Final Word: Applauding ‘No Makeup Monday’ on ‘Today’

I think we all should go the way of the “TODAY Show” and have a “No Makeup Monday” every once in a while.

The show’s anchors did it themselves Monday and I’m sorry I missed it. The pictures are available online and I wish every girl in America could see them.

The images our young girls see in the media every day are hard to live with. I know I didn’t have them growing up.

There have always been beautiful women, and when I was young, it was “Dallas” and “Charlie’s Angels” that I had to look at. You remember Farrah Fawcett, Cheryl Teigs and Cheryl Ladd? It seemed there were just a handful of them. And they did look a little more human, I think, than some of the girls OUR girls have to look at.

Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition is on newsstands (and OUR coffeetable) now, and if those three butts aren’t enough to get you to put your fork down, I don’t know what is. And those are really just bodies on display. With the plastic surgery and Photoshopping we have today, I’m not sure WHAT I’m looking at half the time.

But as often as I hear Hollywood preach that “women should embrace their curves” and that movie stars are not truly all that perfect, they are photographed and filmed after hours of beauty prep. Girls today are faced with more images of stunningly beautiful women than ever before and inevitably compare themselves in vain to that which they see.

So what can you do? You can do what the “TODAY Show” did this week.

The anchors, male AND female, went without makeup on Monday, and the pictures are all the proof you need. Sure, Natalie Morales is almost as beautiful without makeup (don’t you HATE that?) but the rest of them look more like you and me. Isn’t that refreshing?

Even I liked to see it and I would like to think I am over most of my teenage insecurities.

Two weeks ago, the impossibly cute Kelly Ripa did it too, as payment for a losing bet she made on the Super Bowl.
And, yes, she’s pretty amazing too without anything on her face, but she was very honest about how naked she felt without eyeliner.

Look, it’s all pretty superficial, talking about the way we look, but the truth is teenage girls spend an average of more than an hour a day worrying about they way they look. And they don’t even have wrinkles yet.

When the women who make their money looking good and delivering the day’s news and entertainment are brave enough to show what they really look like under all that pancake, we all get to feel a little better about ourselves.

It’s nice to see them put their powder down and take one for the team.