There’s something special about swiping on your favourite eyeshadow or putting on your go-to matte lipstick. For many people, putting on makeup gives a boost of confidence that goes hand-in-hand with feeling like you look your best. With this in mind, a new study analyzed the relationship between wearing makeup and women’s self-esteem — and discovered that the significance given to both appearance and social interactions were linked to makeup usage.
Researchers looked at 1,483 Brazilian women between 18 and 75 years old and assessed not only their cosmetics usage but also their feelings about body image as well as their self-esteem — both their societal self-esteem and general self-esteem. For both, the women completed questionnaires.
Almost half of all the women spent less than five minutes a day doing their makeup, however, the women who “allocated more importance to the way they looked not only spent more money on makeup but spent more time applying makeup and using makeup more frequently,” according to researchers. Almost 20 per cent of the women didn’t spend any money on makeup, and nearly 20 per cent spent no more than $2.50 USD on their cosmetics each month.
They also found that women with higher appearance evaluation — meaning women who felt better about how they looked — also did not spend very much money on makeup.
“Overall, our study suggested that women with greater self-esteem associated with social interactions would attribute higher importance to their appearance, resulting in more makeup usage,” said the study.
