What’s your favorite makeup product? 

If there’s one thing every makeup fan has to have in their kit, it’s a red lipstick. It doesn’t matter if you’re having a bad day, if you don’t feel well, or if you just lost all the rest of your makeup bag: the right shade of red will give you confidence and make you look fierce. Red is the color of passion, of danger, of revenge. Nothing makes you feel more powerful than knowing you’re looking fabulous and ready to take on the whole world. 

Some people think that makeup is just about being silly and looking pretty; a superficial pastime for people with too much time on their hands. But us girlies who love makeup know it’s a lot more than that. It’s not about vanity or selfishness. It’s about expression, confidence, and art. 

Makeup is a whole artistic activity by itself. Combining colors, figuring out what makes you glow, and choosing different designs and placement for pigments takes a lot of practice and attention to detail. Through makeup, we express who we are, how we want to be perceived, what we like, and what we want. Throughout history, makeup was used as a symbol of status, power, identity, and rebellion in different cultures. In some places, using makeup was a sign of becoming an adult; other times, using bright colors was a symbol of rebellion against the unfair. It’s true that makeup is an embellishment. But it’s also true that it is a surviving mark of a universal human characteristic: the need to make everything prettier. It sounds silly like that, but it also makes sense. The beauty standards are not the same everywhere, but each place has its own idea of what beauty is, and oftentimes makeup is involved. The colors might change, the pigments too, as well as the placements and the features to disguise and/or enhance, but the basic idea still stands. 

We are constantly seeking beauty, for some reason. That beauty might have different definitions, different standards, and different goals, but it’s always there. Whether we seek it naturally or if that search has a more profound purpose, we don’t know. What we do know is that makeup is not superficial at all. 

Yet, makeup is part of our daily lives, and like everything artistic, sometimes it flops, looks weird, and drives us mad. That’s why we can laugh about it and spend our time looking at some hilarious memes!