Woman-As-Machine, Emotion-As-Accessory

The next installment of Ask Ugly, my monthly beauty advice column for the Guardian, is here!

Hi Ugly,

In the past year I have stopped wearing makeup and am feeling a lot more confident in living life with my natural face. The only issue is that when I get embarrassed or offended I tend to blush and go bright red. People then exclaim, “You’re going red!” which makes it even worse. I used to cover my skin with foundation, which was a comfort blanket. I feel the only way to hide this is to wear foundation, but I don’t want to go back. Please help!

– Flushed Out

We should all be so lucky, Flushed Out! People pay $25bn a year to look like you.

At least, that’s what beauty enthusiasts across the globe spent on blush in 2024, making it the fastest-growing category in the face makeup market. Sales of luxury blush are up 60%. Hailey Bieber, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande all recently released cult-favorite cheek products, and Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty sells a tube every nine seconds. There are powder, cream and liquid versions. As of a few days ago, there’s even skincare that doubles as blush.

Rosy cheeks meet all the current standards of feminine beauty: youthful, doll-like, cherubic, “healthy”. Everyone who’s anyone is going red in the face.

Some consumers’ relationship to blush even borders on obsessive, which has become a trend in and of itself. “Blush blindness”, a term used to describe those so used to seeing themselves covered in blush that they can’t tell when they’ve applied too much, is the talk of TikTok.

I’m willing to bet your burning cheeks could pass for Sabrina Carpenter’s in full glam. You are the blueprint.

So why don’t you feel like it?

My theory is that your body, spontaneously bursting with human emotion, violates today’s most important beauty ideal: woman-as-machine.

It might sound a little out there, but since the dawn of Instagram Face in 2019, female beauty standards have been accelerating toward the cyborgian, with a focus on symmetry, smoothness and agelessness. (Robots don’t wrinkle.) We’ve seen the rise of glass skin (woman-as-screen), Meta Face (woman-as-avatar) and Stepford-esque hyper-perfection (think: Megan Fox as an AI housekeeper in the 2024 film Subservience, no facial prosthetics necessary). Even the recent move toward “undetectable” cosmetic work – or slightly off cosmetic work, as in the case of “perfectly imperfect” veneers – assumes artificiality as the starting point: The unreal must be made to look more real.

For a girlborg, emotions are not inherent. They’re accessories! So as the beauty industry encourages us to aesthetically dehumanize, it also encourages us to aesthetically re-humanize by purchasing feelings through products.

A few months ago, the beauty brand Fluff launched a blush with shade names like Nervous and Shy, colors inspired by the physiological effects of feeling a feelings. Patrick Ta sells a color called She’s Blushing. The phenomenon isn’t particularly new – Nars Orgasm, one of the bestselling blushes of all time, has purported to deliver a flush on par with post-coital oxytocin release since 1999 – but it is particularly ubiquitous right now.

Today’s biggest blush trends explicitly promote products as replacements for embodied experiences. “Boyfriend blush” takes the place of post-gym ruddiness. “I’m cold makeup” – yes, it’s a real thing – fakes the effects of being outside in the cold. “Sunburn blush” recreates the scorched look of excessive sun exposure. (Not that I’m advocating for real-life sunburn!)

The difference between these trends and your face? Blush offers controlled application on a controlled surface; blushing is the uncontrollable reaction of the uncontrolled body.

Women have been shamed for their unruly bodies for centuries – and for you, that shame only makes you blush more, which people are all too happy to point out.

Continue Reading On The Guardian

The rest of my answer includes:

• how to respond when someone explains your own face to you (hint: rudely)

• the awe-inspiring science of the skin-brain connection

• resisting roboticization

• and more!

Click through to the Guardian to read the whole thing (and if you decide to share it with friends or on social media or whatever, please share it via the Guardian link).

Read On The Guardian