My life would be so much easier if I woke up with my face looking like a Hollywood A-lister on the red carpet. Ok, so not as hot as that, but waking up with beautifully arched eyebrows, sooty vixen eyes and pouty pink lips wouldn’t really be a hardship. I am a makeup adoring slave, but time in the mornings is a non-existent commodity. And, as all makeup lovers will tell you, the natural makeup look is not as easy as it looks. It requires skill, time and patience. In my desperation, I did what any novice will do. I consulted the all-ever-knowing Madam Google and I got my answer – Permanent makeup. I could hear the angels singing in a joyous heavenly chorus! My pipe dream was about to become a reality! My euphoria was boundless until I learned that permanent makeup is also correctly known as cosmetic tattooing.
Origins – Tatau:
The word tatau is of Polynesian origin and has conformed to the English way of pronunciation thus becoming tattoo. Before this, it was uninspiringly described as painting, staining or scarring. The art of tattooing has been used for millenniums as a form of expression of one’s spirituality and decorations for protection, fertility, and status. Modern day tattooing still holds to these original sentiments, but as all things do, it has also evolved and has added modern ones.
Modern day – Tattoo:
Tattoos have not always been acceptable in the modern society; they have been viewed as a stamp of prisoners, sailors, tramps, gang bangers and all of society’s undesirables. The beginning of the 20th century saw a change to that, thanks to sneaky tattooist and glamorous fashion demands of the time. Rumour is that beauty salons gave 1930’s society women “complexion treatments” by injecting their lips, eyebrow and eyelids with vegetable ink. And, voila! Permanent makeup was born, thanks to our unsuspecting pioneers.
Ink – Beautified:
Cosmetic tattooing is wonderful for folks that have suffered hair loss due to medical conditions or accidents as it can be used to create artificial eyebrows. For the rest of us working women it means no eye pokes with eyeliners while navigating in the traffic, which is really unadvisable and dangerous by the way. No hectic search for missing eyebrow, eye and lip pencils or their caps. No worries of ending up with red lipstick on the teeth or smearing the pencil filled eye brows. Been there, done that! I skipped the t-shirt because I have my father to remind me of my beauty faux pas if I ever dare forget them, thank you very much.
Beauty benefits:
•Effortless grooming
•Time saving look
•Enhanced and beautifully defined features
•Smudge proof makeup
•No plain Jane days
Think smart, then think ink:
Natural looking cosmetic tattoos work beautifully with conventional makeup to create more dramatic looks. They do not stop you from experimenting with war paints. While cosmetic tattoos do fade, they take time to do so and will not completely disappear unless one performs laser resurfacing on them. Thus getting tattoos cosmetic or for body adornment need to be well thought out and done at reputable tattoo parlours. Removing your so 90’s Cindy Crawford beauty spot or erasing your two-timing exes’ name off your back, or contracting an infection from unsterile tattoo tools is an expensive and painful mistake to try to fix – even deadly!
To ink or not to:
That is the question that I cannot fully answer as yet. So, while I am trying to convince my brain that having a buzzing-stinging-unprovoked electric needle poking my face will be worth the pain, share your thoughts or experiences on cosmetic tattooing.
Article by: Ncomeka Mpofu http://www.beautybulletin.com/blog-directory/our-bloggers/ncomeka-mpofu