I Removed my Face for a Good Cause. Next Time I'm Drinking Cocktails...

So far, it's been a pretty average week. On the weekend I went for a glass of wine with Jess and Kirsty and ended up stumbling home at 4am after a night of dancing, hiding our coats in condiments draws to avoid cloakroom charges, and getting into the most bizarre arguments with middle aged women in fancy dress who don't understand that Northern Ireland is a country. For the rest of the week I have been pretty much banging my head against useless textbooks and trying to form a 3,000 word chapter for my dissertation out of the 3 convoluted bullet points I have.

But this week has been somewhat out of the ordinary. For a reason I at first could not understand, dozens of makeupless selfies started to clog up my Facebook newsfeed. Initially I was confused, partly because I didn't recognise any of the faces staring out of the pictures at me (apparently, I'm not the only one who looks like a completely different person without my customary 5 layers of makeup on). But it quickly became clear what was happening. Snap a picture of yourself sans makeup, upload it to Facebook, nominate your friends (or enemies), and donate £3 to Cancer Research UK.

Once that was cleared up, my confusion quickly turned to terror. This thing was spreading faster than the plague. Eventually it would find me and, as the day progressed and the number of selfies doubled, then tripled on my newsfeed, I knew it wouldn't be long before a nomination came my way.

It was waiting for me when I woke up the next day. And so was a spot on the end of my nose. Because having to expose your naked face to the world isn't bad enough. But I did it. I won't lie, it was a challenge. I don't have great self esteem. Yes, I'll walk into a room and talk to anyone. Yes, I'll be the last one dancing when they turn the lights on in Arena at the end of the night. And yes, I do insist on wearing ridiculous fancy dress costumes whenever possible. But ask me to take my makeup off or tie my hair into a pony tail and expose my Dumbo ears and I freak out. Welcome to my inner crazy.

But what really surprised me were all the negative comments. Not about my naked face, although there are probably a few of those floating around the place. About the campaign itself. I've read articles about how this trend won't achieve anything, Facebook statuses about how stupid
the idea is, and, of course, numerous male comments stating, "seeing as it's for Breast Cancer, why don't you just get your boobs out?" Original.

But the last I read, the Cancer Research text line was overrun with people making donations and the campaign raised over £1 million pound in 24 hours. I may not enjoy posting a picture of my real face online and I doubt anyone out there enjoys looking at it, but this crazy random idea has done a lot of good. But I would appreciate it if the next campagin was something less scarring. Like, "Nominate 3 friends to go grab a coktail and donate money to Cancer Research." In fact, let's just make that a thing right now.