Superimposed pyramid
The beauty game starts with a colored lipstick. 10 years ago, in a small county town in Yantai, Shandong Province, Liu Xinyi, a junior high school student, applied two layers of lipstick every time before going out to school to make the light orange-red color more vivid. She deliberately placed a mirror on her desk to observe herself at any time. On your face, whenever you find that your lip color is getting lighter, apply another layer. Although her mother, a teacher, would throw away her lipstick every time she was caught wearing it, she carried a tiny lipstick throughout her adolescence.
At that time, beside her, who was bare-faced, the beautiful female classmates in the class had already followed the short videos on their mobile phones and put on "pseudo-dress-less makeup" - bare-face cream, light-colored lipstick, and eyebrow pencil that were close to their skin color. The makeup was so natural that even the school teachers could distinguish it. Not coming out. "Just like nature, there will be a bigger gap." She said that it is often those girls with outstanding appearance who have the courage to boldly pursue beauty in a closed middle school environment.
choose beauty, it is such a smooth game. For Liu Xinyi, who was born in 2001, Internet information and tools are more abundant than ever before, and she can always find cosmetics that match the financial level of students. Makeup is no longer a "non-business" in middle school. Appearance has become a part of "self-investment" in the new context of public opinion. Although this investment is mainly composed of consumption, everything periodically reminds her that she needs to renew in time - Makeup The shelf life is one day, eyelash grafting is 20 days, manicure is one month, hair dyeing is two months, and perm is three months.
Liu Xinyi (provided by the interviewee/picture)
The cost of investment in beauty is constantly increasing. Blush originally only had one step, but online makeup tutorials have refined it to two or three blushes, including main color, shrinking color, and highlighter—you can even swipe the bridge of your nose to create a shy effect. The number of corresponding makeup brushes has also been increased, including blush brushes, detail brushes, and stippling brushes. Putting on makeup also takes longer and longer. She needs to get up an hour early to put on makeup. At the same time, her tolerance for perfect beauty is also expanding. She has to sit for more than three hours for each manicure, and the most complicated hand-painted manicure takes five hours. In order to make the nails sharper and fuller, she "sticks them on longer." To build the nails, you need to clamp your hands hard with a clip." She recalled the torture in the Qing palace dramas she watched when she was a child, but every time after half a month, she started looking for new nail art patterns online.
Beauty is no longer a "natural beauty" genetic privilege that only a few people have. It has become a result that can be obtained through hard work and is related to exploration and learning. A steady stream of people have devoted themselves to this game and pursuit. Beauty has also become a business with a broad market in China. Cream, who was born in 1994, got her first job in the studio of a well-known Internet celebrity because she wrote a public account article on skin care in college. He became a blogger himself, and entered the MCN (multi-channel network, multi-channel network) industry and began to take on the marketing work of the team - presenting beauty, researching beauty, manufacturing beauty, and interpreting beauty on the Internet.
After graduation and working, Cream has been wearing a complete set of makeup and hair for a long time. To do this, she needs to get up an hour early: wash her hair, blow dry her hair, use hair wax to hold her hair, skin care, foundation, sunscreen, foundation, Set your makeup with powder, draw your eyebrows, and then take the subway to go to work. He also changed from an inconspicuous person in middle school who was even bullied because of his appearance to a confident and bright person.
In the eyes of those who have pursued beauty, compared to the potentially futile investment in work, the hardships of creation and entrepreneurship, the fatigue and disappointment of love and interpersonal relationships, everyone who makes themselves more beautiful through acquired efforts People have experienced immediate changes, and others have looked at them with surprise and hesitant praise - "You are so beautiful today."
cream (provided by the interviewee/picture)
"Thank you for your hard work Go ahead, love yourself well."
Song Song is the marketing director of a Shanghai biological group, an upstream raw material company for cosmetics and health food. In the past few years, she has observed that the market demand for beauty products is increasing day by day. “I think this is reflected in the industry’s product involution.At present, whether it is a brand or a category, it is already very rich. "In order to create brand differentiation and brand concepts, they brainstormed at company meetings to think of new directions, new categories, or new consumer needs. "Later we reflected, do these things really have actual consumption numbers? ? "
China's beauty market is still expanding. Although it started later than Europe, the United States and Japan, it has developed rapidly in the past 20 years and is also prominent in the global consumer market. "2023 Beauty and Skin Care Online" released by Magic Mirror Insights Channel Data Inventory" (hereinafter referred to as "Data Inventory") shows that despite the impact of macroeconomics, consumers will appear more rational and cautious in 2023. The proportion of people with an average monthly consumption of more than 1,000 yuan has decreased by 5.7%, but demand Still rising - in 2023, online channel sales reached 494.51 billion yuan, with sales of 4.67 billion pieces, a year-on-year increase of 3.8% and 10.4% respectively.
On February 12, 2024, customers purchased cosmetics at Sanya International Duty Free City (Visual China). /Photo)
The standards of beauty have undergone some changes. Instead of blindly pursuing white skin, keywords such as "sensitive skin", "barrier conditioning" and "skin condition" are increasingly appearing in the product descriptions and online discussions of skin care products. Especially after the COVID-19 epidemic, people pay more attention to their health. Song Song said that the company's turnover and net profit will increase in 2023. After the epidemic, people's health awareness has increased and they are more willing to consume healthy food. , which also means that in the "beauty" market, the concept of health has more coverage and extension. The development of
technology has made it possible for people to pursue unlimited pursuit of beauty. Medical beauty can solve problems that cannot be solved by skin care products and cosmetics. In Song Song's view, people's consumption choices are to combine daily skin care, medical beauty, and makeup. She herself is also a consumer of medical beauty. According to statistics from Deloitte in 2022, China's medical beauty market has the fastest growth rate in the world. One of the fastest medical beauty markets. In 2022, the "Gengmei 2021 Medical Beauty Industry White Paper" released by the medical beauty platform Gengmei App shows that 60% of medical beauty consumers are "post-90s" and 19% are "post-00s". The medical beauty market still has a clear gender ratio, with a male-to-female ratio of 1:9. The medical beauty market has also given rise to the rise of the vertical field of skin care products for medical beauty.
, medical-specific skin care products are very popular. These industries are also stimulating each other. With the support of medical beauty, the acceleration is also reflected in the effectiveness cycle of the products. According to Song Song, raw material testing companies generally have 14-day, 28-day and 56-day cycles. After reading the information, many customers always ask whether the product has undergone instant efficacy testing. How much can collagen be improved within 24 hours or two hours?
Shi Yi (provided by interviewee/picture)
“Everyone is very anxious. It has a lot to do with the involution of the entire industry, because there are so many things to choose from. Brand owners are very anxious about how to create core barriers and differentiation for their products. Consumers are in a more urgent mood, which leads brands to also want to produce products that are more short-term or technical. "Song Song said.
When she was in college, her classmates used relatively expensive foreign cosmetics, and everyone bought them after big foreign brands. Now, the beauty and personal care market led by the "post-90s/95s" has become more personalized. They are willing to spend time researching product ingredients, efficacy and active ingredients. Domestic beauty products have emerged in recent years, and the "post-00s", one of the main consumer groups, are very active on social platforms and are very receptive to new things. Gao. "I think this is the direction. Brand marketing needs to be more on social media, such as short videos and live broadcasts. There needs to be a lot of quality content. Novel, interesting and informative content attracts the attention of young consumers. They There will be more emphasis on personalization and shopping experience. "Song Song said.
Cheng Panpan works for a domestic skin care brand in Shenzhen. In China's beauty and skin care market in 2023, skin care products will still be the absolute main force, with sales accounting for 72.5% of the overall market (according to "Data Inventory" ). Before joining this company, she worked as a editor and director at mcn, mostly in skin care product advertisements.The founder of Revlon said a classic saying many years ago, "What we sell is not lipstick, but dreams." But now it's not just celebrities who are creating dreams. The era of kol (key opinion leader, key opinion leader) has also slowly turned into koc ( The era of key opinion consumer, key opinion consumer).
When looking at the soft advertising copy that bloggers prepare to post on social media, Cheng Panpan will always clearly list the efficacy of the product. From Party B to Party A, what remains unchanged is the "altruism" of these new media software broadcasts. "It's equivalent to creating dreams for fans, making them yearn for, and teaching fans many ways to say, 'You can also be like me.'" In her view, from the earliest insulting and threatening marketing to catering to male aesthetics, "Male makeup", and then the emphasis on female power in recent years, sales methods have kept pace with the times, all based on public sentiment, and even provided "emotional value" in the era of "involution" and "flattening" . "Data Inventory" shows that from January to November 2023, the number of interactions on the topic of "emotional skin care" on social media platforms exceeded 100 million. Both makeup and skin care have become one of the important ways for young consumers to relax when facing the pressure of life. .
When I was reading Cheng Panpan’s message about her favorite advertisement that she handled in 2023, I scrolled down screen by screen on my phone. The article was so long that I almost forgot that it was an advertisement. This young female blogger shared her work in plain language, showing tenacity, perseverance and focus. I even had feelings for her. Her hard work and consideration for others reflected on me like a mirror. My own life, "Are you tired? You have worked hard. You have done a good job." "Before the new job comes, love yourself well."
March 7, 2024, Huzhou, Zhejiang is located in Daixi The town's "Beauty Town" held a Better Life Festival, and a makeup artist explained makeup knowledge to the audience. Daixi Town began to build a "beauty town" in 2015. By the end of 2023, a total of 254 cosmetics and related companies have settled in (Xinhua News Agency/Photo)
The screws are constantly tightened
Shi Yi (screen name perkyeeva) is the person I have seen The person who practices beauty most thoroughly. In the past few years, Shi Yi has been selected by several cosmetics companies to place advertisements. She is a blogger. Every Weibo post is about how to take supplements, take care of herself, do manicures, and exercise - using almost every possible method. To make myself beautiful, her implementation of beauty is almost to the point of spiritual practice. Every time my work and rest are chaotic and my body is exhausted due to various things, she is always in a regular state of self-care, as constant as being on duty.
A year ago, I met Shi Yi in a cafe in early summer in Shanghai. She has fair skin that makes people unable to take their eyes away. She has an oval face and big eyes. From makeup to dress, she is very exquisite, as if even her hair is expensive. .
Recently, she also saw discussions about "beauty service" on the Internet, and felt confused. "Some people want to be beautiful because they are not beautiful enough, but after dressing up, they have a sense of 'exquisite shame'. They want to be beautiful, but they are afraid of others." See it." When I was a child, teachers and parents always said to pretty girls, "If you want to look good, stop studying, or you will become bad." She thinks this is a deformation rooted in people's concepts, "You open up." On the mobile phone, you may have received a lot of encouragement to "be yourself" online, and you must have the courage to do so. Then when you put on makeup and step out of the house, you will find that (people's attitudes) are different. "The voices, encouragement, and chicken soup online are different from the current situation." The environment is actually quite fragmented.” She believes that the reason why “pseudo-no makeup” appears in the market in different forms every year is related to this kind of oppression.
When I contacted her for an interview on this topic, she readily accepted it. She had no interest in discussing or arguing about the definition of "serving in the American military service." Taking care of the body is her main business. Beauty begins every morning. After getting up, Shi Yi starts skin care. First, she makes a few cups of probiotics and wolfberry extract, and then starts working and writing after breakfast. At night, take a bath at home, apply skin care lotion and facial mask. Readers asked her how she had so much time, and she replied: “I just use the time you spend playing with your phones on this."
On December 13, 2023, in Hekou County, Honghe Prefecture, Yunnan Province, a Vietnamese anchor introduced cosmetics to netizens (Visual China/Photo)
At first, posting on Weibo to share these beautiful things was just her daily record. After going to college, Because of acne, she began to research how to get rid of acne. The more she researched, the more she discovered that teaching people to be beautiful has become a business. In the process of becoming a blogger, she saw it more clearly. When she uses the advertised products, she will take pictures of parts of her body to record the changes that have occurred due to the care - sometimes her cheeks, sometimes her hair, and sometimes her jawline. If the product is good, it will take about twenty days. It has a good effect. Then post the advertising copy and comparison photos before and after use on your Weibo, WeChat public account, and Xiaohongshu.
However, in a recent skin care product brand event, I just passed 30. On her birthday, she noticed some signs of lip bags on her face in the event photos. She deleted the photo. Finally, a photo of her and the female celebrities who were also invited to the event appeared in the official push of the cosmetics company. Collections of related content also appear on her various social platforms.
From entering the mcn industry to now, Cream feels that the content of bloggers has changed from being like "stars" to being like "amateurs". This update and iteration makes it more difficult for people to distinguish. Content for advertising. “When we were doing content in the early days, there was a saying that bloggers were actually substitutes for celebrities. Butter said, "At that time, all mcn companies tended to have high-quality and refined content. In the past two years, many bloggers have begun to transform and began to use more casual shooting techniques to create content." The content of Internet celebrity bloggers has also become more natural and casual, creating a form of chatting like friends and neighbors. "
In the work of mcn, Cream handles a large amount of materials. In the beautiful landscape created by social media, almost everyone is beautiful and exquisite." In fact, as a blogger, the content you see is The atmosphere he/she creates out of work needs. " He feels that bloggers are actually no different from office workers. Many bloggers he met are anxious. "When they regard the beauty industry as their career, they will make comparisons. Even if they already stand out among the crowd, they still pick out some subtle details, thinking about how they should be more refined and look better. "Even though Cream sometimes feels that this kind of anxiety is a bit morbid.
The threshold of beauty is constantly being raised. You can continue to improve, and you can do better. There are tools everywhere that you can use. There is too much information and too much emotion. Many people Put your own photos on Xiaohongshu, "the main message is to listen to advice and ask for transformation", and ask everyone for advice on how to transform their appearance. And those "classic beauties of the era" also have to accept the online beauty trial of this era - in Xiaohong. In the book’s PS contest and make-up modification contest, there was a situation where people photoshopped photos of Brigitte Lin and Joey Wong to make their faces more in line with the current aesthetics. They removed the edges and corners, softened the cheekbones, enlarged the eyes, and made the facial lines of the entire face softer. . It's like an endless game.
People often say to people with appearance and body anxiety, "You have to become stronger" and "You can't be disturbed by these messages", but this is not the solution. Exquisite pictures, texts, and videos on computers, tablets, and social software create the myth of beauty, constantly shaping people’s identity and imagination of themselves, exacerbating people’s narcissism and anxiety about their appearance and body shape. Today, we are in a world surrounded by images. The Internet Age. In "The Society of the Spectacle", Guy Debord talks about people's self-objectification and self-presentation; in "Ways of Seeing", John Berger talks about how advertising presents a completely different consumer life. ——These two books were born in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but the issues mentioned have been unprecedentedly strengthened in today's media environment. In the past, advertising was outdoor posters and videos on the TV in the living room. Nowadays, indistinguishable advertisements appear on the mobile phones we carry with us 24 hours a day, and are too invisible to be embedded in our lives.
On May 21, 2024, in Shenyang, Liaoning, young people received cold compress care after eye plastic surgery (Visual China/Photo)
Watch, and
who don’t want to be watched, living in the city, you may encounter such moments, This has happened many times in my life - after walking into a chain cosmetics store and purchasing what you need, the salesperson will point out the skin blemishes on your face and offer some kind of beauty product as a solution, and the person's tone will become more and more... Severe, just to make you "realize" and believe that there is really a "problem" with your face.
You refused to buy in the store, but when you returned home and took a shower before going to bed, you noticed in the mirror what the shopping guide called "problems": dark circles, pores, fine lines, these are skin conditions that you would not have noticed otherwise. The details were now becoming unbearable. In the mirror, your face becomes an object that needs to be corrected and modified.
In "Serving Beauty: How Beauty Slaves and Consumes Women" published in 2024, Italian philosopher and writer Maura Ganchitano talked about her similar experience in Italy. When she looked in the mirror again, she felt The dark circles under my eyes were hard to ignore and frustrating. "It made me look tired and uglier than before. Maybe I should give it a try to make myself feel better. Is there anything wrong with that?"
There is always a standard for beauty. The answer, and often for women: You need to keep being adjusted, you need to keep being modified, you can be better, but you're not there yet. Maura Ganchitano tells how "female beauty" is defined in "Service in Beauty", how modern aesthetics are formed, and how the class that sets the standards of "beauty" uses photography, advertising, fashion magazines, movies and other media means to Promote the beauty of unified standards, and how to use women's consumption to complete the harvest of capital and rights. In the past few years, there have been a lot of discussions on Chinese social media about "serving in the American military service". At the same time, there have also been calls to "leave the American military service" - some women refuse to invest money and time in meeting this set of standards.
The first person to discuss "serving the United States" with me was Ouyang Yufang, the editor of New Classic September Studio. She is the editor of "Starting at the Limit" and "Invisible Women". Suzuki Ryomi, one of the authors of "Starting from the Limit", once researched the fashion magazine "JJ" that has been popular in Japan for half a century and is regarded as the bible of Japanese girls. In 2022, Suzuki Ryomi told me in an interview that at the beginning of its publication, "JJ" "encouraged women to move closer to high-end products with the goal of marrying the ideal man." Although the beauty formula promoted by the magazine has also changed with social trends, But the core has almost never been shaken - in Japanese society, a woman's "youth" is often more valuable than anything else in the eyes of men. Cosmetics must be promoted to emphasize its anti-aging properties, and fashion magazines will promote "make up like this to lose 5 years instantly." , the recommended clothing and outfits often focus on "looking young/beautiful".
Ouyang Yufang wears no makeup on almost any occasion, and uses basic facial cleanser and cream for her facial care. Although those cosmetics advertisements did not mean much to Ouyang Yufang, she found that she was still involved in the standards of beauty. In the past few months, she has become fond of fitness and has become taller and taller. After learning fitness knowledge on her own, she discovered that the main purpose of the classes arranged for her by the coach was to lose fat, not to gain muscle as she proposed. Popular fitness videos on the Internet also focus on local shaping of the hips, shoulders and back, rather than full-body functional training - "(I) train so that I can perform better when running and playing ball. That's called Functional training. ”
In 2023, Ouyang Yufang received the award at a literary awards event without makeup. Most of the female guests at the event were carefully dressed up, while the men often wore no makeup. It seems that it has become a socially accepted obligation for women to wear makeup when attending formal events. When attending public events without makeup, it is often seen as a clear statement of stance rather than one of many choices. As a young editor in her twenties, Ouyang Yufang was a little nervous, but when she received the trophy on the podium, she saw another scholar presenting the award, Chen Ying, the translator of the "Naples" tetralogy. Women older than her also wore no makeup.
When this literary award is held again in 2024, Chen Ying who comes to present the award will still be without makeup. Chen Ying asked me: "I feel very curious. For example, I don't put on any makeup and go directly to give awards. As a bystander, what do you think?" This is what I have always been curious about. In the past, when I attended Chen Ying's salon, interviewed her, and walked with her, every time she was without makeup, she never seemed to be in a dilemma about whether she should wear makeup or not.
On April 15, 2024, in Haikou, Hainan, models displayed fashion works at the seaside show of the 4th China International Consumer Goods Expo (Xinhua News Agency/Photo)
html At the beginning of 2020, Chen Ying was invited as a guest to participate in Luyu's "Flowers in the Rocks" "When recording the show, the makeup artist put on her makeup for three hours. She looked at the face in the mirror getting fuller and fuller, and kept adding the current makeup requirements for women, such as eyelashes, foundation, blush, and contouring. "Anyway, it feels quite unfamiliar." What she is familiar with is morning and evening. She thinks this look of herself in the mirror is safer and most consistent with her self-setting."You have to be beautiful and conform to other people's ideas. In fact, you can still do it, but you have to pay a lot of money to create that illusion. I can't afford it. I just recognize that I am what I am and there is nothing." This face is decorated." she said.
When Chen Ying was in college, there was a stage when she paid special attention to dressing up. She was about 20 years old at the time, 1.7 meters tall and weighed over 50 kilograms. She was slender and had long hair. She often wore a beautiful dress and was always very conspicuous on the dance floor and very popular. At that time, she didn’t quite know who she was and couldn’t find her direction in life. Beauty was the easiest life-saving straw. “That was when I was the most beautiful, but it was also the time when I felt the emptiest in my heart. It caused me a lot of trouble.” . The sense of accomplishment comes from other people, other people’s recognition, and other people’s pursuit.” After entering the postgraduate stage, she realized more clearly what she wanted to do, and the stage of relying on dressing up because of uneasiness passed.
Now, when Chen Ying looks in the mirror, she is observing the lines of her leg muscles. "After all, I am a pragmatist. When it comes to the body, I only consider its practical functions. My body can run three to five kilometers as soon as I lift my feet, and I will feel proud of my body." When I was in my early 30s, An athlete friend often took her to ride bicycles on the wide Chang'an Street in Beijing. She fell in love with the feeling of being fully immersed in extreme sports, and her exercise habit has been maintained since then. Now, she still likes to ride a bicycle for more than 20 kilometers on the riverside in Chongqing after a hard day's work. Every time she left the other cyclists behind, broke out in a sweat, was exhausted, took a shower, and lay in bed to rest, that was the time when she enjoyed her body the most.
She can also understand the complexity behind women’s difficulty in choosing beauty. “Actually, I also know that addiction to makeup also represents the love of life and the pursuit of dignity. However, I saw other people’s hands with nails on them. In front of me, it's still very shocking."
In "The Day of Abandonment" translated by Chen Ying, when the heroine Olga suffered a family accident and suffered a mental breakdown, she looked in the mirror and "started going crazy as soon as possible. Makeup” and strictly monitor one’s body and language. Chen Ying feels that the author Ferrante’s wonderful metaphor in this book is a door that cannot be opened. Perhaps the protagonist is not facing a mirror. “Opening this door requires a calm mind, self-confidence and determination, and an understanding of reality.” Objective understanding of the world also requires faith and hope.”
Chen Ying (provided by interviewee/picture)
Whose desire?
When Liu Xinyi stopped doing manicures, her friends asked her if something had happened.
In fact, she just found it troublesome. After moving to Macau from Shandong to study as a graduate student, she rented a house and cooked her own meals. These exquisite and beautiful nails made three meals a day difficult, even from the stage of choosing dishes. “It was also difficult to wash the dishes, it was simply impossible. Live a normal life." When she got her manicure done again, she no longer applied nail patches, but asked the manicurist to paint on her nails. "It doesn't matter if I want to have short nails or not. The difference."
Remove the attachments on the body. Once this starts, the follow-up will be quite smooth. "If you don't even have to do manicure, can you also reduce some steps in makeup? "Those makeup steps that she diligently spent more than a year studying and several years of refinement in her university dormitory, she added to her face one by one and took them off one by one. Starting from 2023, her makeup Gradually simplifying. By this spring, one day during class, she suddenly realized that maybe she could do without makeup.
Now, every time she looks at her bare face in the mirror before going out, Liu Xinyi can no longer remember why she was so crazy about makeup in college. . Putting on full make-up an hour before going out to class was a bit unbelievable in retrospect, “But that was what my roommates were doing at that time, so everyone continued to get up and put on make-up every day. "
She first noticed her appearance when she was very young. She has been praised for her appearance since she was a child, and has been pursued by boys since adolescence. "I was just immersed in this kind of praise and felt that I could easily gain a lot through my appearance. Attention, energy, and happiness cannot be given up. Therefore, you will attach great importance to appearance, and you will only want more attention from others and receive more compliments. "When
received recognition and praise, she also received comments and suggestions all the time, which was almost the same thing. The first time she felt ashamed because of her appearance was in junior high school. After entering puberty, boys in the class would always publicly criticize girls. Her appearance was as natural as discussing the animation broadcast on the TV station the night before. When a male classmate commented that the legs of other female classmates were not straight, her first reaction was to look down at her own legs and said, "Oh my god, I feel so inferior." , then I don’t want to wear short skirts anymore, and I don’t want to show my legs anymore. "Since junior high school, she has not worn shorts or short skirts. She has always worn long pants and long skirts to cover her legs. It was not until the past two years that she started wearing short skirts again.
That strange feeling has always existed, and she has continued to receive various Most opinions about appearance come from boys. In high school, she had a very close male classmate with similar interests and aesthetics. When they went to a bookstore together, he suddenly commented on the figures of other female friends in front of her, and then suggested modifications to her. : “You should also dress up. "That tone seems like he is helping you, and you have to thank him." "A good friend suddenly became a stranger and became a critic who was superior to her.
When she was in college, a boy asked her on WeChat if she had put on makeup today. She replied, yes. The boy said, take a selfie and show it to me. She has a gentle personality She refused in shock. The boy was still confident: "But isn't it just for men to see girls wearing makeup? Otherwise, wouldn’t it be albino? "
went through the complete process of pursuing beauty and recalled everything. She felt that the people who made comments, suggestions, and harassment didn't realize that they were almost "customizing" and making random modifications. "They really think you look like "It's for them to see." She realized that her body, which she used to do things and live, was regarded by others as serving their eyes.
Did beauty bring any actual benefits? "That's it. Some praise and pursuit, these things are relatively illusory. "Now she has a lot to do. She has to learn to read, prepare papers, and find an internship. "I also thought about it, what benefits can I get from this? I’m not a beauty blogger and I can’t make any money, so why do I work so hard? It is better to do something that I think is meaningful, and from now on I will rarely do something thankless. "
As his work increased, Guan Guan was too lazy to put on makeup when commuting to work. When he was in adolescence, he once envied his sister. Both brothers and sisters had crooked teeth, but the family only sent his sister to have her teeth straightened, and her sister was also sent to the hospital when she had acne. See, his family thought that girls should be beautiful, and boys’ appearance didn’t matter. After he went to college, he studied his face in the mirror and found that “it turns out that I am a person with missing eyebrows, only half of them.” His transformation changed from a box of more than ten eyebrows. It started with a dollar eyebrow powder.
When I was writing a public account about skin care and clothing in college, the article about cream was very popular on campus.He noticed that the girls in the school had become noticeably more beautiful, fashionable and refined in their sophomore year, but the boys had not changed much until graduation. For this reason, Cream specially "transformed" his roommates. He changed their hairstyles and matched their outfits. The roommates who usually looked a little sloppy and lack of energy suddenly took on a new look. This article about roommate transformation is very popular. However, the "appearance transformation" and "rebirth" are not very attractive to boys, and the roommate quickly changes back to his original appearance.
He continued to choose beauty, and got his teeth straightened after working to make money. At every class reunion, the girls are still very beautiful, and he is the only one among the boys who has not gained weight. When he first started working, beauty once brought him confidence. But as his self-understanding deepened and he made achievements at work, he reaffirmed that the source of self-confidence is ability and talent. Now that he has a heavy workload, he usually doesn't dress carefully.
After the Women's Day promotion, the exhausted Cream went to Thailand for a vacation. He was exhausted from the overload of work. When traveling, he rarely put on full makeup, messed up his hair, and put on good-looking clothes. Nice looking bag. "It may look like overdressing to others, but to me, I feel happy inside." He took many beautiful photos while traveling, but he did not post them on any social platform and only kept them on his mobile phone. When he was tired from work, he turned on his phone and looked at photos to refresh and encourage himself.
In his pursuit of beauty and his involvement in the cause of beauty, and in the process of observing people's pursuit of beauty, he recalibrated one thing: Is this your own desire, or do you regard other people's desires as your own?
In Macau, after the rainy season passes, Liu Xinyi will have to put on sunscreen before going out. Beauty is still a happy thing, but it is only a choice. She now feels that beauty is more of a feeling. She has stopped wearing makeup when traveling recently and does not have to worry about taking off her makeup. "I just feel so free." She gave up taking pictures and focused on what she felt and saw at the moment. world, fully feeling your own body - not existing in the reflection of any eyes, lenses or mirrors.
(Cheng Panpan is a pseudonym in the article. Thanks to Zhang Weiyu for helping with the interview.)
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