According to the American dictionary Merriam-Webster, the word of 2017 was declared “feminism”. The phenomenon of "body positive" - love and acceptance of one's body is very closely connected with this concept. Lenta.ru tried to figure out how the popularity of both changed the standards of female beauty in 2017.
Once again about body positive
Bodypositive, condemned by all and sundry, did not originate on Facebook or even on Tumblr, but back in 1967. Then in New York, a rally was held against discrimination against overweight people. 500 protesters, mostly women, advocated a more adequate representation of obese people in the media and the fashion world, and shouted slogans against the demonization of obesity, on which, in their opinion, pharmacists and manufacturers of all kinds of weight loss products profit. The demonstrators ate, waved photographs of Sophia Loren, whom they thought would not be famous for being fat, and burned diet books.
In 2017, body positive includes not only the fight for the rights of overweight people. This is the struggle for the acceptance in society of people with disabilities and people suffering from mental illness, and protests against age discrimination, and even manifestos against the prohibition of abortion. The main idea of body positive is that any body is beautiful, and its owner (or owner) has the right to dispose of it as they see fit. Where did weird beauty trends like wavy eyebrows and hairy armpits come from then?
Activists explain that it's all about objectification and unrealistic standards of beauty imposed by the media. And unshaven armpits are a way to show that their owner does not care what those who evaluate her exclusively as a sexual object (or objectify) think of her. This is perhaps the main reason for the emergence of "strange" fashion trends: after the glamorous noughties with silicone lips and chest, the pendulum swung in the direction of brightness, naturalness and even luridness.
Your soft lips-eyes
One of the first crazy trends of 2017 was furry lips, according to fashion reviewers, ideally complementing a winter look. One of the first pictures of velvet lips was shared by makeup artist Greta Agazzi on her Instagram. She called her invention "a warm sweater for your lips and for all those you kiss with them." In order to make such lips, you must first paint them abundantly with lipstick, and then sprinkle with flock of the same color - powder from small textile fibers. True, eating with such makeup is not easy.
For some reason, furry lips seemed too boring, so in the middle of autumn they were replaced by a new trend: to turn lips into a giant eye, using lipstick, eye shadow and false eyelashes. The girls selflessly began to open the third (and someone even the fourth) eye, inspired by the video of the popular make-up artist Jenna Marbles. The peak of lip-eye fashion came on Halloween, which is not surprising given that makeup looks pretty creepy.
Beach season
oh, one of the brightest beach trends of the year was born, which, however, did not take off due to its impracticality: makeup artist Mia Kennington from London covered the models' buttocks with colored glitter and shared the result on Instagram. Mia said that she was inspired by the sand, which, like glitter, sticks to the body on the beach. To apply glitter, you need to spread hair gel on the buttocks, sprinkle with glitter, and then secure them with hairspray. The makeup artist did not admit what to do to prevent the glitter from getting into the panties and mixing with the sand. As a result, photos of brilliant pops remained mostly on her Instagram, although some fans of the trend posted pictures even in November.
Craftswomen-browists
One of the main trends in 2017 was a variety of eyebrow manipulations. Beauty bloggers are tired of the pursuit of the ideal shape, so they decided to make them as unusual as possible. In April, Finnish makeup artist Stella Sironen turned her eyebrows into feathers. The girl laid them down with Vaseline and asked to rate the resulting image of her followers on Instagram. Despite the criticism, many girls decided to repeat Sironen's experiment, and now more than a hundred thousand posts are available under the featherbrows hashtag. However, most of the photos show ordinary eyebrows: beauty salons took advantage of the hype around the trend.
At the beginning of autumn, they were replaced by eyebrow waves. At the same time, many girls did not just draw a wavy line, but put their eyebrows in this way. One of the founders of the trend was the beauty blogger Promise Tamang, who saw the drawing of a girl with wavy eyebrows and decided to translate it into real life. To create the look, she took PVA glue (to style the hairs), concealer (to paint over the remaining hair) and powder (to completely hide the outlines of a natural eyebrow). The imitators went even further: they painted foam around their eyes, or even painted their entire face blue.
But in October something appeared that made eyebrows of all shapes and colors look like a cute prank. A Chinese woman under the nickname gret_chen_chen posted a photo with false eyelashes in her nose. A photo from a blog with 1,320 subscribers, in which the girl demonstrated much more bizarre experiments with her appearance (for example, she wore a very naturalistic mustache with a goatee), was circulated in the Western media. Perhaps the fact is that the idea was picked up by the model from Canada Taylor Richard: she shot an entire training video on how to make the nostrils furry, and asked her Twitter followers how they were on the new trend. There were not too many connoisseurs of vegetation in the nose. It would seem that by the end of the year everyone should have forgotten their furry nostrils like a bad dream, but Richard decided to remind them of them by inserting green false eyelashes into her nose - a kind of fir needles. To match the nostrils, she adorned the eyebrows and lips, creating an unforgettable and truly unimaginable Christmas look.
2017 on Instagram became a period of fame for makeup artists, many of whom not only came up with new unusual beauty trends, but also turned their face and body into real optical illusions. Verona Colicki, who lives in London, maintains a whole account dedicated to makeup, and in addition to perfect arrows, she uploads photos of her face “cut” with the help of makeup. However, she is still far from the recognized master of makeup and frightening make-up Mimi Choi. This girl is able to transform her face into anything - even mouth-watering salmon rolls.
However, non-standard trends appear not only on the Internet: the largest brands are starting to use a variety of girls in their advertising.
The most scandals, perhaps, caused by the adidas sneaker ad featuring the Swedish model Arvida Biström. The fragile blonde angered netizens with hairy legs, and when they took a look at her Instagram and found out that the girl does not shave other parts of her body and proudly displays her cellulite and acne, the real bullying began. Support came to Arvida from an unexpected side: the porn site xHamster stood up for her on Twitter and offered to post their photos on their resource, as they appreciate any female beauty.
Vogue magazine, a well-known trendsetter, tried to keep up with the trend towards body positivity and feminism. However, he did not succeed in all experiments.
In March, seven supermodels appeared on the cover of the magazine, among whom was Ashley Graham, a plus-size model. Her waist is covered by the hand of another girl, and Graham herself, unlike the others, dropped her hand on her knee, and did not hug her neighbor. On social networks, the magazine was criticized and accused of hiding the model's curvy waist. But Graham denied the accusations and said that she chose the pose for the shooting herself, and no one told her to shyly cover herself.
In August, supermodel Gigi Hadid appeared on the cover of the publication with her boyfriend Zayn Malik, a musician from One Direction. The couple looked quite common for Vogue heroes, standing out only with extravagant outfits. The magazine positioned them as the first gender fluids to appear on the cover. Gender mobility is the property of a person to feel that he is either a man or a woman, but Vogue reduced this concept to the fact that a couple simply sometimes change their clothes. Social networks again opposed, noting that the publication was irresponsible in covering the topic. However, the cover nevertheless pleased some, but for other reasons: for almost the first time there was a Muslim man on it.
The only groundbreaking Vogue initiative that has been warmly received by the internet is the October issue of Vogue Italia, dedicated to women over sixty. The cover of the issue with the subtitle "timeless" was decorated by 73-year-old actress Lauren Hutton. The editor-in-chief of the edition, Emanuel Farneti, explained the unusual choice by the fact that it is high time for fashion to push the usual framework and adopt a variety of models: “We think that the point is in universal diversity. It is related to gender, nationality, religion and age - no one should feel excluded from society. " His words prove the general trend for a variety of models of all ages: for example, the face of the Marks & Spencer brand, 62-year-old Yasmina Rossi, began to build her career after forty, and besides, she managed to give birth to several children.
In general, the main thing in a woman in 2017 is not so much natural beauty as courage and willingness to be ridiculous, misunderstood and even a little funny. Then there is a chance to become famous on the network, and from there it is a stone's throw to modeling agencies.
