January 14, 2020

The World Of Makeup Shaming

The world of makeup shaming

Makeup And Its Position In Society

Doing makeup is a fun and creative way of expressing yourself while embracing your natural features. Creating makeup looks and getting inspired by a social media tutorial is pretty normal nowadays. Sharing your looks with your friends on Facebook, followers on Instagram or creating blog or YouTube tutorials for others to benefit from has never been easier and more normalised.

Some consider makeup as an art form, some wore it daily to school, work or just to go shopping. However, as a thing becomes normalised the voices of those who don’t approve become louder. There are multiple groups, chats or reddit threads on makeup shaming. Some come from men. Their objective is mostly that women shouldn’t wear makeup to be more beautiful, because it is deceitful.

However, more shockingly, some of these incentives come from women, also avid makeup enthusiasts. They are more into criticizing others for creating supposedly ugly looks that they could never wear.

Analysing the both stances

In this blog post, I’m going to shortly analyse statements of both identified groups. Makeup shaming isn’t just making jokes or being funny at someone’s expense.

Many times it comes across as straight bullying or at least nasty gossiping. People should wear makeup when they want to, simply because there isn’t a solid reason why they shouldn’t.

This increased amounts of shaming of totally normal things is a small problem, that might lead us to understand more about human nature and psychology.

You're beautiful, don't wear makeup

Many times you can come across with statements or unnecessary advices about your choice of using makeup, how much of it you’re using, how often your doing it, what colours you’re using etc.

The most common are:

“You shouldn’t wear makeup, you’re beautiful without it!”

I know, it’s obviously a compliment. But a little bit suggestive, don’t you think? This statement premises that you wear makeup because you want to be beautiful. Which isn’t really true.

Yes of course, you can find people that aren’t as confident or as self-loved and it is true for them. But for most of us with healthy self esteem, this just doesn’t apply. We wear makeup because it’s fun, because we use our face as a canvas, because we want to create a piece of art.

We wear it, because we want to feel different, more confident, enhance our features and to be more beautiful. Not because we think we’re ugly and worthless without it.

Also, why would you think that your perception of our beauty means anything to us? Maybe I don’t care that you like my bare face, because I love golden eyelids. Maybe I don’t care what you think I should and shouldn’t do.

Well, not a good compliment nonetheless.

Like it would be harder to say something like, your skin is beautiful/flawless/gorgeous or that you’re a natural beauty. Without any unsolicited advice.

Makeup Is Deceitful Towards Men

There are countless times I got across an argument that victimised men in the topic of makeup. Which is as silly as it sounds. My model statement that I’ve read on a reddit thread called Unpopular opinion was:

“Makeup is all about deception to make a person look super fertile.”

Yeah. That’s exactly why I do my makeup for events or when I feel like doing it. Because I want to seem fertile. Or super fertile. What’s with the arrogance of you to assume that I do it, to please you. Concretely you, the person with this stance.

Many people actually do their makeup at home even when they aren’t going anywhere. Just for fun or bacause they just want to do it. Nobody sees them, only them and they are hardly convincing themselves that they’re more fertile with it.

I would be interested if clothes, razors and deodorants are being criticised with the same energy. Natural sadly means smelly, stinky, hairy. Without brushed teeth, combed hair or a body made in the gym. Isn’t working out for how your physique looks the same?

Usually, these statements are mostly told by men, but there are also women who agree and go beyond and shame others. I was thinking that it might have a correlation with a cool girl thrope, because essentially I feel like that’s the objective these women go for. Hate on a group to show that their different from other women (not like other girls) and therefore more interesting and relatable towards men as a love interest.

There is also a theory that women wear makeup, heels and “fertile enhancing” (can’t forget that) clothes because of intrasexual competition between them and other women. Research showed that “large number of females were highly critical of other women, particularly attractive ones and are highly concerned about their appearance in relation to other women.”

To me this seems like “cool girls” are essentially taking a different route to reach the same objective. Meaning they criticise women that are concerned about their appearance in order to be considered more attractive.

What do you think?

Your makeup is disgusting

The final group is mostly women who depict other people’s makeup looks and gossip them. They, opposing to other group, don’t have a problem with wearing makeup, as they mostly wear it too. These women have problem with how the makeup is done and how they could NEVER wear something like that. And how they totally don’t get it (that’s the most common reaction).

What I don’t get is people who are obviously very happy, confident and glowing and then these women come and shame them like they’re better than everyone else.

There was a one post with a girl with rainbow eye look but no foundation on. She had a severe acne and was embracing it. And these people came and said things like: I could never do this, this isn’t for me and calling her names. And to me, this just doesn’t make any sense. Why would you download a picture from your friend’s private wall, post it to the group anonymously and then laugh at it for how bad it is.

And the makeup looks aren’t even bad and people on the picture are obviously happy about it so, why?

This is what I don’t get. We live in a world when all sorts of things are normalised but there are still people who find a purple lipstick or yellow eye makeup provoking. And of course they’re entitled to their own opinions. But so am I, that’s why I am making this blog post after all.

In conclusion

Shaming anyone doesn’t help. It creates negative feelings and tensions. If you want to change something, do it through positive enforcement. Maybe then, you can actually change other people’s opinions, views or patterns of behaviour.

Hope you enjoyed this article. I wanted to do something like this for a while but never really got any time. I want to make this a series, as I find these topics inherently interesting and helpful in understanding humans and their psyche.

If you want to read about more topics such as these, it’s under the topic “Social Commentary” (click here). Sadly I didn’t think of something more creative. If you do, tell me in the comments!

Interesting websites

Research mentioned: here
Interesting article by Emily Gordon on NY Times, speaking exactly about being a cool girl when she was younger: here

*These links aren’t sponsored, they’re here just for more information for you.

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Author: Radka Slebodnikova

Filed Under: Social Commentary

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Radka Slebodnikova

1 year ago

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Radka Slebodnikova

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The world of makeup shaming

Makeup And Its Position In Society

Analysing the both stances

You're beautiful, don't wear makeup

Makeup Is Deceitful Towards Men

Your makeup is disgusting

In conclusion