CVS Beauty Mark Makes Us All Comfortable In Our Own Skin While Tiktok Filters Some of Us
CVS Beauty Mark is a new advertising method that uses images of women that are unretouched in both video and photo. The campaign is called “Beauty in Real Life” and it will be launched in CVS stores around the country.
The Beauty in Real Life advertisements were created to make women feel more confidence and comfortable in their own skin while making woman realize, “Hey, I want to look like that!” but on a more realistic level compared to what we see in more main stream advertisement. All images used are untouched showing women in daily life using their beauty products.
The goal for CVS is to completely eliminate photoshopped images in advertisement and give a more realistic approach to beauty in advertisement. It’s especially important to reach out to girls and younger women with this campaign in the hopes it will make them feel beautiful and confidence just as they are and not as a perfectly contoured, highlighted model that’s been photoshopped to flawless perfection.
Recently, it came to my attention that Tiktok, in some misguided sense of good (heavy sarcasm), decided to filter and censor the Tiktok content from people that identified with LGBTQ+ community as well as disabled and unfit people to prevent bullying. I’ve been doing a lot of research on this topic and it’s not yet hit mainstream media which blows my mind. According to one article that I posted on Instagram, Tiktok actually admitted to doing this. I’ve never actually stepped foot into making Tiktoks. I was sort of playing with the idea of doing a few on makeup and even doing some of the silly challenges. I never did end up doing them though because I’m just not brave enough. I put so much of myself into this blog and across social media on the daily that Tiktok was sort of my break from all that. I don’t have to create, I don’t have to do anything but scroll and stalk my favorite Tiktokers. It’s sort of fun not having to worry about yet another platform that I have to create content for.
I am not a model. I know this. I see myself in the mirror daily and I realize I’m a short girl with crazy hair and too big eyes for her face. I am not perfect. And that’s ok…! At some point in your life you just realize that this is who you are and no one else is like you and that’s a good thing. If we all looked the same, acted the same, felt the same feelings, we’d be bored within seconds of each other’s company.
I’ve been in the beauty community long enough to realize I don’t fit the ideal of what a beauty blogger or influencer or guru should look like. I don’t walk around contoured and highlighted to an inch of my life. I don’t have perfect arched brows and super full lips. My blending is not perfect, I wear too much damn blush, and I honestly don’t think I care…! Mind you, I don’t envy the influencers that do look perfect and blend flawlessly. I think they are all beautiful but I also think the over filtered, photoshopped content they put out there can be harmful to their younger fans.
It’s weird how the beauty community hasn’t evolved a single bit when it comes to looking perfectly flawless in ever video and picture we put out there. It’s ok to just let people see your normal skin, your crazy hair, your face without makeup on….! Hopefully one day we’ll all have enough confidence to just let it all hang out but most importantly, let’s hope that others can embrace that. The reason we all want to look our best and want to look flawless is we are fearful what others will think or say. Will they be cruel if they see us without our concealer? Will they be turned off if we let our natural, crazy hair fly around our heads? Or will they sit back and think, “What a brave, beautiful woman!”
I wear makeup because it makes me feel confident. Confidence is something I lack and makeup is my tool of choice to making me feel a bit more beautiful. But I do long for the day where I’ll feel just fine flaunting my bare face to the world without the fear someone is going to say something cruel.
I hope you embrace your beauty. And I hope if you struggle doing so you find a way to understand you truly are unique and that makes you beautiful both inside and out.
CVS “Beauty in Real Life” is just the first step in a very long road to unraveling the unrealistic world that brands have created. I hope more brands embrace an unfiltered life going forward….!