Are Beauty Trends Even Right for You? Let’s Talk Beauty + Media
Friday, July 29, 2016
When was the last time that you saw a girl with a couple sunspots, maybe a little bit of redness or a pimple or two on her face in a magazine or on a billboard? Chances are you never have. It’s completely understandable that if a brand is selling foundation to help you achieve near-perfect skin they wouldn’t want to have any imperfections on the face of their models. At the same time, they need to be a bit more realistic.
Newsflash, beauty companies: People have pores. They have peach fuzz, they have texture on their skin. No matter how beautiful someone’s skin is, no one’s skin is perfect, but that’s exactly what we’re seeing in the beauty campaigns.
Let’s back it up a bit—back to a time when Kim Kardashian was the only one who contoured. What really got me thinking about this was an encounter that I had while working at Sephora. It all started whenAnastasia Beverly Hills released her Contour Kit. As soon as it sold out on Sephora shelves everywhere, other beauty companies started to see how mad people went over this whole “contouring and highlighting” thing that no one really knew how to achieve and within a few weeks, every single brand had a contour kit for sale.
Then, all the big beauty brands started to jump on the bandwagon. Sephora caught on and turned their stores into the new hubs of this insane new trend that was legit Taking. Over. Within a week, every single client that walked in the door wanted to know how to contour.
"Within a week, every single client that walked in the door wanted to know how to contour."
I loved teaching people how to change their face shape and create illusions that made their faces look “better” (at least in their minds). Everyone loved the way their faces looked with a little contouring and highlighting, but one girl walked in and changed my entire opinion on the trend.
She was gorgeous and had the most beautiful, pronounced cheekbones I had ever seen. Of course, she sat down in my chair and asked me to teach her how to contour. I honestly didn’t even know how to achieve what she wanted to with contouring because it looked like she had already contoured her cheekbones to perfection.
Long story short, I explained to her that she was literally the poster child for contouring. Of course, this didn’t satisfy her because she wanted to be on trend and add contouring into her routine.
After this moment, I’ve really started to take a different perspective on beauty trends. It made me realize that there are many people out there who don’t necessarily want to do something because it’s good forthem, but they want to take part in the trends so they can feel more like the girls in the campaigns.
It’s hard for women to accept themselves as beautiful in their own ways, but in reality we all should. Not to say that I’ve overcome this completely because I haven’t.
For example, after contouring had its big moment, all the sudden we started to see “strobing” all over Instagram and YouTube demonstrated by our favorite bloggers. As someone with oily skin, I hate the look of shine on my face. I like my skin to look as matte as possible because in my opinion, that’s when it looks it best. As soon as strobing came out, I found myself grabbing for my shimmery highlighters and “strobing” my entire face. I’d leave the house with a face full of shine—the exact opposite of what I normally like to see my skin looking like.
While it felt great to be up with the trend and all, I found myself trying to blot away the shine all day not even realizing that I’m the one who put it there. Purposely. It just seems so backwards, but because everyone else was doing it, I also felt the pressure to hop on the bandwagon—especially being a beauty writer.
"I found myself trying to blot away the shine all day not even realizing that I’m the one who put it there."
Also remember that the girls you see in the campaigns aren’t perfect. The graphic designers have photoshopped them to perfection but that’s not their true skin (pun intended). You should never feel like you’re flawed because you get a pimple or two or even if you have a full face of them (I can tell you all about how that feels). While it may seem like the hardest thing in the world, you can’t compare yourself to the people in these campaigns. People are real. Photoshop is not.
