The problem behind the “no-makeup” makeup look.
Baby pink packaging, baby pink jumpsuits, baby pink walls. Glossier is Instagram’s favorite beauty brand—with customers waiting in long lines to enter stores and collecting every Glossier product as they become released. Not only is Glossier’s success attributed to their ability to create the perfect “Instagrammable” aesthetic in an Instagram-driven world, but due to the marketing of a “natural”, “no-makeup” makeup look. Glossier campaigns and reposted images on their Instagram all feature glowing models who have perfect skin and seem to be barely wearing any makeup. This is the allure of Glossier.
We see models with perfect skin, claimed to be a result of Glossier products, and hope that upon using Glossier, we, too, will be equally naturally beautiful. Unlike other beauty brands that often focus more on the additional quality—pigmented eyelids or long lasting lipstick—that their product can offer, Glossier showcases their products as something that can almost transform biological beauty. With Glossier’s minimal touch-ups, you can be beautiful “without” makeup.
The problem, and perhaps also the key to Glossier’s success, is this idealism of natural beauty. We load up on Glossier products, hoping to be equally radiant as the “Glossier model”—none of which have a single pimple, none of which have any sort of skin blemish. The irony is that in promoting a “natural” look, Glossier becomes inherently unnatural, which in fact, creates a higher standard of beauty—that is even unachievable through the works of Photoshop and Facetune, which were shaping the standards of beauty just a few years ago.
But Glossier wasn’t the founders of the “no-makeup” makeup trend—they simply capitalized on it. Hundreds of articles and videos can be found online, all dedicated to this beauty look. However, what do all of the creators of the tutorials have in common? They all begin their videos with clear, poreless skin, perfectly groomed eyebrows, and plump lips. Because the reality is, whether or not beautiful people wear makeup, they will still be beautiful.
Idolizing natural beauty highlights a greater distinction of “imperfection”, because when people don’t fit this image, even after following “no-makeup” makeup tutorials and stocking up on Glossier products, achieving so-called “natural beauty” becomes completely irremediable. By ironically eliminating natural qualities from belonging to the “natural beauty” look, qualities such as blemishes become inextricably associated with something unwanted and unbeautiful.
While Glossier products are well-made and well-meaning in their emphasis on minimalism, their branding projects an image of unachievable perfection. As Jia Tolentino wonders in her book Trick Mirror when discussing modern beauty standards, what would happen if we “make beauty matter less”?
In choosing natural beauty as the new ideal standard of beauty, we have deluded ourselves into thinking that the problem with unrealistically skinny, white models of the past would be fixed by celebrating unfiltered, un-Photoshopped people. But the problem lies in that we still have a standard of beauty—that beauty still has restrictions and needs to be achieved through some product or another. Although Glossier has undoubtedly made progress in featuring diverse, multicultural and multi-aged people, there is still a thread of commonality separating them from a plethora of other people. True beauty is inexplicable, indefinable. If Glossier is truly natural, then where are the pores, pimples, and sun spots?
