The make-up free selfie Facebook rejected.

She finally found some courage. Then Facebook smacked her down.

Ever since Lisa Goodman-Helfand was a girl, she’s hidden her face behind make up.

The Chicago-based woman suffers a disease called scleroderma, which causes hardening of skin, and sometimes organs in the body.

According to the Daily Mail, Lisa’s condition has caused the skin on her face to toughen, then to become covered in red blotches.

Lisa, 40, has always worn makeup to hide her skin, but after connecting with fellow scleroderma sufferer Chanel White on the internet, she finally found the confidence to show her face in its natural beauty.

While Chanel’s face appears as if nothing is wrong, her condition is causing her organs to harden and is perhaps far more severe than Lisa’s form of scleroderma.

“Chanel, she would trade places with me in a millisecond. I can put make-up on and walk out the door every day and live my life,” Lisa wrote on her blog.

Learning of Chanel’s troubles, Lisa finally found the strength to take a makeup free selfie and post it to Facebook, side-by-side with an image of Chanel. The composite image was attached to a blog post about the realities of this rare and incurable disease.

But when she went to promote the image on the social media site, it returned a hurtful message:

“Your ad wasn’t approved because it includes ‘before and after’ images, or other images showing unexpected or unlikely results. It’s also recommended that you avoid focusing on specific body parts, because these images typically receive high negative feedback.”

Even after Lisa explained the image wasn’t a ‘before and after’, she received another message from Facebook refusing her image.

“I’ve been advised to ‘avoid focusing on specific body parts, because these images typically receive high negative feedback’. That said body part is my face,” Lisa wrote in a blog post, complaining about Facebook’s treatment of her.

“Does anyone else see the irony in my face violating Facebook’s ad policy?’ she asked. ‘Would my scleroderma-ravaged elbows, or fingers have been less offensive?”

 After Lisa’s story was published by Yahoo! Canada, Facebook allowed her post to be published and later apologised for the misunderstanding.

“Since writing my original post, Facebook has responded to me apologizing for removing my ads, and re-approving them. Hooray!” Lisa wrote in an update on her blog. “I will be writing back to them with a copy of my most recent article, so that they might consider taking a closer look at their policy and how it is communicated.”

Some other #makeupfreeselfies women have shared online:

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