teen makeup
photography by Luis Mora

What Makeup Is Okay for Preteens to Wear?

The first question you should ask is if she’s truly ready

Ask The Kit is the real-talk advice column you never knew you needed. Every week, editor-at-large Kathryn Hudson answers your pressing beauty and style questions. What’s the best blazer for work? How should you deal with errant chin hairs? What’s the best way to fight frizz? Send your Qs to ask@thekit.ca.

My granddaughter—age 12—is keen to have her own makeup. I promised to take her shopping. Besides the obvious eyeliner, mascara, eyeshadow what else do you suggest for pre teen makeup? Is one brand better than another for young skin? I’ve been trying to put across the theory that the trick is to look natural, but it’s fun to go a little wild on occasion. —Joan, Toronto

I barely recall being 12. Do you? That period of life passes so quickly, a muddy mixture of childhood wishes and teen anxieties: princesses and playhouses and periods and peer pressure. All I remember is that the age is defined by a yearning to be older, to snip off the last clinging threads of childhood and sew yourself firmly into adulthood. (Although perhaps that happens at a younger age these days; the pace of life has sped up exponentially since I was a kid, not to mention since Instagram, YouTube and TikTok took over as cultural arbiters. I tried to explain to my children this morning that the internet didn’t exist when I was a kid and that you had to use an actual camera to take pictures. They looked at me in disbelief. “Did you use your camera to take pictures of dodo birds?” my son asked, quite serious.)

So to answer your question the way it deserves to be answered, I called a 15-year-old girl because, fundamentally, all 12-year-olds just want to be proper teenagers, already. My friend Cleo Craft-Holloway is not just any teen, though. Because she’s the daughter of a close friend, I’ve had the privilege of watching her grow up and have been constantly astounded from the sidelines by her intelligence, charm and joyfulness. She was wise by five.

“Most of my friends started wearing makeup in grade seven—at least a year before me, because I wasn’t allowed to wear it until I was almost 14,” she explains, on a quick break from her online classes. “When I started, I was only allowed a little bit of mascara or whatever, but no one around me was really wearing that much makeup, either. Most girls my age mostly wear mascara, concealer and a little highlight.” (Note: YouTube tutorials for a full face of contouring might be popular, but that look isn’t the norm for students.)

The heart of a teen makeup collection today remains soothingly similar to what it was when I was in school: lip gloss. “We definitely love it!” she says with a laugh. Lip gloss, after all, is pure fun. It’s shiny and friendly; it doesn’t have the fuss or pretense of lipstick, which is better suited to business meetings; it has yummy scents and offers a fresh wash of colour at most. “A lot of my friends like Burt’s Bees lip balm and Nivea balms, but I also just like Vaseline because it’s so shiny.” Those are simple pleasures you can feel good about at any age.

Because, as you say, makeup can be really entertaining, but it’s also important to acknowledge that there is a pressure that builds on girls as they enter adulthood—and part of me wants to scream that we should push off that pressure to be beautiful as long as possible. I know we can’t ask kids to stay kids forever, and I know you love your granddaughter, and I know she wants to feel cool and special, but I think it’s worth taking a moment to consider the underlying implications of it all. “I mean, in grade seven, you’re still pretty little. I don’t think it’s going to make that big a difference in the future if you started when you were 12 or 14, but it’s worth saying that by the time I got to the point where I was allowed to wear makeup, I didn’t want it as much as I did the year before. Waiting made me realize that it wasn’t fully necessary,” says Craft-Holloway. “At the time I just felt frustrated, but looking back, I think I got makeup and social media at an age that was appropriate for me.”

So the responsible adults in your granddaughter’s life—you, her parents or guardians—should consider when she’s truly ready to start using makeup. That she wants it is not really the deciding factor. When she reaches an age that feels right—whether that be now or later—opt for products that are playful, easy and, most of all, useful. Tinted SPF, for example, might feel like makeup but provides a necessary function. After all, sun protection is the foundation of any beauty routine.

From there, you can treat her to mascara from a cool-girl brand like Glossier, or a highlighter from equally sought after Milk Makeup. “And obviously everyone loves Fenty Beauty because it’s from Rihanna, but I don’t know a lot of people who have that,” says Craft-Holloway with a laugh. So your grandmother-of-the-year award awaits if you score a tube of Fenty gloss.

Most importantly, before you stock her teen makeup bag, remind her that the fun should be optional and that the demands of adulthood creep up fast enough on their own. I wish my relationship with my grandmother had been filled with honest conversations like that. “The point of wearing makeup at 12 or at my age is definitely to look older — and maybe to cover up some acne,” says Craft-Holloway thoughtfully. “But really the main reason to wear makeup at any age is to try and ‘look prettier’ which shouldn’t be the way it is. Everyone should feel beautiful without makeup.”

 

 

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