Jazmin 2.0: now with MORE MAKEUP

I’ve been working on this piece for a couple weeks now, but in the past few days my Facebook timeline has exploded with ‘Love Yourselfie’ nominations.  Perfect timing I suppose.

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We’re all familiar with the age-old debate on whether or not guys are attracted to girls who do or don’t wear makeup.  Guys say they like girls without (or with very little) makeup, girls say that guys don’t know what “without makeup” even looks like.  So prior to beginning this post, I quizzed several of my guy friends on whether a girl is more attractive with or without makeup.  The general consensus seemed to be: a little bit of makeup is okay because it enhances natural beauty, but a lot of makeup is just a lie (as for where we draw the line between a little and a lot, that’s a whole other debate).  But according to my girl friends, this is a case of “do as I say, not as I do”. 

(Girl Code)

So what’s really true?  Do guys say less is more, but consistently go for more is more?  Or, is saying you look better without makeup an honest opinion?  I’m about to find out.

Enter Tinder.

For those unfamiliar with Tinder, it is a “dating” app (errrrrr, more like hookup app) for smartphones.  Users are shown a photo of another user and from there, they can either swipe left (indicating NOPE), swipe right (indicating LIKED), or tap on the photo to see more info before deciding (mutual interests, mutual friends, up to five additional photos, and a short bio).  If ever there has been a more superficial way to meet people via your phone, I am yet to come across it*, and that’s what makes it perfect for my experiment.  If a user who you have liked also has liked you, it’s a match; you can only message users who you have matched with.

I think it’s safe to assume that most of the swipes on Tinder are based on looks, but as an added precaution I left my Bio empty (this is the only time I will ever say I want to be judged on my looks as opposed to my personality).  I set up three profiles of myself: Regular Me, Makeup Me, and a profile with no photo of myself at all.  I left each profile up for one week, and treated them exactly the same in terms of who I liked (I didn’t like anyone I knew in real life, anyone I had mutual friends with, anyone who had no photos of only themself, or anyone with Chad Kroeger in their profile picture).  All three profiles were looking for matches ages 18-26, within 50km of me.  I also completely deleted my profile between each of them, in order to reset all my eligible matches.  Which me would get the most matches?

I decided to begin with Regular Me.  Because I don’t wear a ton of makeup on a daily basis, I chose five fairly standard pictures of myself (in one of them, I’m actually not wearing ANY makeup).  This was my first picture, the initial point of judgement:

I chose this photo because it’s been my Facebook profile picture for a while and I’ve received favourable comments and several likes, so I know it must be flattering.  Users who tapped my profile also got to see these (apologies to my fellow blogger, Cale “Sassy Friend” Bosch, for appearing in not one, but two, of these):

And that’s when the (extremely liberal) right swiping began.  In total I received 71 matches (not including two matches who blocked me) and from those matches, 20 messages. 

Here’s a breakdown of the guys who matched with Regular Me:

And so, I moved on to Makeup Me.  It proved to be difficult to find an assortment of photos in which I was wearing a noticeable amount of makeup, but in the end, I settled on these.  My primary profile photo:

I wanted to choose a photo where the main focal point was my face and I wasn’t smiling, so as to remain similar to Regular Me’s profile picture.  I also picked these as my additional photos:

(My makeup in the fourth photo, particularly, is not as noticeable as I would have liked it to be but I distinctly remember being in Sobey’s that night and commenting on how I felt like I was wearing too much makeup, so I used it anyway.)

And once again, I began to like as many profiles as possible.  In total I received 137 matches (not including five matches who blocked me), and from those matches I received 46 messages.

I think it’s safe to say that guys do, in fact, notice makeup.  However, here’s the breakdown:

It seems that although I had many more matches when I was wearing makeup, these matches tended to be younger than the matches Regular Me had.  I’m not entirely sure what this means.  Is it maturity, or just coincidence?

Something else I found particularly interesting was how much more forward guys were to Makeup Me than to Regular Me.  I wish I would have screenshotted more of Regular Me’s interactions, but none were noteworthy, as most consisted of “Hey”, “Heyyyyyy”, or “Hey :)” with a few guys also asking me “What’s up”.  The guys who messaged Makeup Me were a lot clearer with their intentions:

   

  

      

     

And my personal favourite:

What does this mean?  Maybe nothing at all, maybe, once again, it’s purely coincidence.  But I think it means that these guys are assuming that my makeup means I’m DTF (whereas my lack of makeup means I’m a ‘good girl’?).  But there are plenty of reasons to be wearing a ridiculous amount of makeup, and attracting potential sexual partners is only one of them.  Not even one match was so straightforward to Regular Me.  And that’s kind of unsettling too.  Does Regular Me not deserve such openness and honesty?  IT’S THE SAME PERSON.  Whether I wear makeup or not, I hold the same views and have the same feelings and intentions.  Don’t judge a book by its cover, yo!

And on that note, I moved on to Faceless Me.  For my final profile, I chose no photos at all.  It occurred to me that if I was paying very little attention to who I was swiping right, perhaps guys were being just as liberal with their stamps of approval.  I wanted to discover exactly how big my margin of error may have been in my previous two trials.  This was my profile picture (I used no additional photos):

Once again, the swiping commenced.  In total, I received 65 matches (not including one match who blocked me) and 11 messages.  The messages, much like those received by Regular Me, are hardly worth mentioning and none were so straightforward as the messages received by Makeup Me.

And here’s the graphic breakdown:

I think one of the most unexpected things to be discovered as a result of Faceless Me’s profile was that I garnered almost as many matches with no photos as I did with my Regular photos.  I was expecting a few matches, but this surprised me.  I imagine there’s no harm in liking an empty profile, as it’s easy to block someone afterwards if they prove to be undesirable.  It’s interesting to me though that showing my (regular) face gets me only a small amount more attention than not.

But I could analyze this experiment for ages though and the results would never be conclusive.  I’ll allow the numbers speak for themselves and let you make your own assumptions.

BEST THING EVER!

And am I going to start wearing more makeup on a daily basis?  No.

Jazmin

*Since writing this, I’ve learned about Carrot: “bribe your way to a date”