After paging through a magazine at work on my break, titled "People Style Watch" the presentation given this past Monday about the Cosmetic Industry came to mind. This magazine was entirely centered around clothing, accessories and makeup.
Tons of makeup tricks, ideas and new products presented to the reader. It then occurred to me how the media is so involved with the cosmetic industries, and how wearing makeup now seems to be the "norm." For example, if a celebrity isn't wearing makeup, you find various magazine articles "exposing" her real features and almost puts a negative connotation to them. It's almost as if, if a woman is not wearing makeup she is then regarded as not pretty or even not "womanly." I guess I never really took notice to the cosmetic industry and how large and influencing they can be on society. We are shown commercials daily about various cosmetics to buy, to reduce "fine lines around you eyes, enhance your lips, or volumizing your eyelashes" as if women, and even some men...are not good enough to go out in public unless we have these material things. I myself wear makeup everyday, I don't wear much, just mascara and some blush, but I've begun to think, "Have I myself been pressured by the industry to wear makeup, so I will fit in with the standards of today's society?" I would like to believe I chose on my own regard, but really...I'm starting to think this is not so. Don't get me wrong, I do go out with no makeup on too, but it's once in a blue moon.
So girls (and possibly men) I ask you this: Do you feel pressure to wear makeup? Do you feel like society has put a standard on how you should present "your face?" What about anti-aging makeup in general? Is our society today so out of skew with this ideal that wearing makeup makes you beautiful, makes you a "woman" that there is no way for us to turn away from this view?
