“natural beauty” myth

that mf is not real

“Natural Beauty” Myth Web (Complicating “natural beauty” culture)

Pamela Anderson isn’t wearing makeup anymore but I’m not celebrating it just yet. The actress sporting a bare face at 56 feels like a transgressive shift in the beauty world, but it’s more complicated. It’s a huge risk for any famous woman over 50 to refuse the veneer of beautifying routines like intense makeup, of course. Anderson’s beauty is pretty era defining (fringe subcultural ultra sexy beauty aesthetics define eras now). But I don’t think Anderson embracing her looks or the rise of clean beauty looks are evidence that we’re in some “new era of self acceptance”. It’s fine that we’re not, and again, it’s complicated. 

Last year, the beauty community speculated that Kim Kardsahian was removing her (alleged) BBL, ridding herself of her aspirational signature curves (source being “vibes” and “TikTok”). Speculation grew on TikTok that women were shortening their nail lengths and coincidentally, at once, all racialized beauty trends were “out” and too extreme. Co-opting aesthetics of color as temporary play-things seems very 2010s and dated, but Indie Sleaze and Tumblr are back, so maybe coming full circle on this makes sense.

Being in the alleged Post-BBL era felt parallel to Soho's “nameplate necklaces and Air Forces” to “Copenhagen girl” fashion pipeline. Conversations online about beauty culture have similarly grown to revolve around legibly white middle-class beauty codes replacing 2010s “Baddie” culture, and how employing this idea of replacement will ultimately elevate you into the “soft life”. It’s certain we’re transitioning into yet another era of beauty. But I’m contesting the idea that it suggests an era of “self acceptance”, because it feels more about exalting the semblance of biological capital than anything.

Here’s the current beauty pipeline in my eyes: natural beauty  → beauty enhancements → completely contrived beauty– and we arrive at the simulacrum of natural beauty.

Skincare smoothies

Middle schoolers on TikTok mix hundreds of dollars of luxurious anti-aging skincare products for their “smoothies'' to create a base for their beauty routines. To me, they look like the inverse of that tech millionaire who’s trying to look younger by feeding himself children’s blood (or whatever). Regardless, it’s evidence that we’ve evolved beyond the early era of digital beauty tutorials which were more about emulating Victoria’s Secret runway makeup or Petrliude’s drag looks. Tweens interested in beauty are now focused on preventing fine lines they don’t yet have, and the effects of aging on their skin that they won’t see for another two decades. If it’s wasteful, I don’t care. It’s really funny and scary to see products for sun damaged 40 year olds sold out because they’ve been co-opted by brigades of chronically online middle schoolers. It’s dystopian but at least a good laugh. 

Ivanna Odabi on Facial Balancing

Perhaps a more controversial beauty process indicating that we’re not accepting the self that’s growing in popularity is Facial Balancing. This process involves obtaining cosmetic procedures (filler, botox, invasive surgeries) to “fix” the proportions and symmetry of your natural anatomy. In a viral video, Ivanna Odabi, a medical student, says facial balancing is ruining young women’s beauty and causing them to look like Handsome Squidward (slay). Our goal post has shifted so far beyond appreciating our natural features that we’ve fallen into an uncanny paradoxical realm of delusion about what a human’s face should look like. This is no shade to people who have facial balancing, but it’s interesting to examine the varying distinctions in beauty culture. For middle aged suburban housewives, conspicuous plastic surgery-face used to be a form of asserting status, wealth and distinction. For young women, completely concealing any evidence of a procedure has often been optimal. Now we arrive at the current beauty paradox of getting procedures that clearly look like you’ve gotten beauty procedures which are supposed to look like you’re so naturally beautiful and don’t need beauty procedures. It’s confusing.

The Digital Fairy on Eyeshadow Apocalypse

Cultural experts believe this state of beauty culture exists partly because High Glam makeup doesn’t cut it anymore. Rather than strategically wielding your makeup brushes to construct the sexiest and most drag-adjacent look, you’re expected to do the work from within (not like therapy, more like non-surgical nose-job). The Digi Fairy has been developing the idea that eyeshadow is mostly passé. The London based digital-landscape pros posit that more natural looks like “clean girl makeup” and edgy detached signatures of muses like Gabriette are more relevant and better reflect the online world. It’s like: post-ironic memes lead to feigning disengagement (like photo dumps), which leads to feigning disengagement from feigning disengagement, which leads to laid back minimal makeup. It’s all (somehow) connected. I still think being presumed to be naturally hot (even when it’s evidenced that you’re trying hard to seem naturally hot) isn’t some newfound shift in beauty culture– it’s, of course, its basis. But it’s fair to say the ‘natural beauty’ myth makes our current beauty ideal so impossible to achieve that it is maybe uniquely aspirational. It’s an unreachable form of beauty because it implies access to biological capital through often the most inorganic means to obtain the appearance of contrived natural beauty. 

Biological Capital is like built-in status signaling that exalts you above people who don’t naturally have esteemed features. Think of a man’s ability to grow a beard, or his height or bone structure. The emphasis on contriving biological capital leads us to the “Frog Pretty” conversation.  

Memes and TikTok videos encourage young women to compare their skeletal makeup and facial structure to (often Facetuned) photos of Instagram girls and 90s runway models to determine who can be categorized into the superior labels “Angel Face” “Siren Skull”. Are you “Frog Pretty” or “Bunny Pretty”? Pretty sure I’m Frog. We’ve transitioned from Body Positivity into race science phrenology and eugenics rhetoric, venerating, again, the contrivance of natural beauty which comes naturally to almost no one it’s attributed to. Pseudoscience informed auto-taxonomy as the prevailing beauty currency upends the recent legacy of digital beauty culture. Early YouTube (circa 2006) was filled with Beauty “Guru” content, where young women entrusted self proclaimed “experts” and pro makeup artists alike to teach them how to construct the perfect face. This beauty culture dominated into the early 2010s. And they have their own dedicated investigative Reddit, aww. 2010s beauty essential “Baking”, which is leaving powder on your face long enough for it to blur your features, reigned supreme. Contour, which is the process of applying darker and lighter shades to highlight and attract light to certain features, was also a cornerstone. These face sculpting techniques were popularized by drag queens, pro-makeup artists, theater performers and Kim Kardashian herself. 

Kim Kardashian contouring

Before “de-influencing”, collecting beauty palettes in the name of “self expression” was a pillar of performative participation in online beauty culture. We waited with baited breath for insights into the most successful creators’ hoarding habits in “Makeup Collection” videos. Sometimes I miss the cathartic emotional stimuli of seeing an IKEA Alex Drawer tower full of Anastasia Beverly Hills palettes that I know won’t be used by the end of this beauty-trend-cycle. Every video was prefaced with an “if you don’t like, don’t watch” disclaimer. Liners and lip stains were stockpiled for the latest “Baddie Makeup” looks, which entailed sharp winged eyeliner, flaking liquid lipstick, skeletal contour and bright highlight. All came together in disharmony as symbols of your commitment to not only beauty, but online fellowship and really a broader (lazy liberal choice-feminist) movement (more on that next week). The expectation was that you viewed enough Beauty content to acquire and practice these skills and then assert status, mostly to other women, by wielding what you’d learned about how to reflect the rapidly changing beauty ideals. It was a way of demonstrating your ability to keep up with intra-communal conversations about the best products, techniques, and even creators. Performing this expertise symbolically through these defined makeup looks was less about fooling people into believing you were naturally pretty, and more about asserting that whether you were or weren't, you were willing and skilled enough to achieve the standard of beauty expected of you. This way, you were effectively kept on a hamster wheel of consumption and effectively performing beauty.

In the present, we leave behind the makeup collection videos, and the idea of “self expression” through over-consumption and replace it with the de-influencing trend. We leave behind “cringe SJW” politics around makeup and body positivity, and replace that with the viral phrenology trend (I swear, I think I’m Frog pretty). We leave behind makeup expertise and replace it with the expertise of nurses who do injectables creating viral speculation videos about which celebs have gotten pumped and filled. Rather than buying 4 makeup palettes in a few month period, we might pay the equivalent price for lash extensions or lip blushing or filler. Some of it seems merited, like when we place emphasis on health procedures like lymphatic drainage massages which physical therapists recommend, gua sha, which has been shown in a study to help with chronic neck pain, and other tools that focus on a better quality of life.

But for the most part, the beauty industry re-branding and moving dollars into skincare and procedures has nothing to do with self acceptance or even health, and everything to do with shifting marketing tactics and product introduction. Buying multiples of anti-wrinkle serums and getting preventative botox rather than SugarPill eyeshadow is not about accepting the self, but instead about creating a new self. It’s not a coincidence, those most able to benefit from the no-makeup beauty trend are already established celebrities, lauded for their beauty, who already have smooth skin and access to cosmetic procedures and other beautifying processes. There’s still significant merit behind going makeup free as a woman of a certain age, as a woman of color, and as a woman in general, especially in high glam contexts. But buying into the idea that we’re experiencing even a miniscule crumb of a radical transgressive beauty culture is unfortunately, not yet the case.