How Much Make Up Do You Wear In A Year?

It’s easy to get annoyed when flipping through magazines and seeing the overly-airbrushed pictures of models and celebrities. How can we possibly relate to someone whose image is all fake?

Well, before pointing fingers, maybe it’s time we looked in the mirror a little bit. We’re not doing so great at accepting ourselves how we are, as our daily make-up routine shows. Dutch artist duo Lernert & Sander put together a new film that reveals just how unreasonable make-up habits can be. During a nine-hour shoot, they filmed make-up artists apply a year’s worth of make-up to the face of model Hannelore Knuts.

“We wanted to apply 365 layers of makeup in one day to see how much is needed to go from a natural look to an outrageous one,” they explained.

How much make-up did this add up to? A staggering seven bottles of foundation, two bottles of blusher, three lip glosses, and two bottles of cream eyeshadow in the process. That’s a total of 228.40ml (or 8oz) of cosmetics slathered on the model’s face.

It’s such an outrageous amount of make-up that a few days before, the artists ran a 100-layer test run on their intern because they “wanted to make sure that this amount of make-up wouldn’t kill a person,” they said.

By the end of the shoot, Knuts was unrecognizable, with foundation caked in her eyelashes and indiscernible lips. And even though the experiment is over the top, its result begs the question: is that really what we want beauty to symbolize?

Movies always depict the notion that beauty comes from the inside and is therefore in everyone. But if we keep covering up our faces this much, there won’t be anywhere left for beauty to come out of us.

Contact the author here: sedera@morningquickie.com