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When did you first start to enjoy makeup?
18! I went away to college and was finally allowed to wear makeup,
and it was pretty much instant love!
— Christine
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I played around with weird colors and ~goth~ makeup a little when I was a teenager but I didn’t really get into makeup until I was 25.
Hello I start to enjoy makeup at the age of 19 🙂 I am sorry but I have a question I wanna ask and it is out of this subject… but I went in a mac store today in Brussels to replace a mac 168 brush, all the brushes displays were empty and the lady told me that mac cosmetics is completely changing his brushes range to sell new ones with only synthetics bristles. Is it true? I can not believe it! Did someone hear something about that?
Yes, MAC is redoing their brush range!
Ok Christine that makes me sad… Thank you for your answer 🙂
Sweet… well for me it takes a special aka expensive natural fibre to not be itchy on the skin, so 98% of my brushes are synthetics bristles made to mimic animal hair with powder products or traditional straight shaft for creams.
Same for me. I can’t use natural hair brushes without irritating my skin — has to be really good quality synthetic or nothing.
I don’t use animal hair brushes, so this is great news for me!
I also enjoy synthetics bristles… I was just choked because they are some really good mac brushes that are fabulous as 242, 217, 239, 224… and I thought they will stay forever x( This is why I was disappointed, because I love those brushes. I hope the new one will be as great. I agree, it is a good news for the girls who doesn’t like natural bristles.
22 I think for me as well when I saved enough money to afford college (still had to take a loan the last year :P) and was able to shop at Sephora and MAC in person.
I had lipstick and mascara through high school but that was it, as drugstore foundation & concealers where a real miss for my pale self and I have Mehron brand clown sticks I used on others for stage/ Character Makeup.
I started wearing makeup when I was about 20 and had some money from my job. Before that mascara was all I’d really tried.
But when did you start *enjoying* it?
Pretty much when i I began wearing it. I had amassed a sizable collection fairly quickly and everything seemed quite novel at the time so it was about a thousand times more exciting, figuring out formula preferences was what got me into it, I think.
My earliest makeup memory was as a little girl in the 1960s watching my mother do her makeup. I was fascinated with the way she gracefully swept liquid eyeliner across her eyelids (something I’m still not very good at doing to this day). I started experimenting with makeup as a young teenager during the early 1970s glam rock era. Mary Quant was my favorite makeup brand. I remember doing rainbow eyes and wearing glitter nail polish, much to my mother’s dismay.. From there, my love of makeup just kept growing.
Starting when I was 18 and during my years at the university, the only makeup I was wearing was a tinted lip balm/lipstick and mascara. It was by choice. None of my friends/colleagues were wearing full makeup (i.e. foundations, elaborate eye looks etc.). I grew up in Europe and in the late 1990s and early 2000s, makeup was not what it is today. I remember having in my stash a Max Factor foundation, some lipsticks and a few Artdeco makeup items; I used the foundation a couple of times though. However, I was into skincare since my teens. My mother has always taught me to take good care of my skin, of the eye area etc. She has such beautiful skin. I started to wear more makeup in my early 30s and the fact that I moved to Canada played a role for sure.
I’d always loved it, ever since I was a little girl, but I was not allowed to wear much growing up. When I moved away from home and finally had some disposable income in my 20s, I went hogwild. There was a dry spell in my 30s but in my 40s I’ve been using it steadily and collecting along the way!
I can’t remember ever NOT being interested in makeup and skin care – even when I was still in grade school, skin care products targeted at younger folks really caught my interest. I was a youngster when Pattie Boyd used to do her beauty column in 16 Magazine, and I would hang on her every word!
Well, there is a picture of a 2 1/2 or 3 y.o. me wearing my Mom’s very expensive red lipstick Joker style! I think I’ve always been drawn to it,
*comment got put through before done!
I think I’ve always been drawn to it, but it didn’t become truly enjoyable until my late teens. That’s when I began to get my techniques and skills more honed. Slowly evolving to the very avant garde looks I began doing during the 80’s.
I’ve been wearing makeup on and off for all my adult life, and for a few years as a teen, but I didn’t start *enjoying* it until my early 40’s.
Do you think that not being allowed to wear makeup until 18 pushed you to want to wear it more?
My mom let me start playing with makeup at 14, and of course I had no clue what I was doing! She laughed at my patchy pink eyelids and told me makeup is unattractive (well of course, I was using $1 makeup and had no clue where to put it!). I settled into a routine by 16 that included yellow powder to mask the redness on my nose and tons of black eyeliner because, well, I could, and that was as far as it got until I was in college. I started actually getting into makeup when I was 18 going on 19, when I moved out of a dorm and into my first apartment, and I finally had a little money to play with. I started reading up on brands and products and skincare and it’s all been downhill from there 😉
No – it wasn’t something that I felt strongly about when I was younger. It was more like, “oh, bummer” but nothing I felt restricted by, so wearing it was never about making up for lost time or because I couldn’t before – I just genuinely loved playing with it.
17, senior year of high school. I discovered the Beauty side of YouTube and it was wonderful seeing people enjoy makeup and wear it because they wanted to. I was just mainly into eyeliner before that.
I got into makeup about 6-ish years ago. I got sick and it was a way to feel and look a bit more human. That also got me a lot more into skincare as well. It was interesting as I had to confront a lot of internalized sexism I didn’t realize I had. My mom was of the wave of feminists who thought they had to reject all things classified as feminine, so I grew up learning things like makeup and style etc were frivolous and idiotic. It took a lot of work to get that out of my head and when I buy makeup I still feel guilty sometimes, especially if I’ve seen my mother recently.
Anne, it’s quite true about what you say about your mum’s age group and their attitude to makeup. I was part of that era (I am now in my mid 60’s) and all things feminine were rejected. What was misunderstood in that time was that you could be feminine (and wear makeup) and be a feminist too. I think it took the next generation of women, such as yourself to realise that.
And whilst I agreed with the main feminist objectives at that time, I also thought that no one was going to tell me not to wear makeup because I loved it so much. It has actually saved my skin.
I started getting interested in makeup when I was 12 and never stopped loving it. My parents were not impressed and all that was on offer way back then were frosty eyeshadows in pastel shades. It didn’t matter, I still loved it and wore it whenever I could ‘get away with it’.
My love for makeup started later in life for me a few years ago at age 40. Watching YouTube started my love of makeup.
From the very beginning — first as a young child admiring my grandmother’s vanity that looked almost magical and then in my early teens when I snuck my mother’s mascara and spent allowance on Cover Girl eyeshadows.
I started wearing makeup at 11 and it was true love at first application. ?
It all started at the tender age of twelve. I was very shy and had little confidence and I found that learning how to apply makeup properly helped give me confidence and brought me out of my shell.
I’ve always been interested in makeup, at least from a very young age. I can remember watching my dad’s mother putting on her makeup when I was 6 or 7. She bought me my first little kit when I was 10. It had 4 eyeshadows…baby blue, mint green, light brown, and a mauvey purple, along with a mascara… All Maybelline. Dad wouldn’t let me wear it except for play. I started wearing a full face in 7th grade, but he still had to approve it. If it was too dark I had to wash my face and start again. My dad was a Choctaw indian. I can still hear him call it my war paint every time I’m putting it on. Not very politically correct, but its a nice memory to me. He died when I was 18.
The moment I applied that first lip gloss, age 13. I had been chomping at the bit to wear makeup and the group of friends I hung out with in school were all wearing makeup and I felt like the odd man out and so juvenile. My parents had told me that I couldn’t wear even gloss until the pastor’s daughter started wearing makeup. Apparently, that was the determining factor, what the pastor thought was an appropriate age!! His daughter was two years older than I but she had started wearing lip gloss and a little powder/blush at age 13. I never looked back. I can remember walking down the side walk of our local strip mall in S. California and looking at my reflection in the window and being absolutely sure I was killing it with my blue eye shadow from lashes to eye brows, drawn in lower lashes with the cake eye liner, a la Twiggy and the cheapest looking, bright orange lips. At least I knew orange and blue were complementary colors. My hair was teased into a bouffant similar to those from the 50’s. Why I did my hair that way I don’t remember but so thankful that phase didn’t last long.
We had a model come to our Home Ec class and she was wearing false eye lashes. That sparked a period of wearing false lashes everyday from 8th through 10th grade. How I wish I had back all the sleep I gave up to get those lashes on before school every morning.
By senior year at high school I started falling madly in Love the older I get stronger the passion. 🙂
At 18, I got my makeup done professionally for an event and I was hooked after that!
The second I saw it. It was love at first sight. As a toddler, I would beg my mom to let me look at her collection. If you mean when I first got to play with it, then about age 11, when I was allowed to wear light colored lipsticks and cream blushes.
When I was 12-13! I had a rainbow Claire’s eyeshadow palette that I would match with my clothes (on the weekends – I went to a school with uniforms so colorful eyeshadow and makeup in general was a pretty big ‘no’). It didn’t look good, but I sure had fun!
8 years old