Women Like to Look Good...Can I Say That?

I'm about to get myself in hot water. These days you're not supposed to make gender-specific pronouncements. It's not politically correct. By my experience has been that men and women tend to react differently to having their pictures taken.

As Atlanta, Georgia, photographer Kevin Ames says, "When I used to ask a potential client [if they wanted a makeup artist], women would answer 'No, thanks. I can do my own.' Men would give a look that said having makeup applied was an idea from a far distant planet." I'm male myself, and I have never had makeup on my face, not even when I played Gandalf in a school play in seventh grade, my one and only experience as a thespian. I have a friend (retired now) who was a TV weatherman and news anchor, and he went to makeup every night.

In fact, I could make lots of gender-specific pronouncements about photographing people, marking myself as an outdated troglodyte of an extraneous generation. For instance, with a male executive portrait or graduation portrait, you might have ten or fifteen minutes before your subject starts to look bored, whereas women tend to be comfortable being admired, and being photographed comes under the heading of being admired as long as that person doesn't feel insecure or anxious about her appearance. I encountered women and girls who seemed to have an infinite interest in being photographed, like that bear that was in the news a few weekends ago. (Now I'm making ursine-specific pronouncements. I'm bad.) I'm talking about normal citizens. Professional models—the highest level I ever experienced was one who charged $10k a day in the '80s, when the supermodels were making $25k a day—were amazing in their ability to turn it on and off.

I might point out that advertising for models is exempted from EEOC laws because discriminating by type is "job-related or necessary to the operation of the business." Saying you want to hire specific types of people isn't discriminatory. Maybe blog posts that are job-related could be exempted from being considered politically incorrect as well?

Anyway, here's what I wanted to say: I had a tendency to want to photograph people as they are. Men were typically okay with that because they didn't care (that was the sense I got, anyway). Women not so much. It's true, I am generalizing here, and people can be very different. But as a general rule, women tend to like to look good, and they don't mind if you take time and effort to make them look better.

But I got into trouble with this a lot. I used to ask high-school girls to come to their session with a hair brush and several different tops, and every now and then I'd have them re-do their hair—just so their hair wouldn't be exactly the same in every frame, just in case there was something about it they didn't like. One girl refused, saying she liked her hair being messy. Except she didn't—she hated her hair in all nine rolls I shot of her, and never bought a print. (That was before Photoshop when even small changes were difficult to make.) Another time, a man in a shirt and tie in a family portrait refused to pay for an expensive and time-consuming portrait session because the tab of his belt was outside of his belt loop instead of tucked underneath it. He ended up paying half. I lost $300, about $800 in today's dollars, for not hiring a stylist for the session. Although I've always wondered whether even a professional stylist would have caught the belt loop thing.

Atlanta photographer Kevin Ames solved this problem by making makeup artists mandatory in his portrait sessions. He was dissatisfied using Photoshop retouching only, so he uses both a hair and makeup stylist and Photoshop retouching. I didn't contact him to ask if I could use his illustration, but see his undated blog post "Makeup Artist Required!" and take a look at the three-frame comparison of Cheryl. I would be fine with the version on the left, "Clean face & hair." But most women, I believe, would be happier with the version on the other end, labeled "Retouched" (meaning hair and makeup done, and also retouched). (It's interesting how identical Cheryl's smile is in all three shots.)

It's been a long time since I did a portrait professionally—the last one was five years ago, and I probably went five years before that without doing one. I miss it. To be honest, though, I very seldomly sprung for stylists because I was working at a lower level than that. I wonder how much hair and makeup stylists cost to hire now?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Paul Judice: "I've worked in fashion and beauty retouching for about 30 years and have always been conflicted by the way we create an unrealistic bar for physical beauty. Perhaps out of guilt, I went to career day at my daughter's school when she was in grade two or three. I showed before and after shots of a very famous supermodel (something that could have gotten me in very deep trouble) and let the kids look for the differences. Once all the changes were found and we discussed the process of creating false perfection, I asked the girls what they had learned from my presentation. The unanimous answer was, 'We want to look good!'"

Geoff Wittig: "In my limited experience, it's really not so much a gender-specific thing as personality-specific. That is, there are certainly women who are particular about their appearance in photographs, but plenty who aren't so concerned. And there are plenty of guys who are in their own way extremely particular about how they look. Plenty of business types really want to project dominance, to radiate being the alpha male. In my neck of the woods, it's most often a desire to project a bit of swagger and sneer. Call it the flannel 'n' mustache aesthetic.

"I get a skewed view of the issue, though. My lovely wife of 42 years photographs wonderfully...except that I have taken perhaps a half dozen good photographs of her in that time. In almost all the others she got her hands in the way or turned her back before I could trip the shutter. She's so attuned to the threat, she can hear the nearly silent focusing sound from my portrait lens and gets her hands in the way before things are sharp. Sigh."

Mike replies: I love that "so attuned to the threat." ROFL!

Seriously, though, you two might be good candidates for my "three-minute portrait" contract. See my New Yorker article under "Difficult Subjects."

Benjamin Marks (partial comment): "I always thought a portrait was a success if the subject either saw something authentic about themselves that he or she hadn't seen before, or if they felt it showed them as they thought of themselves, or the best selves. The problem is that none of us sees ourselves the way others see us. My own theory about this, at the most basic physical level, this is because we only tend to see reflections of ourselves, which are left-right reversed, whereas the rest of the world sees us as the eye sees us (right side on the right side). The other stumbling blocks are psychological. I, for instance, think of myself as a 190 lb. 24 year old, when in fact I am a 280 lb. 50-something. Photographic images of me insist on portraying the photons bouncing off the more well-padded current version of me, rather than the svelte version my mind is convinced I present to the world. Photoshop ain't going to do it, if you know what I mean."

Kirk: "I'm not ready to comment much on the basic premise of this blog; that women care more than men about looking good. But I can speak objectively about the costs here in Austin [Texas] of paying for make-up and hair professionals on a photo shoot.

"To keep to current times:

"In the first week of November 2022 I produced a job and photographed for a large medical/technology company which has an international reach. We spent several days on location at the client's Austin offices which included two complete operating suites. They use these to train doctors on cardiac procedures using their products.

"For the shoot we required two male and two female models which we got from a regional talent agency. The cost of the models for one day was $4,500 each. Or $18,000 for all four. Each talent or model was at the location for one day only. The fee included specific, limited usage rights. We hired a skilled make-up person and there was enough time in the schedule for her to also touch up hair. Her fee for each eight hour day was $1,250. She took an equal amount of time preparing the male and female models. I judged her fee to be in the middle-to-higher end of make-up artist's fees in Austin in 2022. You'll probably pay more for the same skills in film and video production....

"I should also mention that I did have one assistant on set. A professional who had worked for several years in NYC and who will probably transition to a full time photographer in 2023. His fee was $500 for an eight hour day.

"I recently (January) photographed both male and female attorneys for a different project. More of a conventional portrait shoot. Shot in their offices as environmental portraits. All came in business attire which meant suits and ties for the men and gender appropriate, corresponding attire for the women. All were impeccably dressed. None required any additional make up. The person most concerned with sartorial appearances was a male who was focused on the fact that his white shirt had 'wrinkles.' I think of a wrinkle as a creased bit of fabric but he was referencing the natural tendency of shirts to have undulating fabric instead of presenting as a fixed, single plane. I assured him that this would be easily fixed in Photoshop. He was relaxed after that conversation.

"I never, ever think of my subjects as 'being admired.' Which I interpret to mean 'judged by their physical beauty.' In my mind, after having done well over 10,000 paid portraits in my careers, my goal is to build a rapport with a sitter. To establish a give-and-take based on equal power. I consider a portrait successful when the sitter and I become comfortable enough with each other to move from 'posing' to the sitter feeling comfortable presenting themself authentically. It takes more time and effort to actually connect, but to my mind it's much more in line with what my clients want.

"Except that unlike your example of the sitter and client being one and the same, in my business the client is the corporate entity, publication or advertising agency that hires me. My hope, always, is that they hire me for both my style and my ability to look past physical appearance enough to establish a human rapport and relationship.

"I should also add that given our busy market, most make-up artists and stylists charge by the day, not by the hour. That means that successful studios that depend directly on individual customers as portrait clients can only cost-effectively use make-up people who are in-house, or the studios must be able to efficiently schedule a full day of portrait shoots to spread the costs across. It's different in advertising, as we can budget for a make-up professional to come in, hang out on set, and spend the day working in a few concentrated spurts. Clients are paying for these services as a line item in a much bigger overall budget.

"Family and friends? They're tough. They don't like to pay. I can't justify hiring a stylist when photographing casual images of B and B. (emoji implied)." [B and B are Kirk's wife and son. —Ed.]

Comments

[John Krumm]

I've only done portraits for friends and family. They know I'm a photographer, and ask for a favor. I don't hesitate to retouch in Lightroom, male or female, but try to strike a balance to avoid the obvious plastic look.

It does get harder as we age. I cringe sometimes when I see my double chin in a Facetime video. I remember drawing an older woman in my college drawing class, and she kind of flinched when she saw my drawing. Too many carefully drawn wrinkles. She complemented me on my honesty. Cameras are too honest!

[marcin wuu]

As a portraitist, my take is that women want to look beautiful, while men prefer to look strong and gritty. Makeup and hair is therefore a must for women, not so much for men.

[...edN]

Somehow, the fact that this post is couched mainly in the context of a professional -- by that I mean money changes hands -- context takes it off the table in terms of political correctness. Which is what I assume you are worried about based on the title. I guess I figure if people are paying you to make a portrait of them... generally "good" is the implied directive. What "good" means, given the financial dimension, is defined by the payor. Not the payee, i.e., you. If you have trouble managing the engagement, that's probably on you and your methodology or maybe even aesthetic -- if that's a word that applies in commercial photography. But what do I know. I've never made much, in any, money with a camera. Maybe what I've written here explains why. Never really tried.

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

Well, since you're tiptoeing around the question of gender, it might be worth thinking that even if there are measurable differences in behaviour between men and women, it does not mean either that men and women have a gender-specific responsibility for them.

Before preemptively fanning the flames of cancel culture, ask yourselves whether your behaviour strictly follows from your will.

Is it because men don't care about makeup and that women are simply "coquettes"? Or maybe it's because our entire culture is still traumatized by the mere possibility that someone's behaviour lightly cross the gender norm?

As always, the answer is somewhere between individual and collective, cultural responsibility. Saying that many women "like to look good" while men do not is not necessarily false, but it's not giving a rounded explanation.

[Herman Krieger]

Is asking someone to smile for their photo a sort of makeup?

[robert e]

We all like to look good, for certain meanings of "good". But women more often *have* to look good in specific ways, as they are judged on both their appearance and conformity with norms to a greater degree than men are. (So, too, are people who work in front of cameras, such as TV news anchors. But male anchors can leave more of that burden at work.)

And if women tend to be necessarily more conscious of, proactive about, and aware of the value of "looking good", compared to men, I imagine that can include greater interest in how one looks in a photograph, or higher tolerance for being photographed. Sure, in any given individual this could be natural vanity, but it's also not much of a choice for most women in most societies. High school is a time when many girls are grappling with this fact of life, so I'm not surprised that you got pushback from students.

I'm curious what hair and makeup stylists make compared to retouchers, and whether that's changed in the Photoshop era.

[Zyni]

No you cannot say that and although it does not offend me (I am a woman) it will probably offend many. It will offend them not least because there is probably no evidence it is correct.

What you can say is I think that in recent western culture women are more likely to be concerned with their appearance (or more likely to be encouraged to be concerned with their appearance) than men are. This has not always been true, even in western culture: look up 'dandy' or look at portraits of men in 16th and 17th century Europe: these were often people very much concerned with their appearance. And outside western culture I do not even know, but I am sure there are many examples.

So what you are doing, unintentionally I am sure, is saying that a thing which is culturally-determined is instead innate. Do not do this.

[I am really only saying that, in that triptych by Kevin Ames, I would guess that Cheryl would be happier with the portrait of herself on the right rather than the portrait on the left, and that, despite my own preference for people "as they are" and not as they look with their hair and makeup done, I probably should have been more responsive to my subjects' own preferences. --Mike]

[Benjamin Marks]

I always thought a portrait was a success if the subject either saw something authentic about themselves that he or she hadn't seen before, or if they felt it showed them as they thought of themselves, or the best selves.

The problem is that none of us sees ourselves the way others see us. My own theory about this, at the most basic physical level, this is because we only tend to see reflections of ourselves, which are left-right reversed, whereas the rest of the world sees us as the eye sees us (right side on the right side).

The other stumbling blocks are psychological. I, for instance, think of myself as a 190 lb. 24 year old, when in fact I am a 280 lb. 50-something. Photographic images of me insist on portraying the photons bouncing off the more well-padded current version of me, rather than the svelte version my mind is convinced I present to the world. Photoshop ain't going to do it, if you know what I mean.

But I found this kind of disconnect in my subjects even when I was photographing peers in my early 20's, although to a lesser degree.

The last fun project I gave myself was to photograph my brother's friends at his birthday party -- held to be co-incident with his block party in Brooklyn. I set up some gray seamless paper in open shade and told the (mostly family) groups, "We are going to do one silly picture, and one serious one." Silly first, of course. I think most folks relaxed enough while goofing off that they could look at the camera with some detachment after that.

Examples here:

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-vcX3kFh/0/4c44fe59/XL/i-vcX3kFh-XL.jpg

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-54pTQ3x/0/bedd283b/X2/i-54pTQ3x-X2.jpg

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-MMrf9SN/0/ffa87629/X2/i-MMrf9SN-X2.jpg

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-DSXX26S/0/9939fa45/X2/i-DSXX26S-X2.jpg

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-6bmdrSn/0/dfc30e27/X2/i-6bmdrSn-X2.jpg

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-qXtk5pq/0/c0182d9e/X2/i-qXtk5pq-X2.jpg

Caveat: I am a hobbyist. I only do take pictures because it's fun. So I have never had a makeup artist or stylist 'cause that's not really what's going on.

As for men and women, I have found humans more or less equally vain (in which observation I include myself as a data point).

[Nigel Voak]

"I'm about to get myself in hot water. These days you're not supposed to make gender-specific pronouncements. It's not politically correct."

How did we arrive at this self censoring fear of saying the current, and ever changing wrong thing? We now fear of expressing an opinion on certain subjects, which can cost us our livelihood.

I find it absurd and frightening that we cannot discuss the differences between men and women anymore, when we all know there are biological, physical and behavioral differences between the two sexes, as your post above points out.

It seems in public anyway, that you cannot speak with frankness or even express biological facts, as the poor J K Rowling as found to her cost.

The latest kerfuffle over the rewritten Roald Dahl's books, is the latest episode in our decent into the world described by Orwell in 1984.

How is a portrait photographer supposed to cope?

[Simon]

"Women Like to Look Good" - I'd suggest that it means many women have been conditioned to believe that certain clothes, accessories and procedures are required for them to look 'good' (meaning: acceptable, favourable, liked/desired/respected).

Men have been conditioned too - both to expect the above practises of women and to adopt different but similarly necessary processes to improve their own standing.

I dislike cosmetics, they are often ridiculously expensive while most of them are toxic sh*t that that you shouldn't put anywhere near your skin. I consider extensive use of makeup as a sign of deep insecurity; although we all have them this is a visually obvious indicator.

[Steve Rosenblum]

@ Benjamin Marks
Your approach of doing a "silly" photo first and then a "serious" or normal one clearly worked, and is brilliant.

[Mike Ferron]

Interesting timing Mike. I still work part time in a large retail building and was asked to photograph the managers, committee and team members. Maybe 20 in all. I’d say the vanity was near 50/50 between the male and female participants. Most were happy by the 2nd photo.
The picky folks, one male and one female took about 5 shots before they said ok.

[David Comdico]

Peter Lindbergh remarked that women are more creative and adventurous in front of the camera. Men just stand there assuming their presence alone is enough to make an interesting photo. He wondered if taking Churchill’s portrait was one of the most boring gigs in photographic history, having to observe him chomping on his cigar frame after frame. I don’t know if that’s true but it’s illustrative all the same.

[Steve C]

An interesting extension to your question about what women or men "want" is to think about what society and culture "wants" in its ideals of women and men. What people want, largely, is to be represented in a way that makes them feel safe — such that they won't be vulnerable to ridicule or embarrassment.

I venture that society is (on average) less friendly to women who don't conform, present or make an effort to present within our cultures "normal" beauty standards than it is to men. I would further venture that society is less friendly to men who care "too much" or are even very interested in how they present aesthetically. For men, looking good is supposed to be (or at least appear) effortless and by the by.