Even from a young age, girls are trained to think that they need makeup to be beautiful. From dressed up Barbie dolls to celebrities on the television, makeup is everywhere. It is now just a regular social standard, but this needs to stop.
“[Makeup] teaches girls and women to cover up things that make them who they truly are,” said junior Mark Crockett.
Most girls wear makeup without even thinking about it, and many feel that they need makeup in order to look presentable. “The reason people wear makeup is to look beautiful and confident,” said junior Layly Roodsari.
Girls who don’t wear makeup have many reasons, and often it isn’t that they’re more confident without it. For Roodsari, going makeup free is reasonable “because you have to pay money for makeup and you have to put it on and I don’t even have time for that. And it doesn’t make a difference.”
And while makeup in itself isn’t bad, it can even be a good thing when used in moderation and when paired with a confident attitude, the overuse of makeup lends to the bad habit of covering the imperfections that make each and everyone of us human.
Is it self-consciousness that leads girls to wear makeup, or is it because makeup is now just a societal normality? I believe that it’s a bit of both. Society is at the core of the problem, but makeup allows people to run from what they dislike about themselves instead of truly seeing themselves and embracing their natural beauty.
Makeup can lead young girls to believe that they aren’t good or pretty enough without makeup on. In today’s society, the media is filled with images of women who are photoshopped or laden with makeup, leading to unrealistic standards of beauty. This is dangerous territory that society is entering into.
Instead of hiding our flaws we should embrace them. Summer is the perfect time to leave the mascara and lipstick behind, and instead have fun in the sun, makeup free and all the more beautiful because of it.
A Woman • Apr 3, 2016 at 9:21 pm
I understand the basis of the argument here that make up is used to hide imperfections and has in turn created both an expectation for young girls to live up to and an up soar in insecurity but I simply don’t see make up in the same light. While I do agree that this insecurity created by the media drives the majority of women towards make up there is a time where the crutch transforms into a form of expression. In the beginning of middle school I drew over my eyelid with a dark color to makes my eyes look bigger because I believed that was how I was supposed o look, I believed that was beautiful. Now, I take 15 mins in the morning making sure my eyeliner comes to a perfect sharp point. I do not do this in the hopes to fool anyone into thinking that a third of my eyelid is back and naturally sharp enough to poke an eye out but it has evolved into my own personal style that I don’t not try to mold to any particular aesthetic. I believe that women are lucky to be able to express themselves in allies such as make up and fashion and in ways that men have been closed down to because of societal standards and I would love to see those allies opened more. I believe that self expression is art and can be done through fashion art music make up etc. , everybody starts somewhere and what once started out as a crutch for many women is now their main choice of medium for their self expression and I see nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t have to be a sign of deceit or a reason for boyfriends to “take her swimming on the first date”. Comments like these and articles chastising insecure women by urging them to “just embrace their natural beauty” does absolutely nothing for them. I am not in the habit of shaming any persons creative avenue just because I do not seek the same path and I am most definitely not trying to make people believe that the solution to a life long struggle with insecurity is to just magically stop being insecure. If you truly want to help these women attack the media and billion dollar companies the fuel this self hatred fire, not the women who are protecting themselves the only way they know how.
Sydney L • Dec 21, 2015 at 8:27 pm
While I see what this article is trying to convey, from my experience it is girls who do wear what is considered “too much” makeup who receive criticism when they are simply trying to express themselves. The whole idea of makeup as strictly a way of “hiding” is a very narrow, and even indirectly misogynistic, viewpoint. Telling girls to wear more makeup OR to wear less makeup is just another way of policing women’s choices in self-presentation to fit a certain standard of beauty. Girls should be able to wear a bare face with jeans and a tee shirt or Amy Winehouse eyeliner and sky high heels and be treated the same. It’s nobody’s buisness to tell them otherwise.