Thunder Bay – Health and Beauty – Questions For Scotia: this month’s question for me was from Nikki.
“how do you go about introducing makeup and skin care to a 13 year old?”
Great question because as we know from so many studies and documentaries like “Killing Us Softly”, that the media starts early and hits hard at our young women with the massive media presented image of “WHAT YOU NEED TO LOOK LIKE”. Which to all us grown ups shake our heads, and shed a tear for all the pain we know our young ones will go through and for some, may never get past.
I will give you my last answer first: the best is always take them to someone who is a professional. A makeup artist at a store or spa, a esthetician, or a hair stylist. They can point you in the right direction for answers.
But now I can in detail answer you…
So my first point is have you noticed that your daughter has started looking at magazines, started fan girling over any certain celebs, are they watching lots of makeup or style videos on youtube/instagram?
If they have: have a talk with them about why they like their style, what they think goes into that style? Is it Simple? Is it too much? Is it edgy?
All are fine but you want her to be aware of what goes into it: do they need makeup artists, style consultants, arts majors, hair stylists, fashion designers and more?
Once you’ve asked her these questions and had that talk, you can ask her what she is interested in for herself. Does she have a style already? Many young girls do by this age.. they have their style whether is punky, free styling, preppy… whatever each has small things they can do to add to it makeup wise and everything without going from a 12/13 year old to a clubbing 18 year old.
Before jumping right into the makeup, we need to talk about skin care. At this age, the young ladies might be starting to experience the fun world of acne. Getting into a good and established skin care routine will be beneficial no matter what. Just a simple cleanser (and once you get into makeup: makeup remover) and moisturizer each day, scrub and maybe a mask once a week depending on where their skin is at (normal-oily-dry-acneaic). Going for a skin care consultation and a facial will get you a experts opinion of what is the best routine for her.
Once this is based going for a makeup routine is also easy to establish. When you and her are comfortable you can start the following makeup that is appropriate for a young girl.
- Powder foundation is easy to match to a skin tone, is light and easy and not messy to put on.
- A cream concealer in a liquid with sponge brush (like the kind in a lip gloss bottle) for touch ups for pimples.
- Eye shadow in light colours (apricots, creams, shimmers, light pinks/purples, and light taupes) on a full lid . Instead of going straight to the black eyeliner, showing her how to use a dark brown or a black shadow with a angle liner brush instead is less harsh. Teach them how to no go crazy but a pop of bright colour/white shimmer eye shadow in the inner corner of the eye can be fun as well.
- A light mascara is okay too though we all have to take our time learning how not to poke ourselves in the eye.
- But if they are on the scene/punky/gothy/emo side then you might have to bite a lip and let them have the black liner. For a younger crowd, a mechanical liner or a black pencil liner will be good. Pot/cream/liquid liners take a long time to learn and get perfect which while trying usually ends up with a 1″ line around their eyes which is too much.
- Are they free spirited or punky? Think about getting clip in coloured hair extensions? or letting them have a fun cut and/or have a fun dye job. Kids and teens are the best to have the super fun colours because 1. they will get so creative with it it’ll blow your mind! 2. not like they have a job or are job looking and aren’t allowed to have crazy hair. Schools might bat an eye but if they are willing to endanger your child’s education just because they have pink hair: they aren’t very good educators.
- A fun coloured lip gloss can be fun and won’t stain their clothes or be too expensive.
Remember to guide them, but don’t stifle your young tween/teen, this is the fun part figuring out their own style. If you are worried about their style being too crazy: go through you old year books and photo albums and then you may ending up having a laugh of “what was I thinking?!” and remember style takes time.
If you have any other questions comment! Or you can book me for your tweens 1st skin care and makeup lessons!
