The Impact Makeup Can Have On Us
GCE Lab School Systems & Models By: SC
Question: How does wearing/not wearing makeup affect a person’s self-esteem? Research: “Self-esteem is essential for school aged children’s health. High self-esteem is linked to increased school performance, improved health, and productive behavior.” (EBSCO, 2019) The activities and interest people work towards are either helping their self-esteem, or not. “When makeup is a choice it can feel like an empowering and creative outlet. But for a lot of women this choice is veiled by a lack of self-esteem reinforcing a belief that we only look good with it.” (The Better Life Project, 2 017) This shows how makeup can impact a person’s self-esteem based on wearing makeup on a daily basis. Arnaud Aubert says, “Makeup acts and stimulates three of our senses: touch, smell, and sight. The positive stimulation of these senses by makeup can induce sensory as well as psychological pleasure.” (Cosmetic Science, 2008) Wearing makeup clearly connects to our sensory details. Power may also play a role in women’s outlook on wearing makeup. “Women rate other women who wear makeup as more dominant. This perception that women who wear makeup are more powerful plays a role in why makeup is more important to help women have successful careers.” (Science of People, 2019) Cosmetics have been around for at least 7,000 years, (The History Of Cosmetics, 2019) The use of cosmetics has recently become more embedded in society’s culture of women. “We have developed makeup for practically every application you can think of”, Sarah Greenwald, from FEM News Magazine said, “Makeup started out being only for fun and now it has changed for some, a necessity rather than expression.” (BH Cosmetics, 2019) The increase in beauty products, and makeup in general has become more of a demand. With social media more accessible, makeup is being marketed to everyone. The impact of makeup is shown through the thousands of beauty influencers on YouTube and Instagram. For example, Jeffree Star, as of his YouTube channel, is a YouTube beauty guru with 15,311,750 subscribers. He has been creating makeup tutorials for a couple years now and has grown his platform to success. He began having an interest in makeup at 13 years old, and became obsessed with it ever since. Jeffree Star says, “Remember that true beauty comes from within - from within bottles, jars, compacts, and lipstick tubes”, (Facebook Post, Jeffree Star, 2012). He launched his own beauty brand in Fall of 2014, and his products have gone viral ever since. (InStyle, 2016) Jeffree Star has played a huge role in social media and especially the makeup industry, because of this he has shown how important makeup is in a lot of people’s lives. Hypothesis: We hope to show the significance of makeup in today’s society through interviewing women who self-report about their own makeup usage and their self-esteem levels. By asking questions about their makeup habits we will collect data to see if makeup does have an impact on a woman's self-esteem. The types of questions are more personal to each individual. I expect that the majority of the participants in the study will report wearing makeup daily and
report lower self-esteem rates because I do think wearing makeup everyday can change your perception of yourself and natural beauty. Materials: Google Form Target Audience - In order to complete this experiment, we had to interview women that have some opinions on makeup. Our target audience was all ages, but women only. It is becoming more likely for men to wear makeup as well, but for this study, our focus was women. Procedure: 1. Created a Google Form that was sent out through email and texts to 20 females. 2. The Google Form was open for responses for 3 days. 3. Created a graph based on the data.
SC, G oogle Form (2019).
SC, Responses (2019).
Questions: By asking this question, I thought it was important to see the age differences. I thought basics were important to know about each participant to compare... How old are you? When did you start wearing makeup? By asking this question, I wanted to get an idea of each individual's preference with makeup, and how it plays into their lives... How often do you wear makeup? Do you prefer to wear makeup? Do you enjoy doing your makeup or is it a hassle? By asking these questions, I tried to get more of an idea on how self-esteem may or may not be affected with makeup... Do you personally feel more confident when wearing makeup? If you aren’t wearing makeup, do you feel self conscious? Do you notice when others are wearing makeup?
Figure 1
SC, Pie Chart ( 2019).
In this pie chart, participants were asked to fill out the category in which fit them best according to how often they wear makeup. The data shows 40 percent of the 10 participants wear makeup everyday. 20 percent of the participants only wear makeup when going out and the other 20 percent is worn when going out. This data from the pie chart shows more participants wear makeup on a daily basis.
Figure 2
SC, Line Graph (2019).
In this line graph, the participants were asked to record when they started wearing makeup. This was an important piece of the study because it shows that most of the participants start wearing makeup during pre teens. The highest percent of 20 was at age fourteen and fifteen.
Conclusion: After completing this case study, it has been clear women are wearing makeup more often daily than not at all. The majority of participants reported makeup to be a hassle to do everyday, but it’s still a part of some women’s everyday life. The data shows women that reported wearing makeup also scored low for self-esteem. This determines that makeup is having an impact on us. One may cover their natural face because their thoughts about their appearance is negative. The younger girls are starting to discover makeup, and it is making it more common than not to feel the need to wear it everyday. For example, 40% claimed they wear makeup everyday, 50% reported not wanting to put on makeup everyday, 50% were self conscious when not wearing makeup and 60% notice when others are wearing makeup. In doing this study, if I could reach at least 50 more people for data, it would’ve been more helpful to show the proper data. I do believe the conclusion of this was accurate, but the evidence could have been proven with more opportunity to analyze.
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