AIBU To be bemused by current make up trends?

[misskelly]

I'm in my 40's and have loved make up since I was quite young. Make up has improved so much over the last 20 years and the colours available for every skin tone has been amazing. Anyone can find the right products and enhance their features if they wish.

So, I ask why,why,why for the love of god has a trend evolved that can only be described as Widow Twanky. Why do so many women want to look like pantomime dames?

Is it due to a culture of selfies and wanting to look good in photos? Fake eyelashes, contouring, drawn on eyebrows and lip lines does not translate in the flesh.

I know this might come across as bitchy, but I'm honestly not trying to be. Especially when so many women could look amazing because they are spending a lot of time and money on their faces. Am I so out of the loop now that I just can't appreciate this look?

I'm sure it looks amazing in photographs, but under the strip-lighting of an NHS ward it ain't working.

If these are nurses, surely it's a bit of a health and safety risk - you wouldn't want a false eyelash or a cloud of highlighter powder getting in to a surgical wound would you!?

I had Avon's "Iced Champink" and No 7 "Shiny Conker" lipsticks.

Contouring often looks like a dirty face in broad daylight.

In the early days of Mrs Gloss I told someone what I honestly thought of her tattooed on eyebrows (she asked). She took umbrage and told me she wasn't taking make up advice from someone who looked like Hev in Eastenders. She got a pasting from everyone and banned.

Oo twilight teaser!!
I am 46. Anyone else??

Ah, No 7 Shiny Conker, loved that! I would love to hear the rationale behind the sharpie eyebrows from someone who does it. They look so fucking awful/comical/panto...can anyone explain!?

47!

I think it is a trend created to encourage us all to buy more products.

I agree about the wake up to make up photos in FB pages , they rarely look better

I was in a restaurant and a woman walked in, mid 20s maybe. Pretty face, though spidery looking lashes, then she turned slightly, and I wondered why she had come out with dirt all over her cheek. Then I realised. It was a failed contour.
It's always too dark, not blended properly, or just looks plain grubby.

agree with you op, it's mad isn't it, at a time when people don't need much make up they slather it on and it does look mad. There was a girl working in zara the other day who looked like lambchop.

It must be bad, even DH has noticed.We went into Manchester from our sleepy little village a few weeks ago, and he said to me, "Why have all the women got shiny, glittery cheeks?" There was much highlighting and bronzer going on.

You can still buy Heather Shimmer. Rimmel, in big Boots / Superdrug stores. I've always wondered why it's still going.

Unblended cheek stripe contouring always reminds me of hamsters:

I don't get the pantomine makeup with high definition brows.
Do they not realise how ugly they look?

I don't get why a young girl, who looks really pretty with minimal makeup, then makes herself up to look like an ugly pantomime dame.

I'm glad it's not just me that's recoiling in horror at this look. I'm hoping it will come to and soon when women come to their senses and realise it is not remotely flattering.

Although, to be fair, back in the day Rimmel Black Cherry lipstick and a pasty white face was my look de jour. I probably looked like a walking corpse to most people.

Dear old Twilight Teaser (and Midnight Runner: bluish purple).

We made some good mistakes in the 1980s but I am baffled by the current trends. DH and I were out this evening and we were served at the bar by a girl of 18 or 19. She was pretty but she'd painted on a layer of the awful, greyish foundation that seems to be popular now (presumably as a base for the dreaded contouring). It made her skin look really flat and dead.

I went to the races with my friends last month - we are all in our mid and late 40s - and we were amazed that almost all the young women there had adopted the same look: weird, dull foundation with the same greyish cast, strange contouring, heavy dark brows. They looked half dead. We were 20 years older and our skin looked younger.

Ooh I had coffee shimmer lipstick and a rollerball lipgloss that tasted of strawberries. I also had ultraglow powder to paint orange wedges on my cheeks, and green eyeliner. My eyebrows were skinny barely there, plucked to oblivion arches.

I was BEAUTIFUL. I was, I tell ya.

NHS updated their dress code for community nurses recently which included a ban on false eyelashes

Heather shimmer! I'd completely forgotten about that my bf wore it all the time, I loved Miss Selfridge Iron Lady lipstick and was gutted when they discontinued it, I'd probably still be wearing it if they hadn't

I managed to live without removing all my eyebrows but yes to frosted blue and green moving to 'sophisticated' electric blue or pink with frosting under the eyebrows.Live the flavored roller ball lip gloss,my bro said it looked as if I'd had a fight with a sticky lolly!
Love the marker pen eyebrows,I find them endlessly fascinating.I can help it,otherwise sane women put these on their face and think they look good.Long may it last

I remember using twilight teaser as a blusher and eyeshadow too! My mum said I looked like I had radiation poisoning.

Wet look gel too. Friends mum once greeted me with 'oh I didn't know it was raining, shall I get you a towel?'. I was like oh my goooooood.......

@Mrs schadenfreude was that you?!?

I remember that post well because I had just joined. It didn't go quite how you said. You told her she looked like a freak so she came back with the "hev" comment 😱😱 . So tbh you were both as bad as each other. and you started it

Sad that her comment obviously stuck with you for you to remember it after all this time. Words hurt don't they 😔

Gloss did used to be quite a bitchy group imo, but as it's grown in size it's definitely a nicer, more supportive place nowadays.

I'm coming to the conclusion that part of this new look involves purposely mismatching your foundation and natural face colour?

There's no way someone spends 3 hours putting on this variety of products (what's the minimum? 12?) and yet doesn't notice the stark border around their jawline? Unless they are spending so much on cosmetics they can't afford electric light in the bathroom?

I also always want to shake them by the shoulders, shouting that they'll never have such clear beautiful smooth skin again, and covering it with 5 layers of gunk will just give them horrid 3D acne (that looks even worse they more they try to hide it).

On the upside, I guess they'll get less sun damage? Except on their necks, where the makeup stops. That'll be something to look forward to- crepey turkey necks with ghoulish waxy faces. Who was it who described a heavily made-up woman as looking 'as though two crows had crashed into a chalk cliff-face?'

Moving the topic slightly to one side, I was chatting to my GP recently, he says this thick coverage makeup is making it harder for him to do his job. Apparently there are loads of clues about your health in your face, and these 'masked women' aren't doing their health any favours. I didn't want to tell him that it's possible his patients are more tarted up than is perhaps average. He is sooooooo good-looking it's criminal!

Make up has always been a bit silly though; in the eighties I was a paper white goth with black lipstick and blusher and stylised eyebrows. I thought I looked amazing.

I had lots of more mainstream pals with blue eyeliner and mascara too. That's not a good look either.

It's total madness out there I tell you. Those eyebrows!

And what's with young girls wearing shorts with their arse literally hanging out? Bum cheeks and everything! Terrible.