What is the main reason for makeup?

There have been numerous discussions as to why women apply makeup. A lot of men think that women apply makeup to impress them, but here’s a newsflash: They really don’t! Many people might even think that women apply makeup because they’re not confident enough to face the world. That’s not quite a fair assumption to make either. Maybe she’s just anxious to face the world with an acne-ridden face and uses makeup to boost her confidence so that she can go out there and enjoy herself without any other concerns. And this only happens because a lot of people have this annoying habit of coming up to you and pointing out the acne on your face or your puffy eyes. Believe it or not, she already knows when you’re pointing out the obvious and you’re not really helping by doing so.

Ladies, we’d only like to say this to you! Apply makeup whenever you want, wherever you want and do not let the world be a judge to any of it.

 

1. Boosts confidence

For many women, makeup is a confidence booster. Many of you might not be used to leaving the house without putting on any makeup. In fact, there are many women who don’t want anyone to even see them until they have put on some makeup. This could be termed as a bit of an extreme obsession though. While a lot of women do accept that makeup helps them feel more confident, even minimal makeup is good enough for many others. Hence, the amount of makeup required to boost confidence varies greatly from woman to woman.

 

2. To look older

All of you could probably agree to the point that makeup has the power to change your appearance to an extent and some people use it for this very same reason. Teenage girls or girls with a baby face often use makeup to seem older and more mature.

 

3. To look younger

Just the way that makeup can make you look older, it also has this uncanny ability to make you look younger as well, especially if you know those tips and tricks that can make you look younger with the help of some makeup. There are quite a few beauty products out there that can help in reducing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles on your skin, thereby making you look much younger.

 

4. Enhance beauty

Makeup cannot really change the absolute appearance of your face or transform you into some other person completely. It can only perhaps be used for enhancing your features at the most. If you have dreamy eyes, you can make them appear even more beautiful by focusing most of your makeup on just your eyes.

 

5. It is so much fun

Makeup is a form of art and just like many other such forms, it is also a lot of fun. You can try out different looks using makeup, transform yourself into a completely new person or even just look pretty much different from the previous day. With patience and practice, you can easily learn this art and if something does go wrong in the process, you always have the option to just wash the makeup off of your face and start again.

 

6. Clear complexion

With the help of makeup, you can easily cover up all those complexion-related issues that might be troubling you. From acne and dark circles to an uneven skin tone, makeup can help you effectively cover them all up. However, the only way you can achieve a seemingly clear complexion is by applying makeup correctly. This way, your skin will look clear and free from any blemishes and discolouration.

While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.

Here’s a question for makeup users and nonusers alike: Would you believe that philosophers once determined makeup trends?

Additional reading:
What Is Dermal Filler Made Of?
Key Questions to Ask When Ordering The Lipstick
How to find settings.json In VSCode
Free Developer Software & Services
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Do Women Wear Makeup? Psychological Reasons & More
What eyeshadows do makeup artists use?

What about poets?

To understand the origin of makeup, we must travel back in time about 6,000 years. We get our first glimpse of cosmetics in ancient Egypt, where makeup served as a marker of wealth believed to appeal to the gods. The elaborate eyeliner characteristic of Egyptian art appeared on men and women as early as 4000 BCE. Kohl, rouge, white powders to lighten skin tone, and malachite eye shadow (the green colour of which represented the gods Horus and Re) were all in popular use.

Makeup is mentioned in the Bible too, in both the Jewish scriptures and the Christian Old Testament and New Testament. The Book of Jeremiah, which details the titular prophet’s ministry from about 627 BCE to 586 BCE, argues against cosmetics use, thereby discouraging vanity: “And you, O desolate one, what do you mean that you dress in crimson, that you deck yourself with ornaments of gold, that you enlarge your eyes with paint? In vain you beautify yourself. Your lovers despise you; they seek your life." In 2 Kings the evil queen Jezebel exemplifies the connection between cosmetics and wickedness, being described as having “painted her eyes and adorned her head” before her death at the behest of the warrior Jehu (though Jezebel’s makeup use was not the impetus for her murder).

So too was there a disdain for cosmetics among ancient Romans, though not for religious reasons. Hygiene products such as bath soaps, deodorants, and moisturizers were used by men and women, and women were encouraged to enhance their natural appearance by removing body hair, but makeup products such as rouge were associated with sex workers and hence were considered a sign of shamelessness. Deriding makeup users is a common theme in Roman poems and comic plays (though theatrical performers constituted one of the few classes of people expected to use cosmetics), and admonitions against makeup appear in the personal writings of Roman doctors and philosophers. The elegiac poet Sextus Propertius, for instance, wrote that “looks as nature bestowed them are always most becoming.” And the philosopher Seneca the Younger, in a letter to his mother, praised the fact that she “never defiled her face with paints or cosmetics.”

This Roman view of cosmetics was at least partially rooted in Stoicism, a philosophy that foregrounded moral goodness and human reason. Stoics regarded beauty as intrinsically related to goodness. While an attractive physical form might be desirable, true “beauty” was instead associated with moral acts. Decorating the body with cosmetics implied a vanity or selfishness that, to Stoics, was undesirable. Though Stoicism was not confined to ancient Rome—it was also prevalent among ancient Greek thinkers, some of whom shared the same ideas about makeup—in Rome it affected the mainstream opinion of cosmetics. Not every Roman was resistant to makeup; some people continued to rouge their cheeks, whiten their faces, and line their eyes. But the Stoic ideal leaned toward what we today might call “no-makeup makeup”—using skin care products and other toiletries to enhance one’s natural appearance, not to decorate it.

So continued a pattern of embracing and rejecting makeup in the Western world. Cosmetics were so popular in the Byzantine Empire that its citizens gained an international reputation for vanity. The Renaissance era embraced all forms of physical beauty, which people sought to attain especially through hair dye and skin lighteners (which, containing powdered lead and other harmful products, often proved toxic). Another widespread movement against cosmetics appeared in the mid-19th century, when Britain’s Queen Victoria declared makeup to be vulgar, and cosmetics once again went out of fashion. Though many women didn’t give up makeup entirely, many now applied it in secret: who was to say their cheeks weren’t naturally rosy?

It wasn’t until about the 1920s that highly visible cosmetics, such as red lipstick and dark eyeliner, reentered the mainstream (at least in the Anglo-American world; not everyone had listened to Queen Victoria and eschewed makeup in the first place). As the beauty industry gained a financial foothold, often in the form of individual women selling to other women, dissenters found that they could no longer compete. Cosmetics, now “productized” and advertised, again became a mark of wealth and status, and emphasizing physical features, even for sex appeal, was no longer considered quite so selfish or wicked. Eventually, advertisers persuaded women to take the opposite view: cosmetics were a necessity.

But that’s another story entirely.