Whenever I’m in public, I see people with and without makeup. One isn’t more popular than the other, at least not significantly. Yet, wearing makeup seems to get more recognition than the natural look.
Makeup is everywhere: tutorials, every pharmacy and supermarket, advertising, media, and filters on social media. It’s inescapable. Don’t get me wrong, if you want to wear it, by all means, wear it. But it’s time the natural look got just as much, if not half, the normalization that applying makeup does.
Movie and TV portrayals of a “makeover,” at least when focusing on the shy or “nerdy” girl, often include fancy dress, great hair, and, you guessed it, lots of makeup. While this is a fine source of entertainment, and the makeover scenes are well-edited, it strongly pressures young girls to change their appearance and go for what television tells them is the standard of “beauty.” Ironically, these same forms of entertainment often include a “don’t change yourself” message, contradicting the whole makeover scene. Talk about mixed messages.
Looking back at the few times I put on makeup, besides for a Halloween costume, I did it because I was drawn in by media: high school girls on TV wore makeup to prom, so I wanted to wear makeup to my 10th-grade dance.
Magazines and the media also condition girls to wear makeup. Throw in influencers giving tutorials and the “pretty” filters on TikTok, and it sounds like a written law that makeup is the new normal. But the truth is, it isn’t. While magazines and movie and TV sets have to use makeup to an extent so that the models’ and actors’ faces don’t get washed out, that doesn’t mean we have to make them look like completely different people or flawless individuals.
I choose not to wear makeup because that’s how I feel the most confident. Plus, I’m not a big fan of anything near my eyes. We can’t, and shouldn’t, eliminate makeup from the media completely; it’s a part of our world, after all. However, if we had more representation and normalization of the natural look, it could be just the confidence booster that people uncomfortable wearing makeup might need. Plus, it’s a good reminder that there is no one definition of the term “beauty.” It’s different for everyone.
