No Makeup, No Message.

As you may know, I have had a bit of a hate/hate relationship with Facebook over the years and I even deactivated my account for 13 months. My return to it is something I aim to cover on here in the near future, but one thing that has been happening on there in recent days has made me wonder why I came back.

Yet another trend has sprung up, in which women are being nominated to post pics of themselves with no makeup on to raise awareness of Breast Cancer. Now, before anyone gets nasty or closes this post before they've finished reading, I want to make the following clear:

• I have no problem with people raising awareness of any cause/disease etc. I've known a lot of friends who have had Breast Cancer and although many have fought it and won, some didn't make it. Cancer touches an astounding number of us in some way or another. The same goes for other forms of Cancer and indeed many other illnesses and diseases.
• Some of the nominees I've seen have actually tried to correct the way this has been set up, either by including links to donation pages or, by posting proof of a donation instead of a makeup-less pic.
• It's a bit of a mixed message, as some females have pointed out that they don't actually wear makeup most of the time anyway. Also, either by means of the message being lost via passing it along in a chain or purely by it being set out badly in the first place, these photos are often posted with little or no explanation. Some of them say it is to raise awareness of Breast Cancer, some say Cancer in general and others don't mention any cause whatsoever.
• Also, I'm not against women going without makeup. There's nothing wrong with showing your face the way nature intended.

I hope that's made my viewpoint clear.

Now to return to the point of mixed messages, as that is a huge problem, I feel. There's no point in doing something to raise awareness of a cause, if you don't actually say what the cause is. Supposing Sport Relief or Children In Need broadcast an entire telethon without saying what their causes are about? Imagine they didn't show you any films about those who they are trying to help? It would just be a pointless variety show. Not having a clear message behind any campaign is extremely damaging towards what you are trying to do.

So, if you do insist on taking part in this trend, make it clear what it is in aid of and include a link to a relevant charity that people can donate to, such as:

http://myprojects.cancerresearchuk.org/projects/breast-cancer-support-pioneering-research 

Or

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/support-us/donate/donate-money 

Or if you have your own fundraising page, link to that. Just don't lose the message, otherwise what's the point?