In recent years, the demographic of buying beauty products has gone down. I’m not talking about money, I’m talking about age. Every day, you see younger and younger children wearing full faces of makeup out in public.
Just the other day, I was scrolling through Instagram and I came across a video of a mother and daughter. The daughter, who is in kindergarten, asked her mom, “How many pumps of blush should I do?” The mother simply replied with, “Only one, not too much.” Which is a ridiculous question for a child her age to be asking.
Kids having fun with their mom’s makeup at home is one thing, but going out into public with it is another thing. Unless it’s for dance or cheer, or an extracurricular activity, it’s understandable yet still weird.
Yes, most kids do play with makeup when they’re younger, but that doesn’t mean they should be allowed out of the house like that.
It’s harmless to let kids play with it while inside their home, but once you allow them to go, the message of makeup gets shifted.
You’re conveying to your children that beauty requires makeup; that is a perilous idea to plant into a young mind.
You’re teaching your kids that they need makeup to look beautiful.
Makeup has been a popular trend for centuries, but in the 1920s, people who wore makeup were typically older women who were often involved in performances. Such as flappers, Hollywood actresses. Throughout the years, the age for makeup has gotten younger and younger. With even young and older boys buying makeup.
The majority of the time, you’ll see girls not even in middle school yet wearing makeup. Social media has created such out-of-this-world standards for not just women but young girls as well. You need to look skinny but not too skinny. Yet you need to have a nice body, but not too nice, or you look fake.
This is shoved down our throats every time we go on social media. No matter what your for you page or suggested is, you will eventually see something that will spark up that need for insecurity.
Makeup is the biggest band-aid for insecurity, so many people claim they feel “ugly” without it. Now you don’t even hear women saying this, you hear little girls saying it. It makes you think about what is going on in their head that leads them to think like this. Children shouldn’t have to worry about their blush being too much or if the mascara they are wearing will make their lashes look long enough.
Most kids don’t even get the chance to be carefree.
Social media has created these unattainable standards that shape young girls into worrying about their outside when they shouldn’t be worried about the way their highlighter looks, if they don’t even have all their adult teeth yet.
The art of makeup is something so beautiful, but not when you’re in elementary school, going to school with a full beat on.
Not only is this eradicating little girls’ innocence of not having to worry about how they look. It also causes unnecessary harm to their skin.
All the chemicals in makeup destroy their skin, which hasn’t even hit puberty.
Time for makeup will come, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of childhood.