Make-up Not A Confidence Booster

I’ve read an interesting study from the February 2006 issue of the International Journal of Dermatology. The premise of the study was to determine how the study participants felt that their blemished skin affected their lives.

As I’ve written before blemished skin does indeed have a correlation with how we feel and see ourselves but this study I believe is the first to have quantified that data. The study’s lead author, Rajesh Balkrishnan, writes:

While it may seem obvious that anyone with a severe blemish on their face contends with psychological issues, until this study, no one had systematically evaluated how such blemishes affect women psychologically.

Furthermore Mr. Balkrishnan states:

“Though they may not have much effect on physical health, severe facial marks may have a significant impact on self-image and over time, that could adversely affect a woman’s health,” he said. “In this case the psychological impact often outweighs the physical aspects of the problem – the women in our study reported having more problems with social and sexual functioning than with physical functioning.”

This study involved 73 women who had severely blemished skin (either acne, acne scaring, melasama), 66 of those women used some type of corrective cosmetics to “hide” or minimize the appearance of their blemished skin. The remaining seven women used no cosmetic cover at all. And this is were the study gets interesting. The researchers found that the women who DID NOT wear corrective cosmetics viewed themselves less negatively than the women who did choose to use corrective cosmetics.

I found that bit interesting because I can’t imagine leaving the house without at least some concealer and powder – to make me feel better about the often chaotic mess my skin can be. According to the study:

“Overall, the women who used foundation treatments felt that they were worse off physically and mentally than the women who weren’t using these treatments,” Balkrishnan said.

Whether or not they wore makeup, participants overwhelmingly felt that without their blemish other people would see them in a less negative light, and that the overall quality of their lives would improve.

Interestingly, the researchers found no difference in health-related quality of life scores based on the type and size of a blemish. For example, a woman with bad acne did not feel any worse or any better than a woman with melasma.

But the more fearful a woman was of being negatively evaluated in public, the lower she rated her health-related quality of life.

In a sense, I certainly don’t have the self-confidence to leave my skin bare when facing the public, actually there are days when my skin is so terrible that I can’t even bear to look at myself in the mirror. So out comes the make-up but like the ladies in the study who also used cosmetics – I can cover the blemishes but there isn’t a cosmetic in the world that can work wonders on my eroded self-esteem and self-confidence. What I’d like to know more about, is why some of the women (a small minority) are so confident despite the physical “disfigurement” of blemished skin while others aren’t…
Source:International Journal of Dermatology