2015 Nov 20
by Anuki Premachandra
Some say that make-up is always a girl’s best friend. What’s the Gucci’s and the Prada for if you don’t look pretty enough? The perfect skin tone, the perfect eye brows, the perfect rosy cheeks, the perfectly lined, bold lips are “essential” for the perfect face, the one that turns heads around when you walk into a room.
How perfect should the lips be? How intricately should your eyes be lined? How rosy should the cheeks be? How perfect should the ‘perfect’ face be? What really is the perfect face? It’s funny really, we tell ourselves that imperfections are what makes us beautiful, but how many of us are confident enough to stand tall and strong and let the world see us for who we really are? Beneath those layers of foundation, concealer and blush was a face you once knew but rarely see anymore.
“They may be reluctant to leave home without it, but make-up is putting women at risk of deadly diseases”, says the health experts. “It’s a portrayal of a woman’s low self-esteem”, says the social critiques. But one woman’s reasoning and another’s is individual to them. Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely love what makeup can do. It makes you feel ten times prettier and better. It gives the boost of self-confidence you need to hold your head high and walk gracefully into the midst of people. But, what I don’t agree with is the excessive use of it, or the mindset that people are developing where they think they look ‘ugly’ without it on their skin. It’s funny because when you actually look at it, it seems like makeup is the answer to cover up society’s perception of ‘ugly’.
The other day, my friends and I were stalking this really pretty girl on Instagram. Suddenly, one of them goes, “OMG she was the one we saw at the party the other day!” All of us, shocked and absolutely startled, tell her she’s either high or blind. But then stalking her profile 2 weeks in, we saw a picture she uploaded from the night of the party. My friend was right! This was the girl! We start comparing her profile picture to the blurred image of her we had in our heads and we’re confused as ever! The person in the picture looks flawless, a spot-on definition of perfection you’d say…
Researchers Alex Jones at Bangor University and Robin Kramer at Aberdeen University in the U.K. photographed 44 early-20s white women, all of whom had just washed their faces, with a Nikon D3000 SLR camera in a naturally lit room. Then they gave them “a range of best-selling foundations, lipsticks, mascaras and blushers,” and told them to apply the products as though they were getting ready for a night out.
“Taken together, these results suggest that women are likely wearing cosmetics to appeal to the mistaken preferences of others,” Jones and Kramer wrote in the study, forthcoming from the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. “These mistaken preferences seem more tied to the perceived expectancies of men, and, to a lesser degree, of women.”
In other words, the models were primping for nonexistent ideals, not for actual humans. (Source: The Atlantic)
What is the real reason for “putting your face on?” For beauty? For confidence? To help deal with the fact that we need to make an 8:00 meeting after a Wednesday evening spent swimming in chardonnay?Women tend to have darker eyes and redder lips than men do, and we wear makeup partly to exaggerate those sex differences. There’s also a corrective aspect: Blush makes us look healthier; foundation makes our faces appear more symmetrical.
Ladies, makeup definitely gives you the extra glow you need. But, too much of it, makes you look like a canvas, with an amateur artist painting all over it, excessively. Trust me, you’re beautiful just the way you are, you don’t need makeup to tell you that.
