No make- up
Magazines and television shows proclaim “natural beauty is best,” but with celebrities attending red carpet events with a full face of the stuff, do we really believe it?
Even the seemingly flawless Katy Perry sang: “You think I’m pretty without any make-up on,” but when husband Russell Brand tweeted a picture of his wife make-up free, the photo was swiftly removed from Twitter, prompting the thought that maybe Ms Perry isn’t quite as comfortable bare-faced as she claims.
When fellow Lifestyle editor, Kate, and I sat down to talk about this, we agreed that most people probably prefer the natural look, but that maybe the ‘natural look,’ isn’tone created with the least make-up. We decided to test out our theory.
Natural make-up
Kate (voluntarily I might add) had her picture taken with varying degrees of make-up on.
With photos of looks ranging from no make-up at all to a statement red lip, and subtle natural make-up to a heavy foundation, false eyelash-ed eye, contoured cheek glamour model rip off, I headed around the Union, asking in which she looked more attractive.
Lots of students and one over-complicated spreadsheet later, we had our results.
As we predicted, the photo of Kate with no make-up on came bottom, and the photo with natural make-up, came top.
Despite claims that being covered make-up is not a good look; people generally thought that a little is better than none at all.
History student Em
Statement make-up
ily Spencer voted this look top. “She looks fresh faced. I personally think less is more,” she said.
Interestingly, the ‘no make-up’ look was rated more highly by females than males.
The glamour look came second for both the boys and girls, but by a much narrower margin for the boys.
Politics and Economics student Josh Hardy reckoned that he wouldn’t even notice how much make-up a girl was wearing.
“To be honest I wouldn’t notice little details of girl’s make-up,” he said. “I just notice if she looks good or bad.”
Glamour make-up
Interestingly, the ‘statement look’ ranked it fairly low, despite being very on trend for Spring 2011.
In fact, generally, males thought Kate was wearing more make-up in this picture than in the glamour look.
It seemed that individuals who didn’t wear make-up themselves only noticed the make-up that “stood out” rather than enhanced features.
The consensus: looking natural is best. That doesn’t mean you should always play it safe though, sometimes it’s fun to stand out, but as Rachel Roberts, who studies English Literature, said: “If you wear loads of make-up all of the time, it doesn’t make as much impact when you want it to.”
Well Rachel, we think we agree.