Why do we wear makeup?

The currently accepted estimate is $15,000. That’s what InStyle reports the average woman spends on beauty products in her lifetime.

If that number seems too steep to you, pause for a minute to audit your beauty habits. Start with makeup — how much did you spend on your concealer? Your eyeliner? Your mascara? Your lipstick? Chances are, you buy each of those things roughly five times a year, at the least. So go ahead and multiply it all.

And that’s just the beginning. Now start adding your moisturizers and wrinkle creams. Your nail polish, your hairspray. Add your eyebrow waxes and highlights. You can probably see what’s happening here.

If the money isn’t enough to make you start feeling nauseous, let’s go ahead and audit your time, too. Think about all the moments you spend curling and tweezing and applying. Every day, how much time do you spend preparing and primping? Add that up, too.

We preserve, protect, polish and perfect everything about our bodies from our heads to our toes. It’s a cultural phenomenon that rules our lives, but many never stop to question it.

Phoebe Baker Hyde wrote “The Beauty Experiment,” which was sparked by her decision to swear off “Beauty and all her trappings” for a little over a year. She analyzes the widespread acceptance of beauty obsession: “I lived with the enigma of my female beauty craziness the way I lived with the Bermuda Triangle: it was weird and creepy in its persistence, but not my problem to solve.”

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So what do we have to thank for this pressure to be perfect? Where do the roots of our motivation to constantly alter ourselves lead?

There seem to be two significant factors contributing to it, but (no shocker here) it all comes back to confidence. When we wake up in the morning with tired, natural faces, the pull we feel toward our makeup bags is coming from two places: within ourselves and in the expectations of everyone we’ll see that day.

“I assumed that one day I’d simply outgrow the freaky diets, the wardrobe crises, the occasional substitution of prettiness for poise,” Hyde explains, connecting with most women’s hesitant but persisting pursuance of beauty.

“I was at war with the world around me and at war with myself — the only self I had,” Hyde writes.

That double-sided war is what may push us to keep going. A 2008 study, “Individual Differences and their Relationship with Cosmetic Usage,” explores the motivations for women who wear makeup. The study found that makeup plays a significant role in both self-perceptions and perceptions of others.

“Makeup most definitely is linked to confidence,” explains Dr. Shawna Harris, associate professor of communication at Missouri Western State University. She explains that this “emphasis on looks being integral to women’s confidence can be problematic.”

The study found strong links between the use of makeup and a multitude of personal insecurities — anxiety, self-consciousness, introversion, conformity and self-presentation.

In contrast, those who did not wear (or did not consistently wear) makeup were also more likely to show extroversion, social confidence, emotional stability, self-esteem and emotional intellect.

So whether you thought $15,000 was a generously low estimate or you have never bothered to use these products, think about what makes you feel the way you do when you look in the mirror.

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