It's been a while now, but it seems that some beauty trends just don't fade away as fast as they should. If you're anything like me, you watch makeup tutorials constantly. To pass the time or to get new ideas, you're always watching some makeup guru do their thing. But unfortunately, I have noticed a trend that hasn't gone away and is simply progressing to be as common as filling in your brows; faux freckles.
I thought at first it was just a little trend I was seeing on Instagram, so I took to Google to see how popular it really was.
About 111,000 results of fake freckle tutorials. There's even a company which produces temporary freckle kits. So popular, Cosmopolitan wrote an article about the company and the details of the product.
Typically, I am not the one to rant about beauty trends or trends in general; the best response you'll get out of me is an eye roll or a scoff. But this one has really got me flustered. I've had freckles my entire life, a black-haired beauty with a montage of speckles splatted across my nose and cheeks. A feature of mine that I've wrestled with for a very long time, sometimes even teased for. I used to be asked if my face was just dirty, or how I had these spots across my face if I wasn't a ginger. The older I got the more the brown blots appeared upon my face, moving from the bridge of my nose, down across my cheeks, and now on my chin and forehead.
Today? I'm questioned by girls constantly to tell them what product I use to get my freckles, how long did I spend making them, and why bother going through all that trouble when I could've just drawn a few little dots on my nose and some on my cheeks and it would've "looked better". Enough already. There are hundreds of girls who caked on layers of foundation to hide their spots, girls who avoided the sun and getting tan to keep them from multiplying, girls who were told they'd be prettier with blank skin, even girls who have been teased and taunted about their freckles. Now, people are lusting over them.
You see the problem isn't that people adore this feature, it isn't that people see it as something beautiful (although they have always been beautiful), it's that the uniqueness of these spots is being tarnished and diminished by people who "want" them so badly, they fake them. Now like the unique pattern of a tree-ring or a cheetah's spots, they've been copied and mass produced. Now the freckled face girl feels like people are making fun of her for faking hers even though they've been there forever.
So now my feature is a trend, a beauty statement. But you know what? No one can replicate my spots. No one can copy the little brown specks on my face. They are unique to my face alone.
And just remember my fellow freckled friends, this is what Marilyn Monroe must've felt like who girls started penciling in little moles on the left side of their faces.
