Should young girls learn to transform themselves in just 15 minutes a day?

We shouldn’t need to devote so much of our time to it, but the reality is that make-up can help as well as hinder us, says Sophie Donaldson

IT takes me less than 15 minutes to put my makeup on in the morning; Zadie Smith would approve. Speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival last weekend, the author of On Beauty made it clear she felt that taking any longer to get ready is waste a of time, especially for children.

She said that her sevenyear-old daughter is limited to a quarter of an hour’s mirror time. “I decided to spontaneously decide on a principle: that if it takes longer than 15 minutes, don’t do it,” she said.

Of course, some comment- ers were quick to point out that seven is far too young for girls to wear make-up, but the reality is that many do.

It’s hardly uncommon to gift a young girl glittery nail polish or a pot of lip gloss. Pretty combs and sparkly hair clips may not be defined as cosmetics, but they are part and parcel of the behemoth beauty industry, and just as effective at communicating to young girls that their natural self must be enhanced.

But is a child in makeup really that bad? I don’t think so. The first time I had make-up applied was at age six. It was for the end-of-year performance my ballet school put on for our long-suffering families. It was, at that point of my life, one of the single most exciting events I had encountered and a lot of it had to do with make-up.

I still remember the intimate, clandestine atmosphere of the backstage dressing room in which the magic happened. The air was heady with hair spray fumes as a handful of lucky mothers fussed over us kids. I remember sitting patiently as my mother applied my make-up in accordance with the house style which, unfortunately for us, meant turquoise eye shadow was painted up to the eyebrows, cheeks were swept with magenta blusher and lips were painted crimson. Our hair was scraped back into a severe bun and lacquered until it resembled a hard, shiny helmet.

It was, by all modern standards, a horrific face of slap. But my six-year-old self couldn’t have been more delighted. I was fascinated by the transformative power of those powders, creams and soft brushes and thrilled I had been privy to this mysterious womanly ritual.

Sure, this was stage make- up, but it wasn’t long before my foray into the world of beauty transitioned into real life. What followed was a hopeless DIY attempt to imitate the trends I saw in smuggled tween magazines. There was a fleeting obsession with temporary wash-off tattoos that I plastered over my cheeks and forehead, as well as garish lipstick shades and strange, frosted eyeshadows.

Aged 11, I had an ill-fated meeting with a pair of silver tweezers after reading that finely shaped brows were de rigeur. I ever so carefully tweezed away most of my eyebrows, leaving two spidery lines of hair on my forehead.

My childhood experiences with cosmetics did not cause lasting damage — thankfully, my eyebrows grew back with a vengeance. I realise a lot has changed in the 20 years since I first used it, with a daily influx of application tips from beauty vloggers and Snapchat stars. Kids are far more exposed to the world of beauty and Smith is right — 15 minutes seems ample time for a child to get ready for the day, make-up applied or not.

Given that girls will eventually enter a world in which an inordinate amount of value is put on their appearance. Perhaps introducing them to cosmetics is actually equipping them with a necessary skill-set.

I resent this imbalance that women must endure — but until there is a dramatic societal shift, women and girls have to navigate it somehow. We don’t wear make-up just for our own pleasure — we can use it to our advantage. If there is such an onus placed on women to look a certain way, then it is in our interest to subvert it for our gain. Sometimes, a little extra mascara goes a long way. It’s a perilous bal- ance, though. It can make our cheekbones higher, our eyes bigger, our lashes longer and the result is that we feel pretty good about ourselves. The downside, of course, is that without it, many women feel deeply insecure.

Thankfully, therein lies the difference when kids wear it. They treat it as an artistic outlet and tend to apply it with the same panache as they do their finger paintings.

Smith says that contouring —the practice of layering foundation, bronzer, blusher and highlighter to create hollowed cheekbones — is a particular waste of time, as it takes “like an hour and a half, and that is too long”.

Whether you are seven or 70, life is definitely too short for that.

‘We don’t wear make-up just for our own pleasure...’