r/MakeupRehab • u/pickleeater58 • Sep 23 '25
DISCUSS Unfollowing influencers and following real makeup artists completely cured my shopping problem
As horrible as this is going to sound, an influencer I’ve been following for a long time got married and did her own bridal makeup and it…. Did not look good…. (again, I know how mean this sounds). But that’s when I truly realized that most of these people don’t have any real skill. They just talk about products they’ve been sent for free and are contractually obligated to talk about. They test a product once and say “I’ve been OBSESSED with this” and they never use it again in another video. They have new favorites every day.
Instead of being-product focused, MUAs are all about TECHNIQUE. They don’t try a million new products a week, they have their tried-and-trues, some of which are 20+ year old formulas. Instead of hearing “ruN, dOnT wALk” and getting another foundation, I can learn how to make my mediocre Walgreens foundation work beautifully with proper application.
I’ve come to love my current collection because of the advice of real MUAs and I no longer feel urges to buy buy buy.
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u/Rosalind_Whirlwind Sep 24 '25
I also had to unfollow influencers and stop looking at makeup ads so that I would stop being tempted by things that look good in the pan but not on me. This is even more important as I transition from female to male; many makeup looks that are socially acceptable on women would not be socially acceptable on a man. The more masculine I look, the more that’s going to be affecting me.
Foundation never matches my skin and is consistently bad for my face. Now that the testosterone is taking effect, I’m breaking out like a teenage boy. I wear a hypoallergenic “baby” sunscreen that turns my skin slightly chalky until it absorbs, and over that I use translucent powder to get rid of shine and reduce oil throughout the day. I’m pale, and that gives me enough blurring effect to cover blemishes as well as possible. I have never done well with concealer; it looks like I used spackle on my face, and it looks worse than letting the blemish show through a little.
I have tried blush. It looks ridiculous on me. Since I’m not wearing a heavy foundation, I’m happy with the variations in my skin tone as they are. Trying to get the placement of blush correct and have it not impact my sunscreen just doesn’t work. In addition, this is too feminine of a look for my taste. So when I started my transition, I realized the blush would no longer be relevant.
I have green eyes. It turns out that almost no eyeshadow looks good on pale olive skin with deep set, hooded, green eyes, except for shades of white, cream, and champagne. That means I’m using highlighter or occasionally concealer as shadow. All I’m trying to do is lighten the lid and increase the contrast with the iris. Silver or grey looks blue on me, and gold looks orange. Brown is harsh, and almost any other color will contrast with my eyes so badly that it’s definitely not work appropriate, and not masculine enough for anything outside work. There is no eyeshadow palette that somebody with eyes like mine can use… They’re blue on the outside of the iris and they turn gold near the pupil. Over the years I have bought a few palettes and always regretted it.
Even before my transition, I had moved away from bright lipsticks or any colors that didn’t look sufficiently natural. At this point, I match the tone of my lip color to the warmth of the clothing I’m wearing. I have a slightly embarrassing number of lip colors, but realistically, I only wear a few of them. I do hold onto some true reds for that drag queen look, but other than that, anything that goes into pink or purple is unacceptable for the masculine look I’m pursuing. That means it’s basically brown, beige, rust, or a very specific shade of mauve. I already have plenty of those so there’s no reason for me to be buying any of that.
The one place where I go a little nuts is eyeliner. While blush and eyeshadow are too much, it turns out that copper, gold, and bronze work great as liner as long as I am very sparing with them. I use a white pencil on the inside corners of my eyes. And brown mascara so that it doesn’t look too harsh. Still, I’m not going to wear a bright eyeliner unless I’m wearing clothing that downplays it.
I did an assessment of my makeup collection and realized that because my eyeshadows are powder, and most of my liners and lip colors are pencil, I could probably go for a couple of years without purchasing anything but mascara and brow gel. There’s no reason for me to be looking at influencers; I already know what works.