What Our Makeup Reveals About Us
How beauty trends fuel snap judgments—and what science really shows.
Posted March 23, 2026 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.
Social media has turned makeup into a personality test. Scroll through TikTok and you’ll see women sorted into aesthetic tribes: “clean girl,” “vanilla girl,” “full glam,” “latte makeup,” “mob wife.” The implication is that how much makeup you wear—and which trend you follow—reveals something deep about who you are: confident or insecure, low‑maintenance or high‑maintenance, classy or trashy, feminist or “pick‑me.”
Recent research suggests a very different story: Makeup does tell us something , but far less than the internet would have you believe. And the strongest effects are not about the women wearing the makeup—they’re about the people looking at them.
What the science actually says about makeup and personality
In a 2024 study of 1,410 Brazilian women, Mafra and colleagues asked how often they wore makeup and how heavily they applied it, then measured a range of personality traits, including narcissism , psychopathy, and the Big Five traits like extraversion . Women who reported more frequent or heavier makeup use were, on average:
All of these scores fell comfortably within the normal range of personality. The researchers emphasized that the links were statistically significant but small —they explained only a tiny portion of why some women wear more makeup than others. So based on these findings, you can’t look at a woman’s face and reliably guess her personality profile.
Other research finds that heavier makeup use is sometimes associated with more appearance concern or lower body satisfaction, suggesting that some women use cosmetics as an “appearance‑fixing strategy” when they feel self‑critical about how they look (Mafra et al., 2022). But again, the effects are modest and far from universal. For other women, makeup is closer to a creative hobby or a way of signaling sociability and playfulness.
The bottom line from personality and body‑image research is clear: makeup habits reflect many different motives—social, practical, cultural, aesthetic—not a single underlying “type” of woman.
Where the big effects show up is in other people’s judgments.
If makeup only weakly predicts the wearer’s traits, why does it feel like such a powerful signal? Because it strongly shapes how observers respond.
Experimental studies using standardized photos of the same women with and without makeup—reveal consistent patterns:
These shifts happen even though the woman’s actual personality and abilities are unchanged. Makeup acts as a kind of visual Rorschach test : People project their cultural stereotypes about femininity, sexuality , and professionalism onto what they see.
Social media trends amplify this. “Clean girl” videos often frame minimal makeup and dewy skin as authentic, disciplined, and morally superior—a quiet status symbol of wellness, money, and time. “Full glam” looks are alternately celebrated as empowered self‑expression and dismissed as desperate or fake. The aesthetics become shorthand for character judgments.
Clean girl, full glam, and everyone in between
Seen through the lens of research, today’s aesthetic camps are less about discovering the “true” you and more about navigating powerful social expectations.
The risk is that we treat these aesthetics as quick personality tests and then behave toward people in ways that confirm our expectations: being more respectful to “clean” faces, more flirtatious or dismissive toward “glam” faces, more skeptical of bare faces in polished environments. Over time, that can shape real opportunities and self‑concepts.
Three takeaways for everyday life
Makeup will probably always be loaded. It sits at the intersection of beauty standards, gender norms, sexuality, and identity . But the science offers a reassuring message: Your eyeliner doesn’t define your character. The more we understand that, the freer we are to see makeup as what it really is—a flexible tool for self‑presentation.
Facebook image: PeopleImages/Shutterstock
Bernard, P., Content, J. Servais, L., Wollast, R. & Gervais, S. (2020). An Initial Test of the Cosmetics Dehumanization Hypothesis: Heavy Makeup Diminishes Attributions of Humanness-Related Traits to Women. Sex Roles. 83. 10.1007/s11199-019-01115-y.
Mafra, A. L., Moraes, N. S., Ferreira, M. E. C., Abreu, D. R., & Varella, M. A. C. (2022). The contrasting effects of body image and self-esteem in the prediction of women’s makeup usage. PLOS ONE, 17 (3), e0265197.
Mafra, A. L., Moraes, N. S., Varella, M. A. C., et al. (2024). Makeup usage in women is positively associated with narcissism and extraversion and negatively associated with psychopathy. Archives of Sexual Behavior. 54. 349-364. 10.1007/s10508-024-02974-7.
Mileva, V. R., Jones, A. L., Russell, R., & Little, A. C. (2016). Sex differences in the perceived dominance and prestige of women with and without cosmetics. Perception, 45 (10), 1169–1182.
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Tara Well, Ph.D. , is a professor in the department of psychology at Barnard College of Columbia University.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.