I kept putting off this post because I was worried about offending anyone, but the thing is, I can't please everyone. I'm not trying to directly insult someone, I'm just expressing how I felt about certain trends that were blown out of proportion in 2016. I was inspired to write this because of the roasts by Jackie Alna and Irischel. I laughed so hard during some of the things that the girls spoke about, and I really agreed with a few of them.
I'm so tired today, I've been working on my sleeping pattern because, starting tomorrow, I'm going to be waking up at 5:30 am every Tuesday and Thursday. I start my new job in a little over 12 hours, so I'm trying to get as many posts written and scheduled, so I'm not always trying to scrape together a post at the very last minute just so I can meet my deadline.
Contouring
I feel like this is one of the trends that has reached a whole new level the past year. You can't walk into Priceline or Mecca without being confronted by a gazillion contouring palettes. I, for one, do not own a single contouring palette, because I feel like makeup is meant to enhance your best features, not to completely transform your face. I hate my nose, but you won't be finding me reaching for a darker shade of foundation or concealer to change the shape of it. Nowadays, everyone just looks like a variation of Kim Kardashian, and it's sad. We should be happy with what we've been given.
I may use a grey-toned bronzer to add a bit of depth if my blush and highlight doesn't seem to really enhance my cheeks. I rarely ever do it, though, because I don't like the feeling that I'm trying to change something about myself.
Highlighting
Don't get me wrong, I love strobing. In fact, if you checked my makeup drawer, you would find at least eight highlighters. But, highlighting is one thing, strobing is another. We highlight to draw attention to our best points and give the illusion that we have a healthy glow about us, to hide the fact that we live and eat like slobs (just me?). However, these days, highlighting has reached epic proportions. Rarely ever do I find influencers and gurus boast a nice amount of glow on YouTube, because most of them like to pile it on to the point where they look like shiny trophies.
I cannot fathom a time, day or occasion when you would need to wear that much glitter, especially when used in conjunction with contouring. I personally prefer a natural, pearly glow to looking like a disco ball, which is why I rarely ever reach for the more sparkly highlights I picked up.
Instagram/Sharpie brows
Not to push any buttons and possibly cause an outrage, but I gotta be honest here. I hate this trend. I am appalled every time I see someone with drawn on brows that look unrealistic and cartoonish. I understand how some people draw them in because their brow hairs are too fine or are practically invisible, or they've shaven it off, but at least a lot of them don't go overboard with it. On the other hand, we've got the people who look like they've taken a marker to their brows. And sometimes, they make them too big and/or too dark in proportion to their face and colouring.
Any qualified makeup artist will argue that you should fill them in lightly, in a colour that matches them, so that it looks natural. I quite agree and use the Freedom Makeup Brow Pomade in Ash Brown with an angled brush to define my brows.
Lip Plumping
The trend that all began when the Kylie Jenner Challenge took the internet. Even though the challenge died out quickly, beauty gurus, their fans and makeup addicts are still employing and encouraging the use of small vessels to plump up your lips by sucking the air from within the vessel. I think this trend is ridiculous, along with over-lining your lips.
I'm not sure how people think over-lining the lips is a great idea. Sure, having bigger lips would be awesome (I know I'd like to plump up my top lip) but over-lining them actually looks obvious. You can easily see when a person has taken their lip liner too far, and it just doesn't look good. The only time you should take a lipliner outside of your natural lips is to even out the asymmetry in them, and even then, it should only be a tiny bit.
Baking
Honestly, I don't understand why people do this. It's a known fact that baking is used by drag queens and the theatre when makeup has to last through hours of vigorous dancing and hot lights. Sometimes, baking makes your photography look good, but it doesn't look that way in person. It creases and makes lines and wrinkles look worse. I remember reading about someone complaining on In My Kit that they didn't like their designer foundation (I'm 90% sure it was something like Yves Saint Laurent's Touché Eclait) because while the finish was great, it creased under their eyes when they baked. Everyone, even the most seasoned makeup artists, stressed that it was the baking that was creasing in their under-eye area. The original poster just wouldn't have a bar of it and refused to believe that baking was the culprit, saying that they looked absolutely flawless whenever they baked, and if everyone else was doing it, then the artists were wrong.
It was the sort of thing that made me want to hit my head on the desk in front of me. Why ask for help if you're just going to refuse everything you hear?
I hope to see little of these trends this year, especially the Instagram brows as they bug me the most out of them all. I'll live with the shiny faces and "chiseled" cheeks if it means I don't have to see painfully and heavily drawn brows anymore. Who's with me?
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