TIn the morning, I massaged oil on my face and put on SPF. I washed three different concealers under my eyes, then I did the foundation on my body to lend “bouncy” thickness. I hid the “imperfection” (rash, bump).
Next, I blended a greige crayon on my jawline with a light blue shadow near each cheekbone, first highlighting the cheeks with lavender, then berry blush; using highlighter along each eye and on the tip of my middle-aged nose. I filled in the gaps in my eyebrows, then put them in an arch with gel.
I decorated my eyes with one product, painted them lilac with another, added a purple line along the upper lid and a milky cream inside the bottom, before going with jet mascara (separating my lashes in a bun). I circled my lips with a crayon, filling in the center with bright and matte colors. Then I set this face – my extra face that is also me in a way – with powder so that the mask stays in place.
I am not a model or an actor. I was not being photographed, nor expected to leave the house. At 55 years old, this is what I do when I wake up, and I’ve done it every morning since I was 11, give or take the odd routine, depending on the time. A slap is how my day starts. It’s something that comes naturally, rather than brushing my teeth, that I sometimes forget until later. This is not my work or party face. That’s what I do just to “look like a normal woman”, as Tina Fey once said about spending six weeks starving and eight hours in the makeup chair before accepting the Golden Globes.
My official point is that makeup is an attraction, a joy and a carnivalesque type of creativity that I consider a form of entertainment. And this is true. Our desire to adorn ourselves – to dress up even – is as old as humanity itself; indeed, it is the first civilization: Neanderthals were also known for surrender.
And, anyway, not only is there a consumer debt attached to such a practice (each part of the above has an average price of £25-ish), there is a cost in terms of time, and – perhaps – an increased psychological debt. After all, I am not making myself acceptable to society here, but somehow I am acceptable to myself. There is something that has been embedded within the dimension that this creative person feels more than I do. How much to enjoy the game and how much to be beaten by beauty behemoths? How much is self-expression and worshiping social norms about what “looks like a normal woman”, at least when the popular structure of what a normal woman looks like has become homogenised?
I ask all this because this week the brilliant American photographer and Emmy-winning film-maker, Lauren Greenfield, called out the negative role of AI in subverting and reinforcing our standards of beauty here in Britain. It took place at Waterloo station, involving female passengers and young girls over the Easter holidays.
Greenfield is praised for her account of youth culture, as her blurb for the Robert Koch gallery describes it as: “a culture of exhibitionism, extreme sexuality, and peer pressure in which contemporary women must negotiate their sense of self-worth”.
You may recognize her work from her #LikeAGirl for Always campaign, which reorganized society as a rallying cry for women’s empowerment. #LikeAGirl was one of the most awarded advertising campaigns in history, not only named “Best Super Bowl Ad of All Time”, but received a 2015 Emmy, 14 Cannes Lions 2015 (including the Titanium Lion), seven Clios, five art directors and eight pencils at the D&AD Awards. Greenfield was also named the most awarded director by Ad Age (the first woman to top the list) and Best in Show at the AICP Awards. It has since become part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and – however many times I look at it – it still makes me cry.
His short film What He Sees Matterswinner of the 2022 Webby Award for Best Community Service/Activity Video, similarly touches on the crippling beauty standards presented to young people by the social media they use.
This week, in Waterloo, came his first collaboration with Dove, both sides have warned us about many of the same issues over the years. There, in the middle of the convention, their teams installed the Beauty Machine: a work of art that looked half vending machine, half electronic photobooth. In its sales section there were 16 female faces, identical except for skin color, made of flesh magic.
Greenfield created these chimeras with advice from experts, including academics, tech brands and journalists – as well as an AI budget – to ensure they include modern adaptations such as the so-called fox eye, twisted mouth and protruding jaw. You know this face: it’s the face that the algorithm feeds us – the thick lips, the pixie nose, the eyebrows, the skin is shiny and even. It is supernaturally symmetrical, a feature celebrated by influencers just as it was celebrated by proponents of the “golden ratio,” or the ideal body shape restored during the Renaissance. It is the face of Instagram, the face of TikTok, the face of young women who go to clinics. Or, a slogan of Greenfield’s equipment: “The Machine of Beauty: One Face, Another Beauty.”
According to Dove’s 2024 report “The Real State of Beauty”, almost one in two British women feel under pressure to change their appearance even though they know the image is fake. Standing in front of Greenfield’s contraption, women and girls were invited to “pay with their faces” and have their “parts scanned” to find out which type of identikit, accepted by the algorithm, looks the most like them in color. Once they confirmed their choice, the screen asked the question: “Is this the future you want for beauty?” On the other hand, many of the advertising screens behind the installation were filled with images shot by Greenfield of women who represent a more unsophisticated, uncompromising sense of pulchritude than the station’s advertising tends to represent. They looked confident, engaged, smiling – all the things that science has taught us humans find really attractive. The message: it’s our differences – not our similarities – that make us beautiful.
The Beauty Machine also has a QR code that invites participants to submit selfies to “flood the feed with a positive difference,” as Dove’s evangelist put it. Greenfield’s project film – Dove’s latest campaign – will be released on April 9.
I don’t know about the concept of troped aesthetics. My latest research was about the blason of the 16th century: a literary catalog of female beauty that was compiled, also appeared in visual form, and was imitated by women who had access to it. They bleached their hair, plucked their foreheads, painted their faces white, turned their lips and cheeks red. These methods are also spread by modern technology. However, print culture may feel ubiquitous, but there was nothing as ubiquitous and addictive as social media, a hobby tool found in every pocket.
Last week, the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) announced that it had launched an investigation into Sephora and Benefit, owned by LVMH, for appearing to sell anti-aging drugs to children. It argued that the company’s actions may help fuel the so-called “cosmeticorexia” – an unhealthy obsession with skin care among young people. And it announced an “unclear” plan to use “influencers to sell skincare with hashtags like “Sephora kids GRWM. [Get Ready With Me]”.
And here I am again: I’m back with the quick, but fancy morning regimen I opened with; My ritual, the start of my day, started before I was a teenager. I’m not a kid anymore, and I’m not selling my 55-year-old “GRWM” on Instagram or TikTok. However, I often write beauty articles for newspapers and magazines that – try as much as I can to promote happiness, balance and individuality in the article – can be given headlines that give different opinions. I get this: newspapers need to make money, and I click the clickbait button too. The light is in the name.
However, as a lifelong feminist, how political is this? How involved have I been in cheating the youth and those who wish to stand out forever? And how messed up is my brain with all this? How easy would it be to wake up without my one woman “Wake Up With Me”? Wash and go, so to speak? Looking at Greenfield – turning the camera on him – is not the point here. But, look at him, I did as I watched the Waterloo call to action unfold. He is many things: gifted, articulate, kind but incredibly controlling, Gen X as I am Gen X. At work, he is what Fifties magazines would call “refined,” Gen Z would call “clean,” unsullied by slapstick; her face is alive, full of emotion – and altogether, very beautiful.
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