Why Do We Wear Make-Up?

Make-up: eye shadow, bronzer, eyeliner, mascara, lipstick, lip gloss.  It really never ends.  The biggest pain to put on, but even more of a nuisance to take off.  More than $40 billion is blown on cosmetics globally each year and hundrshutterstock_159672665eds of hours are spent applying creams, lotions and powders.  Personally, I never wear make up to class or during the week because I don’t see the point; I prefer to wear it strictly for going out.  However, there are many people who wear it religiously.

Obviously we all aspire to look good, but do you ever wonder the scientific reasoning behind WHY we conform to norms and wear it?  Well, there are a bunch of reasons that explain why exactly we go to these lengths to look pretty.

1. Women with red lips are in fact perceived as more attractive.

Not only is it a huge confidence booster, but studies confirm that red lipstick is officially the sexiest colour.  In a study conducted by scientists at the University of Manchester, thered_lipsticky tracked the eye movements of 50 men who were viewing different images of women and found that men spent longer fixating on the women wearing red lipstick.  They found that they spent 7.3 seconds staring at red lips, 6.7 seconds on those with pink lips, and 2.2 seconds on those who wore no lipstick.   In psychological terms, red is associated with warmth, positive energy, and motivation, with studies finding that red is the colour which excites our emotions, as well as triggering feelings strength and ambition.

2. Make-up enhances one’s eyes.

In recent research, women rated eye makeup as the Number One product enhancing other women’s facial attractiveness.  Eyeliner, eye shadow, and mascara may exaggerate facial neoteny. In other words, adults are often viewed as beautiful when they have features typical of the young, including large eyes (as well as small noses and large lips). Such exaggerated youthfulness tends to have greater appeal.makeup-1

Furthermore, researchers at Procter & Gamble, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute showed a different study whose female participants were either wearing no makeup or wearing one of three different cosmetic looks — natural, professional or glamorous.  In the first study, subjects were first shown images of women, who were of different ages and ethnicities, for 250 milliseconds. In a second study, a different set of study subjects looked at the same photos for an unlimited amount of time so they could carefully inspect each face.  Study participants then rated the women in terms of competence, likability, attractiveness and trustworthiness.

“We found that when faces were shown very quickly, all ratings went up with cosmetics in all different looks,” said Nancy Etcoff, lead author and associate researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital. “The women were judged as more competent, likable, attractive andScreen Shot 2015-10-22 at 12.43.10 AM trustworthy.”

“In situations where a perceiver is under a high cognitive load or under time pressure, he or she is more likely to rely on such automatic judgments for decision-making,” the authors wrote. “Facial images appear on ballots, job applications, web sites and dating sites.”

From all of the studies, there is a strong correlation between make-up and how a person’s physical looks are perceived.  Now that doesn’t mean that a person is not pretty for not wearing make-up but it does prove that there is evidence as to why make-up is worn and why it makes a difference.  I think we would need to know more about the study and the types of people that were participants in it before establishing if this study was a causation or not.  Even with the red lipstick study, we don’t know for certain that the men were attracted to the women because of the lipstick or if the color caught their attention.  Some confounding variables could be other physical characteristics of the individual that the men were attracted to or the clothing the women were wearing.  Cosmetics can make a woman more attractive, but it is not certain if these results were a fluke or not.

Needless to say, you are beautiful whether you choose to wear makeup or not. Don’t feel pressured to wear make up because other women do.  At the end of the day, have fun with your makeup and apply what you are comfortable wearing.