Lip Gloss Sometimes Does More For A Woman's Appearance Than A Face Lift

Prior to the experiments conducted at Gettysburg College, researchers at other institutions had already established that face lifts often don't get women the responses they want. Even though cosmetic surgery to repair sagging skin or laser resurfacing of sun-damaged skin drastically changes a woman's appearance, women who have these procedures are not necessarily seen as younger as a result.

Why? One study found that when a woman who has passed the age of 40 has a facelift, her apparent age is only reduced by an average of 4.5 years. And that same study found that when a woman past the age of 40 has laser resurfacing to remove wrinkles and age spots, her apparent age is only reduced by an average of 2.5 years.

Cosmetics, however, can do much more to make women look younger. This, in turn, makes you wonder why so many women spend thousands of dollars on risky surgeries when they could simply learn to apply makeup more effectively if looking younger is an important goal for them. Scientific research has confirmed these principles for making makeup sexy:

• One of the cues that men recognize as particularly feminine is the color red. Redness in the lips, around the face, around the neck, or in clothing signals sexual potential to men. Putting a woman's photograph in a red frame will make her more appealing to men. Wearing a red scarf will make a woman look younger. It's not accidental that nun's habits and most women's choices in hijab or chador are black or darkly colored to make the women appear less attractive, or rather more maternal.
• In addition to looking for red, men also respond to the contrast between red tones in the lips and green tones in the rest of the skin of the face. A tiny amount of green in the skin is healthy and natural; it results from the breakdown of hemoglobin in the skin.  As a woman ages, circulation to the skin of her face decreases, and the faint green tint of her skin goes away. Cosmetics can compensate for this. Globs of green eye shadow can (believe it or not) make a woman more attractive at a distance, but the usual way to use green in cosmetics would be to apply green makeup, red makeup, and then flesh-colored foundation (not the other way around, order is important). Of course, many women eschew green makeup entirely -- it's really more useful for covering up pimples (green on the pimple, red on the green, flesh-colored foundation over the first two layers) unless it is used very subtly.
• Lip gloss enhances the effects of lipstick. Making the lips more luminous with lip gloss also compensates for the appearance of aging, although lip gloss won't have this effect with lipstick unless the lipstick is a shade of red.

Two precautionary notes for the interpretation of these results are in order. The Gettysburg researchers worked with photos of Caucasian women. The color contrast that makes women with other than fair skin tones look younger may be different.

And not only did the researchers test their theories of perception with college students aged 18 through 20, they only showed the students photos of women aged 20 to 69. Other cosmetic interventions may be of greater value in enhancing the appeal of girls younger than 20 and women 70 and older. Nonetheless, this is a truly interesting piece of research. The one take-home message would be that makeup can be a better tool than invasive operations — a welcome message for many.