whats the obsession with natural beauty??

i honestly hate how natural makeup is the most popular style online right now. i hate how bland and boring it is. i hate the way it makes people feel more insecure without it. and i hate the way its changed peoples perception on more dramatic makeup, nowadays people who wear a lot of makeup are automatically seen as insecure and self hating. i hate everything about this trend and i want it to die asap. 

i miss fun makeup, makeup with colour and individual flare. it feels like people dont try with their makeup anymore, like they dont enjoy it they just wear it because thats whats expected from them socially. it feels like people are just less creative overall nowadays, either that or they care more about fitting in with everyone else that they begin to sacrifice the wants and desires of their true selves. it was so fun to see people experimenting with their makeup and style in the lockdowns of 2020 and the short period after where people stopped caring about other peoples opinions. now a lot of people look the same to me as none of them stand out anymore and i often struggle with remembering faces. now dont get me wrong, i dont think natural makeup looks bad or ugly, it just bores me, i find it very unremarkable. 

i feel like peoples perception on makeup has shifted over the past few years. before, people used to use it as something to help express themselves and complete their outfits where as now, people seem to use it to cover up any perceived facial flaws and make them look as close to perfect as they can get with the face they were given. i think this was partially caused by social media, tiktok in particular. besides the most obvious thing of people ruthlessly nitpicking others appearances, something else i think impacted this are the many makeup tutorials (if you can even call them that) that are supposed to show you how to do your makeup according to your features or whatever. though these may not seem like much of a problem, i think that the wording used in them often makes it seem as though the features mentioned are ugly and the only way to make them look good is through the tips in the videos.

this new perception of makeup automatically makes anyone who wears a noticeable amount of makeup appear insecure to anyone who holds it as the amount of make up must equate to the number of flaws the person has, right?? i find this assumption very ironic as well as some of the most confident people ive ever met wear a lot of makeup and some of the most insecure ones often wear little to no makeup (that obviously doesnt mean that everyone who wears heavy makeup is confident and vice versa).

i want this trend to end. putting such a strong emphasis on natural beauty and holding such a strong hatred for so called 'artificial beauty' puts stress on women to be perfect naturally as getting any kind of enhancements, big or small, will automatically make them ugly no matter what. this may sound counter intuitive but i feel like natural beauty being the standard is making people more insecure than ever, feeling the need to get so much work done in order to be perceived as perfect for the approval of strangers when the idea of natural beauty was to promote feeling comfortable in your own skin.