Friday, January 25, 2013

Maybe she was born in Maybelline UPDATED

I've been against "natural" beauty since forever, but this is not a post about that. It's a post about how 'celebrities not wearing makeup' are always wearing makeup. I mean, Keira Knightley is a beautiful woman, but I'm quite positive no one was ever born with eyeliner plus a subtle smokey eye.

UPDATE

A commenter successfully persuades me that Knightley was actually born looking as though she has sultry eye-makeup on. Seems her brother was as well. It's a crazy world.

8 comments:

Rachel @ Musings of an Inappropriate Woman said...

Keira Knightley is a beautiful woman, but I'm quite positive no one was ever born with eyeliner plus a subtle smokey eye.

Ha! No, I would say not.

Ed said...

This is from an interview Joe Wright did for Pride & Prejudice back in 2005:

Keira has a natural eyeliner. It’s really weird. She’s got these dark lines around her eyes. So the only makeup that was worn was by Keira, which was to paint out her natural eyeliner so that she’d look like she wasn’t wearing makeup, because otherwise it’d look like Keira was wearing makeup and no one else was. That’d be really crap.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

Great find! Yes, it would be weird to have a natural eyeliner. Less weird for a celebrity to show up on set already wearing eyeliner. But anything's possible!

In all seriousness, it's definitely possible for someone to have darker lashes than hair otherwise, or to have shadows in places where makeup typically goes, or to have lips that are naturally redder than most, etc. This is not unheard-of. Knightley may arrive at whichever final look more readily than others. But unless we're to believe that in this photo, massive amounts of makeup were used to make it look like Knightley didn't have heavy eye-makeup on, I'm not convinced that the no-makeup photo is as claimed.

Ed said...

So your theory is that she fooled Joe Wright and the entire make-up department by showing up every single morning already wearing make-up which they somehow didn't notice? I'm not convinced by that.

In the other photo you've posted she's definitely wearing make-up. Is some of it may well be hiding the dark areas she's naturally got around the eyes, but that's not exactly easy to prove.
I'd guess this picture is make-up free as it's a pap photo of her leaving a gym.
Her brother has a similar thing going on.

Now, I'm not saying the photo in the original post is make-up free. (I really don't know and in any case a lot can be done just with lighting and post-processing.)
Just that the appearance of a bit of eye-liner doesn't in itself prove anything.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

Ed, you win this one. Her brother's what clinches it. Otherwise, I'd be pointing out, as a woman who does wear black eyeliner, that the stuff is awfully stubborn, even in the face of the proper makeup remover, such that a woman can effectively always have some on. It wouldn't have to be intentional deception. But fair enough, Keira Knightley's special.

Of course, what it means to feature the rare woman who looks like she's wearing heavy eye-makeup even if she's not in a spread about 'the natural look' is another question.

Ed said...

The pictures were originally published in W Magazine and I see nothing on their site to suggest they're claiming them to be make-up free. On the contrary they quite clearly include the credit: "Makeup by Dick Page".
The "no make-up" thing was, I suspect, invented by gossip/tabloid sites subsequently reproducing the images.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

Ed, your research skills are impeccable. I'm tempted to hand over the reins of WWPD.

Ed said...

Many things can be uncovered when you combine google with a strong tendency towards procrastination.

I think the site is in pretty safe hands as it is, though. ;-)