womens cosmetics

Make-up, or cosmetics, along with clothing fashions, jewellery, body piercing, tattooing, and hair adornment, is one of the many forms of body decoration regularly practised around the world. Like hairstyles and clothing fashions, make-up is usually a temporary form of adornment, one that can be washed off and changed at will. Make-up usually involves painting or dyeing the skin of the face, hands, feet, or other body part in normative patterns and colours, which vary across cultures and time periods. Western make-up since about the time of the Roman Empire has had two main purposes: to remedy some deficiency of nature, supposed or actual, and to keep up with contemporary fashion.

Current Western body ideals emphasize high cheekbones, bright eyes, smooth skin, and full lips. Women use foundation or concealer to diminish fine lines and hide blemishes, freckles, or other skin markings in order to make facial skin appear young, fresh, and pure. Blusher is often applied in successively darker shades beneath the cheekbone to create the appearance of high cheekbones, while eyeshadow, eyeliner, and mascara outline and deepen the eyes, making them appear brighter and more distinct. Lips are lined and painted to make them appear fuller and darker. All of these techniques help to accentuate what we see as women's sexual cues and increase a woman's sexual desirability — assuming, of course, a moderate application.

Although we often think of make-up as something which serves to extend natural possibilities of the body, fashion often dictates make-up trends which differ markedly from subtle enhancement. Green, white, or black lipstick, blue mascara, body glitter, and stark applications of strong shades highlight both the artificiality of make-up application and its trendiness. Make-up can thus serve to indicate membership in social subcultures, such as Goth or rave culture, or to advertise a person's identity as fashionable or hip.

Make-up has a long history, both as a fashionable marker and as a highly marketed commodity. Ancient Egyptians had a highly developed art of make-up, especially for the ruling class; different shades of eyeshadow were appropriate to different times of year, and different times of day called for different tones to complement the strong desert light. Make-up was so important, in fact, that mummies were often buried with make-up for the afterlife. While early saints condemned women for cosmetics, European noblewomen frequently painted their faces; Elizabethan court women used pastes of white lead and vinegar to create a very pale face (as well as significant health problems), and vermilion, a mercuric sulfide, to create very red cheeks and lips. Later Englishwomen followed different make-up fashions that often included very pale skin of varying shades, and bright cheeks and lips; this palette of red and white was established in the medieval period over other popular colours such as green.