Lipstick put on around the lips

[CruCru]

I’ve started noticed more and more women who have drawn their lipstick around their lips, rather than just on them. AIBU to find this quite weird? I think it is meant to make their lips look fuller but it usually looks as though they missed their lips and decided that it would do. One of the contestants on Race Across the World used to do it.

Is this a new make up trend that has just passed me by? It’s rather unnerving.

Robert Smith immediately came to mind

And I don’t wear push-up bra or Spanx either. For those that do - they generally succeed in their aim whereas this doesn’t, hence the thread.

"they generally succeed in their aim whereas this doesn’t"... according to you.

Surely the internalised misogyny lies in the belief that your lips are not enough as they are and must be enhanced. Who are women trying to appeal to? Who do they think like big lips - it’s not other women is it?

*Cue: I do it for myself because I’m worth it etc.

According to the whole thread.

🤣

This. Ridiculous looking

It looks amusing in real life. It’s always brown coloured too, very comical really.

The 90s are back (again).

It was around in the 80s too! I never did it, I've always thought it looks daft. I didn't know it was back - but then I guess it fits with the current trout pout obsession, which I also think looks daft!

Personally I think it looks awful.

There is a star who does it, and I hate being mean, because she has suffered from bullying and I do like her, but it just looks so obvious, the outside is done in a different colour.

According to some people on this thread. Although even if it was the entire thread, it doesn't make it fact.

I made my dd laugh in boots as one of the Kardashians was sporting this look on a photo in there and it looks to me like they can’t do their make up properly and not sexier at all - but horses for courses if it makes whoever is doing it happy, good luck to them.

This reveals a very, very simplistic and inaccurate perception of why women wear makeup. There's a huge amount of evidence to suggest that this isn't the case.

Women continue to wear makeup despite being told time and time again by men that heavy makeup isn't what men like.

You don't have to wear makeup - of course you don't. But to assume that the only reason any woman would possibly want to look a certain way is because she's trying to gain male approval is, absolutely, misogynistic. Assuming that women are entirely driven by men's wishes and desires and can't possibly just do things because they want to suggests you have a very low opinion of women's intelligence.

Women have been changing the shape and appearance of their lips in a multitude of ways, using makeup and other techniques, for literally centuries. Sometimes to make them look bigger. Sometimes to make them smaller. Sometimes to make them look a different colour.

If you look at photographs of actresses from about 1920 onwards, you'll see changing fashions in lip shape and style. Did you think that women's lips had just evolved to a completely different shape between 1920 and 1950? Spoiler alert: they hadn't. Makeup trends had changed and lipstick was being worn in ways that created a different lip shape.

Which is exactly what is also being done now.

So yes, it's normal. It's been normal for well over 100 years for women - and, for long periods of history, also men - to use cosmetics to make themselves look different.

You’ve fallen into the very simple trap of confusing overlining lips in particular with wearing makeup in general. I made no comment about makeup in general.

And there is no laminated notice from the male gender on unanimous makeup preference: some men like heavy makeup, some don’t.

A black woman is telling you it’s a popular makeup technique used among black women. Who are you to turn around and say she’s wrong about her own experience of black women as a black woman?

She can read, she knows the Op means overlining. Many black women do it, it’s less obvious on darker skin. Many also line to turn the Cupids bow into a filled in oval.

My husband’s step mother did it in the early seventies and imo looked weird. I put it down to her being beyond retirement age and an alcoholic with poor eyesight. I was obviously out of touch with certain trends.

No, I haven't fallen into any trap. I have pointed out that over-lining lips to change their shape and size has been happening for over a century - as I pointed out, you only need to look at photographs of film stars from the 20s onwards to see that lip shapes change. That is due to women drawing over (or inside) their natural lip line to make them look bigger, smaller, more round, more angular, with more of a Cupid's bow, with less of a Cupid's bow - I could go on.

And there is no laminated notice from the male gender on unanimous makeup preference: some men like heavy makeup, some don’t

Then you can't reasonably claim that women are overlining their lips to please men. Some men like heavy makeup, some don't: therefore women aren't trying to please men by wearing it, because they could please just as many men by NOT wearing it. Saying 'you wear certain makeup to please men' is just as daft as saying 'you go bare-faced to please men' - precisely because, as you say, there is no male consensus.

Wearing makeup is a choice. Not wearing makeup is also a choice. Neither is a choice driven by male approval.

@BauhausOfEliott Do stop going on - we know men and women have always used makeup techniques to alter their appearance - some with more success than other. And this particular iteration of lip overlining looks absurd and doesn’t achieve its aim.

Despite your denial, you conflated women wearing makeup in general - on which I made no comment and isn’t especially relevant to men - with lip overlining in particular - which is only likely to appeal to men. There is no straight woman who is going to give a toot about the size of another woman’s smackers.

Most men don't actually know what heavy makeup looks like.

You see it all the time - they give examples and say oh I like the natural look

And the examples are all carefully blended makeup using neutral palettes that are exactly matched to the correct skin tone using good quality products. At a glance in the dark maybe it could pass for natural but any woman would recognise it as high effort and high skill in a moment.