“Girls who wear make-up are fake”: #everydaylookism stories tell us you’ll never get it right.
Putting on your face is something that very many of us do on a daily basis. On average, women will spend “ 29 minutes putting on make-up to achieve a 'natural look'”, and a third of us “ never go out without make-up ”. And, over a lifetime women on average spend 136 days (3276 hours) “getting ready for a night out”. Once upon a time respectable women didn’t wear make-up. Only ‘painted ladies’, sex workers, wore make-up; made-up eyes, lips and cheeks were how they advertised their trade. Gradually make-up became OK, so much so that in the Second World War, lipstick was believed to be vital to morale - it was not rationed and was imported across blockades with other ‘necessary’ supplies (Dyhouse, 2011, p.82). Wearing make-up is now routine; required for work, special occasions, or to ‘face the day’. Make-up is such a part of who we are that we can raise money by not wearing it! The 2015 ‘bare faced’ selfie campaign raised £8,000,000 in six days for cancer research. The n