Make-Up: The Evolution Of Makeup

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The Evolution of Make-Up The evolution of make-up has quite the turbulent ride, beginning approximately six-thousand years as means of protection and to aid health and has now evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry. During its evolution, make-up has been declared illegal, immoral and in some instances was deadly. Today, makeup comes in thousands upon thousands of colors, textures and is even specific to skin type and race. In about 4000BC, Egyptians used unguent, a substance that softened the skin, to prevent sun burns and aging as well as protection from the sandy winds. The Egyptians also felt that makeup, particularly heavy eye makeup, could protect against evil spirits and help improve vision. Egyptian women were fond of black and green colorings and they use these colors to decorate their eyes by putting dark green under their eyes and using kohl to outline the eyes. This gave the eyes the appearance of almonds. The kohl was a dark-colored powder made of lead, crushed antimony, copper, burnt almonds, oxidized copper, ochre, ash, malachite, chrysocolla (Chaudhri, SK, and NK Jain, 2009). The kohl helped protect the eyes from the suns glare, kept flies away and was believed to …show more content…

Lipstick was one of the few cosmetics that avoided the “rationing” during the war and was considered a necessity to “maintain national morale”. This gave rise to the so called “lipstick theory” that when the sale of other products and services reduces during a recession the demand for beauty products increases. By the 1950’s over 90% of women used lipstick and rouge which reflected the expansion of the middle class. During 1960’s-70’s feminism took hold in the Western World and women began to go natural without makeup. The feminists believed that make-up made women sex objects rather than

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