"I tested an app that shows what women look like makeup-free. This was the result."

I don’t know about you, but when I dabble in my love/hate relationship with selfies, I want to look my best. You know, flawless skin, matching eyebrows, Kardashian-esque cheekbones, natural filters… the whole shebang.

What I don’t want? All the effort I’ve put in to look slightly presentable and less like I need four months of sleep to be quite literally wiped away with a tap on a screen.

It turns out there’s now an app for the latter, proving to be an app we (or more accurately, I) never asked for.

It’s called MakeApp, and its predominant (read: soul crushing) feature is removing all traces of makeup from any face. Yep. ANY FACE.

You can do it to yourself, your friends, your partner, even your favourite celebrities – which I have to admit is somewhat entertaining.

But why does such an app – one that puts the focus back on our looks and hones in on some of our biggest insecurities – even have to exist in the first place?

And for the love of god, why does makeup-shaming basically still exist?!

Zoe Foster-Blake shares her beauty advice for busy women. Post continues below…

Founder Ashot Gabrelyanov – because naturally the mastermind behind the app is a man – defended his app after receiving multitudes of backlash, saying that the intention behind the app was not to shame women. Of course.

“We built MakeApp as an experiment and released it into the wild a few months ago and unfortunately the media coverage solely focused on the makeup removal function of the app and characterised it as a bunch of ‘tech bros’ trying to hurt women, which is just so far from the truth,” he told Buzzfeed.

To be fair, removing makeup and exposing your tired self isn’t the app’s only tidbit. You can plaster on a variety of different not-so-natural makeup looks. But hey, we’ve been there, done that.

The app has created some… buzz, if you will, with many women and girls finding that the app doesn’t truly depict your bare face, but actually adds imperfections, redness and dullness that wasn’t even there in the first place which is great because we all need more things to be insecure about.

To put these rumours to rest (and hopefully boost my bare face confidence), I took the bait and decided to test it out.

Ahem. Drum roll, please.

Now, I'm not saying it's bloody ridiculous but... IT'S BLOODY RIDICULOUS.

Sure, there's a resemblance, but so there should be. It is my face after all and it's not like the app augments facial structure. It just adds wrinkles I don't have (yet), makes my skin three shades lighter and changes the pigment colour of my skin, hides the bags that have been under my eyes since the dawn of time, fades my eyebrows and adds redness around my mouth that I definitely do not have. (OK, maybe I have that a little bit.)

Plus, I somehow managed to turn into a sort of... redhead? Miraculous.

Basically, there are some flaws to MakeApp. What if you use an already makeup-less photo? Does the app just shed another layer of skin until you're so pale and ~imperfect~ that you mimic a zombie?

Thanks, but no thanks.

I mean, I most definitely don't need this kind of witchcraft in my life. Not when I can just, I don't know, maybe do the difficult deed of taking off my makeup myself and probably looking somewhat normal. Well, normal to me.

I think I'll stick to my airbrushing flower crown Snapchat filters and Instagram tools.