meghan o’donnell

MAKEUP & CONFIDENCE: the visual effect of cosmetics on self-esteem

I chose to photograph women both with and without their makeup. My personal interest in this subject is a combination of a few things, but my own rea-sons for wearing makeup is what primarily inspired me to look into the impact that cosmetics make on a woman’s self confidence. I am extremely pale, and I have blonde eyebrows and eyelashes. I started wearing glasses around 3 years old, and in typical early 90’s fashion, they were huge, which did not help me look any more “normal.” The glasses amplified my blonde eyelashes, and made other preschoolers think I was “an alien.” The first time I remember being very uncomfortable with the way I looked was some time around first grade, when I was asked for the first time out of the many, many times I have been asked to this day, “Are you albino?” “No,” I responded. At age 6, my under-standing of “albino” only came from rabbits and mice, tiny white animals with red eyes. Mutations. Weirdos. (And any time anyone asked me this, almost without fail, some other kid who was around would chime in, “She can’t be, she doesn’t have red eyes.”) My parents assured me that I was not albino, but no one could ever give me answers as to why everyone else has dark hair, lashes, visible eyebrows, and the abil-ity to tan. I was a freak. Aside from my own experience growing up, my interest in makeup and the impact it makes on the wearer also came from one of my closest friends, Erinne, who is a hair and makeup artist. (“It’s the most intense form of art. It’s your face.”) I had always viewed makeup as an appearance “enhancer,” with which one could take creative license. Erinne was more concerned with the creative license than anything else. She created blue and green hairstyles based off the color and movement of waterfalls, “neapolitan ice cream hair,” and rainbow makeup that went from the top of her forehead to the area just beneath her temples, punctuated by false eyelashes made of feathers. It is not to say that she did not use makeup to enhance what she looked like, but she definitely took many more risks than the average “makeup wearer,” and prided herself on doing so. In this essay, I want my images to convey what makeup does for a woman. For some (such as the one of myself), it is to change or enhance appearance. For others, like Erinne’s, it is more of a form of self expression. Whatever the personal reason for wearing makeup, the emotional answer to this question lies in the con-trast between the two images of each woman- the subtle difference in the person from one image to the other.

To capture these images, I used my Sony Alpha DSLR. It was important to me for me to be able to get as many images as possible, which a digital camera allowed me to do. I took at least 40 photographs of each person. I wanted to make sure I was able to choose the best, most telling photograph possible. I was also shooting many exposures of so many different people that if I had used film, taking so many photographs would have worried me, as I would have been afraid to “waste” exposures. I wanted straight portraits and I wanted to have major amounts of control over them. I love the unreliable nature of film and the dif-ferent variables I have while processing and printing. However, in this photo essay, I wanted to avoid any variables I did not have complete control over. I had the instant ability to decide if I had enough relevant shots to use for my project, as well. In general, I prefer to use film, but when taking photographs of women in makeup and without makeup, I wanted something very “fast” and high-quality to highlight flaws. I wanted to capture as much reality as possible in the moment I was shooting. I did not want to be very careful while shooting, and tried to take some of my photos when the women were “in between” at-tempts at posing, which I needed an extremely fast camera to do. I did use Adobe Photoshop on almost all of my images. I generally only use Photoshop to color correct or to adjust contrast, and that is what I did in this instance as well. I adjusted the color balance slightly on each image to evoke a certain feel. For example, in the photograph of myself without makeup, I adjusted the midtone cyan levels in order to make the photograph a slightly paler blue. I felt that this gave the image a “cooler” feeling, and added to the “nakedness” I wanted to impart upon the viewer. In the photograph of Kate without makeup, which I discuss at length, I adjusted the blue level of the shadows, which gave the photo just a touch of blue in the darkest areas, and added to the contrast. This gave a “sharper” look to the photo, and, in turn, made Kate’s expression sharper. It was important for me to capture the vulnerability in the girls who did not feel comfortable without makeup. When planning the project, some suggested that I make the women without makeup look empowered. I did not feel like this resonated with me at all. I personally don’t feel empowered or happy without makeup.

I feel clean, I feel naked, I feel alien. I don’t feel “ugly,” but I feel unfin-ished. Victor Burgin (1977) explains that photographs are not read in any one set way, that there is “no ‘language’ of photography, no single signifying system [...] upon which all photographs depend” (p. 131). Instead, photographs each have slightly different codes which are “read” by the viewer. I found that this was absolutely true for each of my photographs. Burgin also states that some of these codes are “pecu-liar” to photography. I felt that one such characteristic was the look in each woman’s eye. I think I accomplished this vulnerability best in the photo-graph of Kate (pages 6 and 7, the third woman pictured overall in the series)without makeup. I could attempt to explain with words exactly what this vulnerability looks like, but as Burgin puts it, there is no “lit-eral translation” for it. My attempts to explain this vulnerability would be inadequate. However, it is still possible to “read” the photograph in depth, because “the characteristics of the photographic apparatus position the subject in such a way that the object photographed serves to conceal the textuality of the photograph itself- substituting passive receptivity for active (critical) reading” (p. 133). Side-by-side with her made-up image, the discomfort in Kate’s eyes is even more obvious. This is “obvious” because, “decoding and investiture takes place instantaneously, unselfconsciously, ‘naturally,’” Burgin explains. We “project” emotion into this image. With her makeup on, Kate has a light behind her eyes, she has a “glimmer.” This is in spite of the fact that her makeup is not at all dramatic. It is, at first glance, barely even noticeable. All the same, it makes Kate feel confi-dent. She wears a shy smile, and it reflects in her gaze. In comparison, her bare-faced image (on the right) is almost accusatory. She is stoic, but with one look at her eyes, her discomfort is clear. She appears to be holding something back from the viewer, and on the defensive. Kate’s positioning in the photographs also alerts the viewer to the “wall” she has put up. In her made-up photograph, Kate faces the camera, with her shoulders forward and not tensed. Her smile is not forced, and her septum ring is slightly off-center, which almost gives the viewer a more “intimate” and “off-guard” feeling. and casual.Kate knows we are looking at her, but she is not making it an issue.

She is comfortable She feels good about the way she looks and she is willing to show her face and her feelings to the camera. In the photograph of Kate without makeup, Kate does not face the camera head-on. Instead, her body faces the the right of the frame. She turns her head slightly to look at the camera, but still faces primarily to the side. This blocks the viewer off from Kate. Her po-sitioning places her in way such that she is not exposed completely to the camera. She protects herself from the viewer. Even though we can still see Kate’s face, she puts her body in the way of it because she is not comfortable without being made up. In accordance with the rule of thirds, Kate is in the first two thirds of the image. Her eyes are in line with the first horizontal divide, as shown in the image to the right with the grid drawn over it. This is where the viewer’s eye first falls, and where the viewer is guided back to by almost every other element in the photo-graph.The lighting highlights the areas on Kate’s cheeks and nose and creates shadows directly under her eyes and on her neck. The shadows surrounding her eyes guide the viewer back around her eyes, and then on to her dark, sweeping hair, which frames her face. This hair, as well as Kate’s eyebrows, also bring the viewer back to her eyes, as they “frame” her eye. Because the image is of Kate specifically, the background is completely plain. If I had photographed her with anything “busier” behind her, it would have been majorly distracting to the viewer. Simple features, such as her eyes, could lose their nuanced meaning to whatever else could have been happening behind the image. The plain background allows the viewer to focus solely on Kate without distraction.

I felt that generally, even the girls who seemed more confident in person without makeup exuded more confidence after being made-up. Where Kate had to remove her makeup before starting, Gwen and Chelsea, the last two women pic-tured (respectively) both showed up to be photographed without makeup. They had gone about their daily routines bare-faced, and were comfortable without it. Gwen and Chelsea certainly don’t appear as defensive as Kate in their “without makeup” photos. In fact, they seem quite comfortable with nothing on their faces at all. When they were photographed with makeup on, however, something changed about them. It might be an unconscious response to adding something that the brain knows is said to “enhance” appearance, but there is definitely an “edge” to the made-up photos that the other photos don’t seem to have. A comparison between the photo-graphs of Erinne (the first woman pictured) gives a definitive concept of this edge. Without makeup, Erinne still has an honest, happy glow in her eyes. In the other photo, Erinne is heavily made up, wearing colors that are more intensely pigmented than any of the other models. She looks at the camera as if to say, “I have defined my own look, and I am in control here.”

Works Cited

Burgin, Victor. (1977, 2003). Looking at photographs. The photography reader (pp. 130-137). New York, NY: Routledge.