Something that I have struggled with my whole life is makeup. Before I had a major glow up, my makeup skills and knowledge were less than desirable. Like, I didn’t even know what contouring was until I was 16. Especially having East Asian features, perfecting my makeup skills took a little more patience than it did for others. Despite watching tutorial after tutorial, the makeup never looked the same as when I tried it.
Now, if you are as enveloped in the beauty/makeup world as I am, you probably keep up with a lot of makeup artists, whether it’s on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook or any social media platform. Personally, when I think of popular makeup artists I think of Jeffree Star, Kat Von D, Amrezy, nikkitutorials, jadeywadey180 and many others. These artists offer a wide array of styles, products, and personalities. However, despite my makeup skills being much better than they used to be, it’s still hard for me to transfer the look from video to face, and I could never figure out why. And then I realized: makeup looks are very hard to recreate on Asian features if they weren’t created with them in mind. I find this to be true, not only for East Asian people but for anyone with Asian features. This includes Indian, Malaysian, Taiwanese, Thai, Mongolian, Malaysian, Cambodian . . . you get the idea.
For me, the biggest makeup struggle is eye makeup. For those who don't know, people of Asian descent often have a feature called "monolid." This is exactly what it sounds like: mono = one. Lid = eyelid. Basically, we don't have a pronounced crease on our eyelids to create an upper and lower lid when our eyes are open. This makes it difficult to create eyeshadow and eyeliner looks. A perfect example of something I still continue to struggle with would be no matter how thin your eyeliner line is, it will touch your upper lid. Unless it's so thin you can't see it, it will go into your crease. So annoying.
The main point of this article is to point out how left out Asian people are in the makeup/beauty world, and that we have this stereotype that Asian people should still look a certain way. The most popular makeup artists I can think of that represent Asian people are @patrickstarrr and @bretmanrock, who are both of Filipino descent. For East Asian girls, especially Japanese girls like myself, we're still expected to fit into the cute, adorable, "kawaii" mold, and therefore only have a few makeup styles offered to us. There are even countless tutorials of non-Asian people creating makeup styles to make them look Asian.
If you are still a growing makeup artist and don't quite have your "go-to" look yet, don't worry it will develop. My best advice would be to learn your face shape and experiment; you won't find what works for you until you find out what doesn't work for you.
And finally, here are a list of Asian makeup artist and fashion inspirations that work hard and can give you some great inspiration if you are struggling to find a new look or simply want to expand your horizons with some fresh ideas. If there are any other makeup artists/fashion bloggers that you want to highlight, post it in the comments! Enjoy
@naye0na
@arikasato
@cybr.grl
@mimles
@nikita_dragun
@kinashen
@lavish_yink
@shimycatsmua
@ling.kt
@nuehai
