How A "Real Girl" Campaign Made Me Want Fillers
There’s been an obsession with the no-makeup, makeup look for a long time now and to be honest, I’m all here for it. I love a good natural look where the results are subtle regardless of the amount of makeup you use, but within the last couple years, girls started taking it one step further.
All of a sudden you couldn’t open Instagram without finding a slew of “no makeup” selfies. Influencers started ditching their makeup altogether and embracing their filter free, bare faces. The concept - amazing! Their purpose was to show the world what real girls look like, that it’s beautiful to be natural, and that no one always look like her glamour shot. But it didn’t take a genius to see that the majority of people posting these shots had eyelash extensions, lip fillers, and microbladed brows. As someone who generally only wears brow filler and lip liner on a daily basis, my confidence would probably be somewhere around 100 if I woke up with my brows already done and my lips “naturally” overlined. So are these selfies actually helping anyone? Should we criticize the girls who are enforcing false beauty standards yet again or praise them for trying to spread a positive message? Of course, there were some women who accepted the actual challenge, but those were few and far between.
What brought me to thinking about this topic is actually a campaign I took part in a couple years back. Without giving away too much detail into the particulars, I was hired along with a group of other women to participate in a video fashion shoot. We were originally told to show up hair and makeup ready, but as the event got closer, the brand asked us to come fresh faced so we could be made up on set. Sounds exciting, right?
The second I sat in the makeup artist’s chair, I knew this was heading nowhere good. She scrubbed off every last remnant of makeup I had on my face and then proceeded to use an almost sheer foundation. Thankfully I’m blessed with clear skin, but about two minutes later, she slapped on some light pink lip gloss and pronounced the makeover complete. No lip liner, no brow filler, not even a hint of an eyeliner wing. I looked in the mirror and my heart sank. I hadn’t signed up for an au natural beauty campaign. This wasn’t even a beauty shoot. Now you can say all you want, “I’m sure you looked beautiful,” but that’s not really the point here. I showed up for the shoot looking like a 10 and I was about to be thrown in front of the camera feeling like a 2.
As I mentioned above, I wear very little makeup, but what I do wear plays a huge part in how I feel and the confidence that follows. I used to have the best eyebrows, but as my fellow 90’s babies will remember, thick eyebrows were not acceptable, so I let my sister go tweezer happy. Fifteen years later, big brows are all the rage, but much to my dismay, mine never fully grew back. Brow filler lets me easily fill in the gaps and reclaim my full brows, so when the makeup artist told me, “No brow filler allowed,” because the brand wanted us to show our “natural brows,” I was devastated. I looked down the row of other women also receiving their makeovers and spotted quite a few ladies with their flawless eyelash extensions and perfectly microbladed brows. Maybe I should have done that…
I asked the makeup artist if there were any way she could add lip liner, make me feel a little more like myself. “Unfortunately, the brand only wants natural lips with just a little bit of gloss.” I looked back down the line and spotted woman after woman with her “natural” lip fillers. Maybe I should have done that…
I never understood why women felt the need to use plastic surgery in place of makeup, but in a world where people are so obsessed with “natural” beauty, it suddenly all makes sense. Facetuning your body is a big industry faux-pas, but learning your angles to make your short legs go on for days, goddess. Airbrushing your skin to remove fine lines… so fake. Botox to remove them...flawless.
As we continue to reject women who feel their best in a full face of makeup, we will only continue to make beauty standards that much more unattainable. Because the bigger push the industry makes to embrace ourselves exactly as we are, the stronger we’ll feel the need to simply enhance ourselves -- “naturally,” of course.
