Story time. I told a bit of it on the Fashion crimes thread and wasn’t sure where to post it, so yeah.
I was a "volunteer" for a career day last month at a higher education centre in a town near me. Mixed gender, i’d say around 70% Jewish and 30% Arab. One thing I noticed is that the vast majority of the girls in attendance had some combination of: full makeup, contour, eyelash extensions, threaded/instagram brows, long acrylics, obvious lip fillers and hair extensions. Majority of them had at least a few of these things, some very clearly had all of them. Even the more modest hijabi girls who were there with their families had false eyelashes, fancy eyebrows and plenty of makeup/contour.
I had to stand there through the event so I had plenty of time to speak to people and weigh them up... I'm not exaggerating that half of the girls there (mostly just out of the army/national service, so 20-22) were augmented in some way beyond just makeup (as in lip fillers, injectables, implants). The rest of the girls were more indie or art hoes so still plenty of effort went in to their looks, a lot of of makeup and accessories. There was literally one exception in the room- one girl with really long hair, no makeup, a long denim skirt, black mary janes and a plaid shirt so she was either Orthodox Jewish or had somehow out-art-hoed the art hoes in a spectacular way.
Now i’m a guy- some of the 40+ year old women in my family have already started on botox and I’ll seriously consider getting a hair transplant if my hairline goes the way of my dad’s so I'm not opposed to any of this but I was very surprised to see just HOW prevalent it is. All of my female friends are a little older than these girls (mid and late 20s) so it’s definitely exploded within the last couple of years.
I really wonder how this will play out as these girls get older. Honestly it strikes me as a status/money thing more than anything else, but i'm sure the usual insecurity over beauty standards has its part to play too.
What do you guys think? Is this the case where you live as well?