A few days ago, while doing my makeup for a photoshoot, I asked myself what would happen if instead of trying to camouflage lines and wrinkles I enhanced them with makeup?
I’m no makeup artist, mind you, so I didn’t really have all the tools handy to do what I really wanted to, but I gave it a try anyway, on a whim.
I mean it’s one thing to embrace and show your wrinkles the way they are, but it’s a whole different concept to actually highlight them with makeup.
What got me thinking about this was this recent Tik Tok trend of faking undereye bags. Granted, the influencers doing this are extremely young.
Then there is the Canadian influencer The Bird’s Papaya, who has just released a photo editing app, Pink Papaya App. She designed it to help other content creators decorate and enhance their stretch marks with glitter amongst other cool features.
I downloaded her app as soon as it was available, and although I use it and enjoy the effects it can create, when I tried to decorate and enhance my 57-year-old facial and body wrinkles with the app, it just wasn’t the same.
Anyhow, so back to my own experiment. I played around with pencils and eyeshadow and silver spray for my hair and this is what I came up with.
I didn’t do a great job apparently bc when I shared the pictures on Instagram one midlife woman said I looked like a toddler drew all over my face. Someone else (much younger) said she got was I was doing: highlighting my wrinkles and that I had achieved it.
I’m so interested in playing around with the idea, however, that I am looking into hiring a makeup artist to help me bring my concept to life.
After I shared the pictures on my Instagram stories, I posted a slide with a question box: “why are wrinkles thought to be ugly?” Why do we try and hide them? There were all kinds of answers from “because my mom hates her wrinkles, they must be ugly” to “because they ARE ugly” and everything in between.
And trust me, I’m as guilty as the next midlife woman wanting to look good: from using highlighter and concealer to getting beauty treatments (I got complimentary Sculptra last year and loved it, and I also do Xeomin a few times a year), to taking pictures in the best possible light.
That doesn’t mean I’m not also questioning the narrative society (although WE are all society so every one of us has a hand in this, myself included) has created around the signs of aging.
So, do you think we could actually get used to seeing older women enhance and highlight our lines and wrinkles with makeup? Or is this just some silly, far-fetched crazy idea?
Leave a Reply