#you know y'all are only supposed to be using like half the amount of foundation that you're using

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

Makeup in the age of internet

I know a lot of girls these days are probably learning to do their makeup from their peers or from YouTube/Instagram, and I think this is a problem

my mom wouldn’t let me wear makeup (apart from lip gloss) until I was 11, and I wasn’t allowed to wear mascara until I was a teenager. I actually didn’t resent her for it like I imagine many girls would, but in retrospect I see exactly what she was thinking in doing this:

She was preventing her child from being sexualized

She was making sure that she would be the one to teach me how to do my makeup

now I don’t know how y’all’s moms taught you to do your makeup, but my mom utterly drilled this into my brain:

Makeup is not for changing your face; it is for accentuating the features you already have

So what are girls learning about makeup from the Internet? They’re learning to contour their cheekbones higher or lower, contour their noses narrower or perkier, add or erase freckles, overline their lips into shapes that make their smiles unrecognizable, etc.  Now I won’t deny there is real artistry involved in this, and there’s a time and place for all manner of makeup styles, but what kind of mindset is developing when a girl expends energy every day into making a completely new face for herself? Why are we teaching girls they look better as a certain type of woman instead of teaching them to see the beauty in their own features?

Mothers need to stop leaving their daughters’ beauty education in the hands of the culture, because culture will teach them there is a mold to fit. That the face God gave them isn’t good enough. Today’s culture tells me my nose is too bird-like, my forehead is too tall, my lips are too small, and my eyebrows aren’t symmetrical enough. Thanks to how my mom taught me, I know my nose is unique (I got it from my dad, after all), my forehead looks noble, my lips make me appear sweet & personable, and my eyebrows make me expressive.

And when I say a Certain Type of woman is perceived as “the goal,” this is what I mean:

Before the makeover, each woman looks like an (absolutely gorgeous) individual about whom I can learn something just by glancing at them. After the makeover, every single one of these women looks biologically related to the other. Every single woman has overlined her lips, donned fake lashes, contoured herself into a different ethnicity, and altogether looks like a Bratz doll.

I’m also gonna go out on a limb and say this is bad makeup, because beforehand we know that the focal point of their face is their eyes. Afterwards, we don’t know where to look, and because of this, we can’t pick up on any particular personality trait in their expressions. But this is the makeup that current Internet culture props up as the pinnacle. The ideal product of your time and money. And no matter how much we talk about artwork and skill, that’s just false. The ideal use of your powders and brushes is to bring attention to the features that make you You.