Japanese vs. American Makeup
Since I was little, I have always been fascinated by makeup. When I was young I often played with my mom’s products and attempted to doll myself up to look and feel beautiful. Now that I am older and have studied different techniques and styles of makeup, that fascination has turned into a bit of a passion for me. As I have done individuals’ makeup for their proms, weddings, etc. I like to consider each person’s face a unique canvas. Along with this, I find the different styles of makeup done throughout different cultures quite interesting. So, to dive deeper into the differences in standards of beauty across different cultures, Liz, Maria, and I decided to try to create different cultural styles of makeup, and therefore observe differences in what different cultures consider beautiful.
To start off, I had Maria be my model, while Liz took pictures. We started with a popular Japanese inspired look. After watching several tutorials on makeup inspired from this culture, we found that the overall objective is to make the face look as doll-like as possible. To do this, I kept Maria’s skin very matte with bright rosy cheeks and eyes. When applying these colors to her eyelids I kept my brush strokes in a downward motion, in order to create a drooped eye effect. Along with bright colors on her eyelids, I used white on the lower water line in order to really open the eye up and create the illusion of a larger eye. This Japanese makeup look also uses contour beginning under the cheek bone and taken all the way down to the jaw line in order to create a v shaped face. Lastly, this look also emphasizes straight and short eyebrows at an attempt to narrow the face.
The style of makeup which is achieved within this Japanese look truly represents the interdependent personality, as it strives to present a childlike and doll-like effect. The makeup look presents this personality type because it portrays a young, innocent, and dependent individual through its enhancements of childlike features. Through this, Japanese culture appears to see beauty as young and vibrant.
After creating the Japanese look, I then moved onto the American style of makeup. In America, we often like to keep the skin matte, yet add definition and color to the skin with highlighter, contour/bronzer, and blush. Americans tend to use a subtle amount of peachy toned blush just to the apples of the cheeks to bring some color into the face, along with a large amount of highlighter to the cheek bones and nose. When it comes to contour however, the American and Japanese techniques are very different. Rather than starting under the cheek bone and taking the contour down to their jaw bone, Americans strive for the look of a strong shadow directly under the cheek bone. To accomplish this, I placed contour directly under Maria’s cheek bone, and then went back to sharpen up the line using setting powder. Now for the eyes, I created a warm and bronzy look all over Maria’s eye. When applying this, I kept my brush strokes in an upward motion in order to enhance the eye and really lift the structure of the face entirely. Lastly, and most importantly of course, the eyebrows. American makeup puts great emphasis on full, arched, and long brows, to also lift the features of the face all together.
One of the things I find to be most interesting in comparing these two culture’s styles of makeup, is that the Japanese tend to desire that their face look small and petit, while American’s wish to lift the structure of their face entirely to create and more defined look. This really shows the more independent personality seen in Americans because it strives for a strong, mature, and bold appearance.
After creating these two looks, I think the differences in the styles of makeup is very interesting because it shows how culture truly affects the individual persons standards of beauty