeup to work — or most days, for that matter. But it wasn't always this way.

Let me take you back to when I was 12 years old. That's when it all started — my love affair with makeup. Except, it wasn't really about love; it was about survival. Makeup became my armour, my way of feeling 'enough.' I learned how to apply my makeup — mostly through trial and error and teenage magazines.

Every school morning, I'd be there, carefully applying it. Before long I didn't seem to be able to step outside without it anymore. Before popping to the corner shop, I'd put a full face on. Before anyone in my house woke up, I'd be in the bathroom, covering up my bare-faced self. And when I started staying over at my boyfriend's house? If I didn't have my makeup bag, I'd leave it on all night, waking up with panda eyes rather than let him see the 'real me'. Makeup wasn't just something I wore — it was who I was. Or at least, who I thought I had to be.

Then, everything changed. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I began to question it all. Did I want her growing up thinking she needed to 'fix' herself to be seen, to be enough, to be worthy? Did I want her to feel, as I had, that her natural face wasn't 'good enough' for the world? The thought terrified me. I realised I had spent years hiding — not just from the world but from myself.