the Wonders of Makeup
Makeup is a cosmetics colorant and substance that can be applied to the skin to improve one’s appearance. Makeup could also be any substances one applies on the body to change the look.
Women and makeup do have a complicated relationship. Some revel in it, running from one makeup counter to the other, to try on the latest trend, delighting in transforming their look with the flick of a brush. Others keep it simple, sticking with the bare basics and often forgetting to put it on at all. And many abhor it, either because they don’t like its feel on their skin or don’t like what it stands for.
Love it or hate it, women have been using makeup, in different forms, for a very long time. Fashionable sixth century women made their faces paler by bleeding themselves, either directly or with the help of leeches. During the Italian Renaissance, women coated their faces with toxic chemicals including arsenic, lead and mercury. It was even popular to look sickly in the 19th century, when tuberculosis was considered a ‘romantic’ disease. Women of that era emphasized the circles under their eyes and used rouge to look flushed with fever.
So when did people first start to use makeup? No one is 100 per cent sure. The first archeological records of clear makeup use come from Ancient Egyptian and Sumerian tombs dating as far back as around 3500 BC. They used soot and other natural ingredients to paint their faces, and even had specialized tools to apply their makeup. However, paints and other means of self-decoration date back tens of thousands of years. Archaeological sites in South Africa provide evidence that body paint may have been used over 50,000 years ago, suggesting people painted their bodies before they even wore clothes. But the real question is, why does it work? Because makeup use across cultures and eras presents a similar pattern: the maintenance of youthful features and the exaggeration of female typical traits.
Advantages of wearing makeup
- Makeup works because it enhances a woman’s natural sign of youth, fertility and sexual availability, thus making a woman seem more appealing.
- Makeup doesn’t just change how men view a woman’s looks. When asked about personality measures, men naturally give higher scores to women who wear makeup.
- Women feel prettier when they’re wearing makeup. Putting on cosmetics has been shown to boost self-image.
- It is a way to be expressive
- It corrects thing that we cannot always correct on our own, like natural flaws
Little wonder the makeup industry is a billion dollar industry.
With additional reports by Okonkwo Uchechukwu Ethel
