Op-Ed | The Slippery Slope of Beauty Transparency

Sable Yong is the author of Die Hot With A Vengeance. She’s also a beauty writer and host of the “Smell Ya Later” podcast. She’s based in New York City.

The first time I experienced lip filler, it was filmed for a Facebook Live broadcast on Allure’s page. I’d only been a beauty editor at Allure for less than six months and was finally presented with the irresistible offer of free injectables — but it had to be captured for the magazine’s social content. When I’d tried Botox, gotten lip filler re-ups, Emface, microneedling, microblading, lash lifts, or lash (and hair) extensions for the first time — it was all recorded and reported in editorial format. Or if not, it was documented on my Instagram stories. Beauty transparency as a beauty editor is second nature. It’s how we’re able to access so many expensive treatments and products in the first place. (Much like Bill Nighy’s line in Love Actually about drugs, “Don’t buy beauty products, kids — become a beauty editor, and they give you them for free!”)

Beauty secrets are a relic of the last century by now. Transparency by way of authenticity is beauty culture’s strongest currency. Thanks to the internet and social media, one can make a living (and a killing) by putting vanity on display. The performance is just as much about the transformation as the result.

When I began beauty reporting more than 10 years ago, the media generally sensationalized aesthetic treatments in disparaging, grisly and lightly misogynistic tones. YouTube and social media changed everything; we could acquaint ourselves with these taboo procedures without judgment. It’s where our beauty voyeurism can thrive without shame, abbreviated into more BTS, GRWM and LOTD codewords to categorise intention. Divulging one’s beauty routine felt radical in a society that stigmatised vanity. And now people post lengthy GRWM TikToks while oversharing increasingly personal anecdotes.

Beauty inspires transparency in more ways than just aesthetics. Now, we expect nothing less than absolute candidness (especially if we’re to idolise certain individuals who profit off their looks). Beauty’s reality may be underwhelming but it’s a quick study in appearance economics: the kind of beauty we can cash in on requires effort, labor and lots and lots of capital. It’s why we sensationalise Kim Kardashian (the Instagram Face prototype) being quoted as saying she would eat poop daily if it would make her look younger. And why Olivia Culpo’s Vogue feature detailing her wedding makeup look, or lack thereof, elicited the backlash that it did.

The tricky politics of no-makeup makeup and “bare-faced” beauty are demonstrated most clearly when certain unspoken rules are transgressed — namely, gatekeeping beauty while making a living from it. Implying that one’s looks are simply a result of nature, genetics, or the model cliché of “just drinking lots of water” reeks of inauthenticity (or more condemnable: promoting unattainable beauty standards)— a far worse stigma than ugliness in the eyes of the beauty community. Anyone can flaunt their “unattainable” beauty as long as they disclose all the gory details.

We have the internet to thank for the ‘no-makeup makeup’ moniker. It’s not a groundbreaking way to wear makeup. (I’m pretty sure that’s how most makeup is acceptably worn, generally speaking). But the term at least acknowledges that makeup is required to look like you’re not wearing makeup while looking like a Disney princess (or like you’re playing a version of yourself on a TV show who just woke up glamorously). It’s become so popular that the ways to achieve the look have extended beyond makeup altogether.

The increasing accessibility of non-invasive procedures like filler and neurotoxins, and their constant parade of befores and afters on TikTok, have upped the ante so that we can now live the no-makeup look with semi-permanent procedures like lash lifts and tints, lash extensions, brow lamination, laser facials, chemical peels, and more. It’s the high-maintenance to low-maintenance cheat code — if you can afford it. Eschewing a makeup routine altogether is the ultimate “I woke up like this” flex. Effortless beauty becomes a package deal rather than a lived experience.

And if injections are still out of reach, there are countless ways to beautify your way to a satisfying “morning shed,” the new TikTok trend of sleeping ugly so you can wake up beautiful. (The hashtag has 96M views on Tiktok, and it includes going to bed wearing mouth tape, anti-wrinkle patches, hair bonnets or rollers, sleeping masks, and more to wake up, shedding the beauty cocoon into a beautiful butterfly.) No-makeup beauty is a formidable market force.

Beauty has traditionally always been validated by status, class, and believably natural genetics. Beauty ideals, by design, require exclusivity to maintain status and value. Our compulsion to protect these assets can sometimes lead to self-sabotage. Now that all those things can be attained with enough effort, beauty’s labor itself has come to define the arena, championed by replication.

Beauty transparency’s proliferation is incentivized with content metrics, so more people are encouraged (and pressured) to post any tidbits about their beauty routines, thoughts, and experiences for social media engagement. And when one content format, beauty trend, or product goes viral, you can bet that it’s all you’ll see when you log on for the next two weeks until the next trend bubbles up. Its effects are potent enough to redefine our baseline perception of ourselves to the detriment of mental, emotional and financial well-being. If you only feed on a diet of other people’s GRWMs, beauty can feel like a funhouse mirror maze (or a moshpit).

As beauty culture evolves to champion a more inclusive model, it’s nearly done away with vanity’s outdated stigmas. Its digital reboot introduces a different kind of tension, one that feels not unlike capitalism’s nagging pull to optimize and keep up at all costs. No one needs to be the beauty ideal to be successful in the social media economy, active participation in beauty has nearly as many rewards.

I’m not entirely sure what it’s for anymore, though. Posting one’s injections, laser facials, workout routines and diets says more about privilege and access than the alleged empowerment it may yield. I never begrudge anyone their beauty indulgences — I’ve had more than my fair share — but I also don’t believe that empowerment is defined by your ability to embody conventional beauty ideals. I believe the confidence that it affords is very real, but that too is none of my business. I don’t need to see all the ways a person can blur away signs of living, sculpt their jawline by the millimeter, or reset their gut health. I am happy for them, but I’ve come to appreciate that gatekeeping has a renewed purpose.

Some of us must be saved from what we want, after all. The saying may go, “Another woman’s beauty is not the absence of your own.” But in many ways, Tame Impala was right: the less I know the better.

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