What Do Girls Use To Do Makeup

F rom the soot-rimmed eyes of the ancient Egyptians to the lead paint worn by the Elizabethans, women and girls take experimented with cosmetics throughout history. Indeed, according to the Roman playwright Plautus, "a woman without paint is like food without salt". Shakespeare'due south Village was less keen but simply every bit rude, telling Ophelia: "I've heard all near you women and your cosmetics besides. God gives you one face, but you paint another on superlative of information technology. You dance and prance and lisp; yous telephone call God's creations by pet names, and you excuse your sexpot ploys by pleading ignorance."

So is makeup necessary seasoning, a conniving ploy by manipulative sexpots, or neither? Ask a grouping of women why they wear makeup and you'll receive myriad responses. Some will say it makes them feel more than confident, that they don't feel completely "done" without it; others volition say they love experimenting with looks and colours as a fashion of expressing themselves, that there'due south a fun, theatrical chemical element to face paint that allows them to channel different personalities and aesthetics.

"Later on 20 years working as a makeup creative person I can say quite confidently that women wear makeup for themselves," Lisa Eldridge, the author of Face Paint: The Story of Makeup, tells me. "There are many different roles makeup can play in a adult female's life. At that place's the playful and creative aspect – who doesn't enjoy swirling a brush in a palette of colour? Then there's the conviction-edifice aspect – why not cover a huge red blemish on your nose, if you lot can? Finally, at that place is an element of war paint and tribalism. Makeup can make y'all feel more powerful and ready to face any state of affairs."

But just as there are women and girls who wear makeup completely for themselves, there are those who wear makeup for the perceived benefit of others, or who feel as though they are unacceptable without it. Makeup tin can be a mask y'all hide behind that gets you lot prepare to face the world, or something you deploy as a weapon – to attract a partner, to intimidate, stupor and amaze. It is used as part of religious or cultural rituals, or to align yourself with a subculture. It tin mask your insecurities or be used to heighten the bits you love the most.

Makeup is so ubiquitous in our society that for a adult female to get without it has get, in some cases, a argument – the "no makeup selfie" existence a instance in point. Female celebrities characteristic on the Daily Mail's sidebar of shame below headlines such as "Jennifer Lopez, 46, dares to bare her naked face". Boybands, meanwhile, cynically tap into the anxiety young women feel by claiming that they dear you lot just as you are, a trend expertly satirised in the Amy Schumer sketch "Girl yous don't need makeup".

Indian students in Amritsar — 'Some volition say there's a fun, theatrical element to face paint that allows them to channel different personalities and aesthetics.' Indian students dressed as Punjabi giddha dancers apply each other'southward makeup in Amritsar. Photo: Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images

Possibly, so, the more useful question to enquire is non "Why do women wear makeup?" only "Why do women wear makeup when most men don't?" (peculiarly when David Bowie'due south career bears testimony to the fact that the sight of a human in makeup can do powerful things to a adult female's nether regions).

For some feminists, the question can be answered by simply muttering "patriarchy" and dusting off their hands earlier heading to the bar. Certainly, women receive messages from an early historic period that encourage us to believe that ane of our master functions is to be decorative and therefore appealing to men. Go into any newsagent and you'll see trivial girls' magazines that come with free gifts of lipgloss and nail varnish. Parents purchase their daughters strange, disembodied dolls' heads to practise on. The Disney princesses so many piddling girls model themselves on wear eyeliner, mascara and eyeshadow, and accept perfectly plucked eyebrows. Considering the extent to which makeup is viewed as a process of adornment used for attracting a mate, to foist information technology upon girls and then young is arguably more a little creepy.

Evolutionary psychologists have it that, as with so many things, makeup comes down to sex. Women tend to have darker eyes and lips than men, and makeup enhances those sex differences. Furthermore, the desirable qualities a man looks for in a woman – largely related to reproductive fitness – are said to be amplified by makeup. Beauty ideals vary from culture to culture, but there are some universal markers of bewitchery. Facial symmetry and an fifty-fifty peel tone imply skillful wellness, while youthfulness denotes fertility. Plump lips and flushed cheeks, meanwhile, are signs of sexual arousal, so your scarlet lipstick and pinkish blusher might only be giving that random man in the bar the subconscious betoken that you lot're ready for a dark of passion.

David Bowie 1973 — 'David Bowie's career bears testimony to the fact that the sight of a man in makeup can practise powerful things to a adult female's under regions.' Photograph: Ilpo Musto / Rex Features

Readers of women'southward magazines will exist familiar with the use of evolutionary psychology to flog cosmetics. I'll never forget reading an article that suggested I wear cerise lipstick so my lips could mimic blood-flushed labia. And, if a vagina mouth isn't your thing, then you could always make the skin on your face resemble a baby'due south in lodge to attract men, a suggestion repeated with alarming frequency in the pages of the glossies and capitalised upon by makeup brand Maybelline's Baby Skin range.

Cosmetics companies often rely on women's insecurities – inculcated through years of exposure to images of physical perfection in mainstream media – in guild to sell products, operating on the basis of "maybe she's born with information technology, only probably not, and then buy this concealer". Its office equally a means for roofing up unwanted flaws or "unsightly" blemishes is hammered into us again and again. Many women spend hundreds of pounds each twelvemonth on cosmetics, and as many minutes worrying about the way we look. In The Dazzler Myth, Naomi Wolf makes a persuasive case that the beauty manufacture exists to control a generation of women in the process of emancipation. Go on us broken-hearted, keep us hungry, keep us ever vigilant in our quest for concrete perfection, the argument goes, and you lot keep us downwards.

Every bit such, the message that your natural beauty is never enough is socialised into us very young. I beginning started to clothing makeup as a immature teenager because I believed the freckles dusted across my cheeks were ugly. My mother, a redhead who before leaving the house will say "Concur on, I merely need to put my eyelashes on", never encouraged me to wearable makeup until – concerned near the fade-out cream I was using in an attempt to bleach out my freckles – she thankfully steered me in the management of foundation (and and then spent the next 10 years pointing out the slightly orange tidemarks that would launder up around my chin). At the time, covering upward my freckles made me feel ameliorate about myself, more than attractive, more in keeping with the "type" of girl I believed boys went for. It wasn't until I gained confidence, and started seeing more varied portrayals in the mainstream media, including girls with freckles, that I began to wonder if they were really so hideous after all.

When the vision of beauty you are presented with is largely homogeneous, information technology'southward only natural that y'all might resort to makeup equally an attempt to "blend in" or to "pass". But, as frequently with trappings of femininity, yous're stuck betwixt a rock and a hard place. Studies repeatedly tell us that men are more attracted to women who article of clothing makeup. We're encouraged to aspire to a kind of unnatural natural dazzler, as captured past the immortal words of Calvin Klein, who said, helpfully: "The all-time affair is to wait natural, but it takes makeup to look natural." (Cheers, Calvin.)

Of course, equally the aforementioned Plautus was no dubiousness unaware, too much common salt – a probable feature of life in aboriginal Rome due to the absence of refrigeration – can be a bad affair. A study terminal yr at Bangor and Aberdeen universities found that both men and women thought women with some – merely not likewise much – makeup were near bonny. According to the written report's abstruse, "these findings propose that attractiveness perceptions with cosmetics are a class of pluralistic ignorance, whereby women tailor their cosmetics preferences to an inaccurate perception of others' preferences." The Atlantic, which reported the findings, was quick to point out that "the judging took place in Bangor, a tiny village in Wales, where beauty standards are probably unlike than they are in Beijing or Berlin or Baton Rouge". (If they were suggesting that those standards might exist lower, well, those of us who have frequented the ladies' toilets of the Bangor Wetherspoon's and seen a makeup session in progress would humbly beg to differ).

Peradventure, then, when it comes to makeup, we are our ain worst enemies, believing that the world wants to run across us in a sure mode when in bodily fact we're fine the way we are. Why do women vesture makeup? You could say it'southward a pinch of patriarchy, a dusting of sex, a smattering of fun, and a whole, caked-on layer of misplaced insecurity.