For those of you with young daughters might be interested to learn that tween aged girls (8-12 years) are using more beauty products while teens (13-17) and young women (18-24) are reducing their use of products.
According to Cosmetic Design mascara is now used by 18 percent of tween girls as compared to 10 percent in 2007. Similarly the use of eyeliner has gone from 9 to 15 percent. The study says that tweens regularly use an average of 4.5 different beauty products. (Although that number sounds kind of low to me!)
What do YOU think? Why would younger girls be using more eye makeup while teens are using less? Leave a comment and share your thoughts with the rest of the Beauty Brains community.
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When I was in high school, I always heard that college girls wore less makeup. And, sure enough, when I was in college, I found that many of us were to lazy or slept in too long for anything more than lip gloss and mascara. Maybe some tinted moisturizer.
So, perhaps the tweens are wanting to be more like they think the teens are, and wearing more makeup. And the teens are wanting to be more like the older girls and wearing less. Maybe it will trickle down again! I work at Walgreens and it’s so bizarre to me to be selling eyeshadow and mascara to an 11-year-old.
I think tweens wear makeup to look like the older girls. Also kids see more beauty related advertising nowadays, than I was a kid in the 90′s. They think it will make them look better, but they already look better, they have skin and eyelashes and hair that the older women want, which is why most women wear makeup, to look younger. Foundation, for example for even skintone (like a child would have), mascara for long black eyelashes (which a child has), etc. Older women typically wear makeup to look younger, tween girls see that and want to look older, so they’re reversed from one another. At least, that’s what I think.
When we look at the commercials, TV shows and movies what do the women look like? Many of the ‘glamorous’ looks are heavy in the eye makeup.
Girls at that age are trying to grow up and look pretty. Unfortunately the unspoken message is more makeup.
When I was growing up, in the 70′s & 80′s, women were a little more natural, but even at that I remember getting into my Mom’s makeup drawer and trying it all out.
One word.
Twilight.
They want to be all emo and vampirish so they can find their own undead stalker who’s controlling on the verge of abusive.
Remember when all the girls wanted Jareth The Goblin King? Man, I miss those days.
Never factor out boys, that’s the main preoccupation of young girls. No matter how much boys say they don’t like when girls wear too much makeup, the ones that wear too much makeup always get the most attention. This mixed message does not go unnoticed by your average 11 or 12 year old
I remember being crazy with eye liner and mascara in seconday school but never ‘over the top’ when I entered University I found practically all the girls I met have either no make-up or very little make-up.
When I went to college to do my A -levels I was loved wearing earings, bracelets, necklace and headbands. But now in Uni, I rarely wear any! Maybe the odd hair band. I guess, no-one’s trying to impress anyone else. It feels that being in Uni, you’ve already shown to the world that you are impressive enough to get into uni? And most of us are too lazy/tired to do much with all the hang overs from weekend drinking and essays due the next day.
I meant ‘had either no make-up’ and ‘a-levels, I loved wearing..’
Maybe it’s because I live in Southern California and near Newport Beach – a city where every other building is a plastic surgeon, and between each plastic surgeon is a day spa or beauty salon – but I never found the “less makeup after highschool” to be true. Seems the girls at the local jr. collage wore even more makeup. Not to mention designer clothing. I can remember several of them whining about not having money to pay the rent and having to borrow from their parents. I’d reply, “Well, if you bought your clothing at WalMart instead of Saks and stopped smoking you’d have money to pay the rent.” They’d raise their overly made up eyebrows and go, “WalMart? EWWWWW!”
That picture of the baby with the eye liner or mascara on reminded me of Alice Cooper’s 1973 Billion Dollar Babies albumn. That baby had more make-up on though, and it looked unhappy. “billion dollar babies, rubber little lady, slicker than a weasel, grimey as an alley loves me like no other lover”. Great lyrics, don’t really mean a whole lot though…the seventies. Turn it up real loud and those two vintage Gibson custom SG’s Glen and Mike played sound cool. Maybe Vince could offer some beauty tips, hmm….
As a 22 year old woman, I know I use a lot less eye makeup than I used to. I’m on a blush kick lately (I use a liquid rouge from Ageless Artifice- the recipe they use is from 1774!) but it might be because I’ve begun to learn more of what compliments me makeup-wise.