Makeup and self-exploration

 

Image Source: Becerra Govea Photo

What may seem like a remarkable verdict after an immersive exploration into makeup, its history and its progression through history, isn't much of so. Our emotional biologies haven't changed over millennia. At any point of time in history, the purpose of inventing any makeup product for those who revelled in its usage was at its core, achieving a superior form; a piece of information derived by congregating eras and countries through history. To find a foundation in this rationale, one should, for example, look for warriors from different parts of the world, preferably from different time periods. Thus what stands tall from east to west is that all attempts to enhance one's looks lie in the aforementioned stated fact. 

Successful beautification broadly involved 2 factors: 

1) Intensifying one's pleasant features

2) Augmenting the "unpleasant" features (of the time) to fit the cultural standards

While the second factor shows up in different parts of the world in different ways, one might find a gorgeous example of such in beauty trends in China from 1600 BCE to 1644 CE. Second to monobrow beauty trend for women in Greece; cited due to its distinctive fame in the world of beauty trends and makeup; the augmentations must have allowed a higher pool of mates, thereby inconsequently sustaining the cultural standards of its time. 

     

The information available around the central topic is immense and delightfully sweet to summarise. Springing out of the vast data, one comes to realise a few notes of importance.

Around the world, astonishingly similar to today, folks bunched up in one of the three compartments of contemplation regarding any rituals of personal enhancement.

• Use of makeup is wrong
• Gentle enhancement to highlight what is already present is okay
• Look enhancement tools/items are amazing and should be improved upon. 

While it might be useful, perhaps even fascinating to detail the countries and cultures that fit into either of the 3 categories, the actual act of doing so requires elaborate recollection and reprisal of dissertations of information into perfect bites of snackable information; a form of information that doesn't quite within my reach, requires an intense degree of imagination and perhaps even some embellishment to an unsavoury degree. What can be universally drawn out as a conclusion though is that inventions of red pigment to enhance cheek and lip colour, and paling down complexions in parts of the world where populations were naturally light-complexioned was immensely popular with both men and women. Trends in eye makeup, throughout eras, countries and cultures, however, were too complicated to be reduced to one perfect sentence of conclusion.

Mirrors vs Selfies

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