Recent Posts
Entertainment September 11, 2016
How often do you, as they say, “cake” your face?
Back in May, Alicia Keys wrote a message on Lenny Letter explaining her decision to live au naturel. In her letter, she laments the painstaking labor of trying to fit in, of “hiding a piece of who you are in order to fit into a picture of what others seem to see as perfection.”
Keys elaborates on the struggle of being a “pretty girl” and how women are pressured to tame their frizzy locks, be a specific weight and wake up early every morning to “put their face on.” She writes, “Before I started my new album, I wrote a list of all the things that I was sick of. And one was how much women are brainwashed into feeling like we have to be skinny, or sexy, or desirable, or perfect. One of the many things I was tired of was the constant judgment of women.”
As a response, she began exemplifying the words to her song, “When a Girl Can’t Be Herself”:
In the morning from the minute that I wake up
What if I don’t want to put on all that makeup?
Who says I must conceal what I’m made of
Maybe all this Maybelline is covering my self-esteem.
Aside from her Instagram photos proudly revealing her no makeup selfies, the celeb’s first makeup-free red carpet debut was at the BET awards. She then, as People says, “took her bare-faced look one step further [and] appeared on a season preview of The Voice totally bare-faced.”
But when Keys showed up to the VMAs without even the slightest bit of concealer, fans had mixed opinions. While some people praised her for “showing women how beautiful they can be with literally no make up,” others criticized her decision.
Daily News shares some remarks made on her bare-faced look. “If my skin was as nice as @aliciakeys I’d wear no makeup but my skin is pizza so there’s that.” One person claimed, “Alicia Keys is doing that no makeup thing cause she can afford it. Some of you girls look like Krusty the Clown without makeup. Don’t do it.”
However, despite these polarized reactions to her decisions, Alicia Keys’ words on Lenny Letter still ring true: “All of it is so frustrating and so freakin’ impossible.”
Even when Keys chooses to wipe the makeup from her face because she “[doesn’t] want to cover up anymore,” the public took to social media to profess their judgments about her decision.
On the other side of the argument, NikkieTutorials defends makeup on her YouTube channel. She says, “Girls have been almost ashamed to say that they love makeup. Nowadays when you say you love makeup you either do it because you want to look good for boys, you do it because you’re insecure or you do it because you don’t love yourself. I feel like, in a way, it’s almost a crime to love doing your makeup.”
In the video, she explains how people treat or react to her differently when she wears makeup. For instance, when she shows people her makeup portfolio while she’s bare-faced, “they look at [her] and tell [her], ‘That is not you’ or ‘That’s funny because [you] don’t even look like that girl [in the picture].’”
In response to these sentiments, she created a look with half of her face “full on glam” with the other side “me – raw, unedited, nothing.” This inspirational video went viral and sparked the #PowerofMakeup movement on Instagram, where people began posting images to make a point that makeup is a “transformation” and is “fun.”
In response to NikkieTutorials, Glamour says, “This all brings up a good point: Makeup and self image have a strange relationship. While we don’t love the idea of a woman feeling dependent on it, we also don’t begrudge anyone the use of it if it really truly makes her feel great.”
In fact, The New York Times even published an article titled, “Makeup Can Provide a Fleeting Confidence Boost to Some.” In the article, Nancy Etcoff, assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, talks about how “makeup is what you make of it.”
According to her, “Psychologists distinguish between trait and state self esteem, a stable sense of confidence versus a transient boost.” While “grooming” rituals can serve as temporary confidence boosters to some, women who feel like makeup is obligatory “require a forced confrontation with the mirror [and] do not feel more confident after using it.”
In other words, while it’s valid for critics to say something along the lines of, “Alicia Keys can be makeup-free, because her bare face is already an example of what society accepts as beautiful,” it shouldn’t be acceptable to judge her personal decision to not wear makeup.
As NikkieTutorials and Nancy Etcoff explain, some people will wear makeup because it makes them feel confident and beautiful. Others will choose to skip the bronzer, concealer and liner because that is what makes them feel beautiful.
It shouldn’t matter to anyone but yourself whether you don’t need makeup to feel more like yourself or if you use makeup because that’s how you express your personality. As Alicia Keys reminds us, “Me choosing to be makeup free doesn’t mean I’m anti-makeup. Do you!”
