I love, love, LOVE, make-up. I use it pretty regularly, especially when I want to get spruced up for a night out. I see make-up as a way to enhance your natural features, not as a way to cover up imperfections. Recently, I’ve noticed a large number on women on social media encouraging others to stop using make-up because it creates unreal expectations of what women should look like. While I agree that some magazines and product lines airbrush their models to the paint where they don’t even look real anymore, I think make-up is awesome. It’s fun, it’s artistic, and from what I’ve learned, it creates complex reactions in the brain that can release positive chemicals into the body. Instead of researching how make-up affects the face, I wanted to find out how using make-up goes much further than just sculpting a pretty face.
In 2007, Kanebo Cosmetics began conducting a study with Japanese neuroscientist, Ken Mogi. They called the project “Cosmetics, Beauty and Brain Science,” and made several discoveries about a woman’s brain when she uses make-up. Their first discover was that make-up allows a woman to see herself in a “social context.” In this study, fMRI’s revealed that “the same part (the fusiform gyrus) of the brain lights up when a woman sees her own face with makeup and when she sees the faces of other people.” When she sees herself without make-up on, an entirely different part of her brain lights up, maybe because she sees herself as an individual, and not part of a social group. The fMRI’s are shown below:
It’s clear to see how some people might mistake this as bad for women’s self-esteem: when women have make-up on, they conformist, and when they don’t have make-up on, they don’t see themselves as part of a social group. However, several studies show that social interaction and feeling included in a social group is linked to feel-good chemicals, like dopamine, being released into the body. of mammals. One study showed that the ability for a female rat to have access to her children is more powerful than cocaine in her body, and that dopamine in certain parts of the brain is related to typical mating behavior and social interactions. It is part of our mammalian nature to want social interaction, and make-up helps women achieve that. According to research, make-up can also foster communication and make her more approachable and receptive.
On the other hand, the Kanebo Cosmetics study found that seeing oneself without make-up on “activates the reward system of the brain.” A series of experiments show that the body releases once again releases dopamine and the caudate nucleus, or the “reward-prediction” area begins to light up when a woman sees her bare face before applying make-up. This is because the brain knows that a woman is about to apply make-up and senses that it will help in a social context. That release of chemicals makes a woman feel “a mix of expectation, encouragement, and ambition,” which are all positive emotions in this context.
This topic of research certainly doesn’t suffer from the file-drawer problem — there are dozens of studies out there that say that make-up can hurt your self-esteem. One New York Times writer claims that “makeup can provide a fleeting confidence boost to some.” She writes “grooming rituals can be temporary confidence boosters, and studies suggest that the confidence they inspire is attractive itself…research suggest that women can feel objectified by make-up, and for such women, any potential advantage may be offset by the emotional labor of wearing it.”
To some extent, I agree with her. Some of the affects, like the pleasure felt by the release of dopamine, are temporary. But even more of the affects, like the improvements in social and communication skills can last a lifetime.
Weighing the advantages against the disadvantages is tricky because this then becomes a battle between emotional harm and scientific benefits. Some people may continue to fight again make-up, which is ultimately good for science — like Andrew said on the first day, science is subject to deep, skeptical scrunity. In order to get better, there needs to be a fine error detection system to find the mistakes in research. Thanks to our friend who won $100 in class, we know that it IS possible for scientists to be corrected by people who are not scientists, which is what our journalist friend of the New York Times is doing, and what many others are doing across the world.