THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST OF COVERING UP YOUR FACE

From the obsolete view of, women waiting to take their makeup off until their husband falls asleep to, feeling pressure to wear it every single day seems to come from the term toxic masculinity.

For those are unfamiliar with the term, “a cultural concept of manliness that glorifies stoicism, strength, virility, and dominance, and that is socially maladaptive or harmful to mental health: Men and women both suffer when toxic masculinity perpetuates expectations that are restrictive and traumatizing,” Dictionary.com reports.

So, what does this male stereotype have to do with the anxiety of being seen bare faced? Well, it’s the history of in this case, girls learning from a young age that if they were too much makeup on their ugly, if they choice not to, they are boring, for some, if they are somewhere in the middle with the amount of cosmetics they use, they may get caught up in the emotions of not being different enough.

On the opposite spectrum, it is less common to see cis gender, white, straight, males with the confidence to wear lips sticks, or eye liner etc. If they desired to.

According to the Morning Consultant, 49 percent of men would never try makeup. But, with the age gap of 18 to 29, 15 percent of those people would absolutely be seen with some on!

With that positive spin, I will say that, the nontraditional standards are SLOWLY changing, (which is progress of course), take a look at what this CNN article found: “A youthful male model rubs moisturizer between his palms. He then applies it to his face, pats on some tinted [moisturizer], dots concealer under his eyes and buffs on powder to set.”

There is even an uprising of feminine men, especially with cosmetics, some of this is very much easy access on social media platforms, like TikTok!