Farley Hall’s new signature event Be Fine—to be celebrated on Thursday, December 4—encourages women across campus to rejoice in their inner beauty.

Saint Augustine once said, “Since love grows within you, so beauty grows.  For love is the beauty of the soul.”  Today’s young girls find themselves constantly bombarded with advertisements and popular culture telling them what it means to be “beautiful.”  Usually this beauty is not defined by “love that grows within,” but strictly by one’s outward appearance.

For their new signature event, Be Fine, the women of Farley Hall decided that they wanted to unite Notre Dame women in the notion that all of us are beautiful for reasons outside of societal expectations of feminine beauty.

Jessica Merdes—one of the Farley Hall residents in charge of Be Fine—described the event to the Rover: “Be Fine is our new signature event for the year.  The goal is to promote confidence and positive body image in the women of Notre Dame.  We are going to encourage all girls on campus to go the day without make-up. We’re not trying to say that makeup is evil, or that you shouldn’t wear makeup.  We want it to be a representation of saying, ‘I don’t need makeup to be beautiful.  I am beautiful the way I am, and there are other things besides just looks that make me beautiful, like your laugh around campus or being smart and confident.

“We will be handing out bows and pins so that girls can show their participation,” she continued.  “We will also be handing out hot chocolate in front of [DeBartolo] on the day of the event.”

Farley Hall also encourages women across campus to post “selfies” of themselves on December 4 without makeup to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, with the tag “BeFineND.”

When asked if Be Fine was based on any national events or movements, Merdes replied:

“We got inspiration from the Dove campaign against Photoshopping.  Photoshopping’s a big problem because on magazines girls see images that aren’t real.  Aerie just launched [its] new no-photo shopped campaign—[the group is] doing an unfiltered campaign.  It is a national trend that’s going on right now.  People are saying that there is no point in Photoshopping—it is very unnecessary and it is sending the wrong message to girls.  We want to be a part of this movement.”

“The inspiration for Be Fine came from taking a deeper look at what Farley’s Finest truly stands for,” Casey Skevington, president of Farley Hall, told the Rover.  “We have a strong focus on sisterhood and we wanted to share that with all our sisters at Notre Dame.  Living in a dorm of 230 young women, you see that each resident is beautifully unique and that in Farley we feel that is something that should be celebrated campus wide.”

Skevington also described another event taking place next week that fits in with the theme of Be Fine: “Notre Dames (a new club on campus) is going to center their Talk it Out Tuesday (a weekly occurrence from 6-8 in Lafun) about natural beauty on December 2.  We’re really excited for them to be a part of the natural beauty campaign.”

“This is a great way for us to come together as women of Notre Dame and say that, ‘We are tired of all the societal expectations for how we are supposed to look.  We are beautiful because we are who we are,’” Mendes continued.  “I hope that with our campaigning and advertising that enough girls will be excited about this event and participate so that we can all come together and be beautiful for the day.”

Be Fine will be celebrated on Thursday, December 4—the women of Farley Hall encourage women across campus to rejoice in their inner beauty by not wearing makeup and embracing what it means for each of them to “be fine.”

Caroline Corsones is a junior English major with a minor in business economics.  She said that her echoing laugh makes her fine.  What makes you fine?  Contact her at ccorsone@nd.edu.