Natural beauty is in fashion, at least on social media. Millions of #nomakeup posts have appeared on many online platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Users claiming to be makeup-free or “all natural” post selfies with the hashtag. The trend reflects a growing consumer interest in natural beauty, the kind that seems untouched by human intervention: honest, fresh and effortless.
But the call to look natural doesn’t necessarily discourage the use of cosmetics; instead, it may encourage the use of enhancements to simply achieve the look of naturalness, suggests research by Rosanna K. Smith, Elham Yazdani, Pengyuan Wang, Saber of the University of Georgia. Soleymani and Lan Anh N. Ton.
The researchers propose that this is because calls to look natural highlight a tension women typically face. On the one hand, women are often expected to meet a certain standard of beauty, yet those who put effort into their appearance (such as putting on makeup) are at risk of receiving negative judgments. Therefore, in response to the call to look natural, consumers can strategically present a natural look to appear attractive with little effort. This has implications for cosmetic companies and others in the beauty industry.
Building on previous research in attribution and self-presentation theory, the researchers posit that others often assess a person’s attractiveness relative to the effort the individual puts into appearance. The less work seems to have taken, the more attractive the person is considered. As a result, a woman can create a natural look to convey low effort but at the same time enhance her appearance through the use of cosmetics.
The researchers tested this reasoning by exploring the relationship between the rise of the makeup-free movement on Twitter and cosmetics sales. Collecting all the #nomakeup tweets posted each week from the start of the movement in 2009 through 2016 (the year singer Alicia Keys announced at the MTV Video Music Awards that she didn’t wear makeup), they compared it to weekly sales data. of facial cosmetics. for the same period. They used weekly scanner data, from Nielsen Datasets housed at the Booth’s Kilts Marketing Center, which provided information on all facial cosmetic products sold in 206 geographic areas of the United States.
Source: www.chicagobooth.edu