Women start applying makeup early, survey shows

/ Yonhap

Six in 10 Korean middle school and high school girls apply makeup regularly, a study shows.

A significant majority started applying makeup in their middle school years to "look pretty," according to Jun Hye-jung's master's thesis at Sookmyung Women’s University, entitled "Middle and high school girls' skin and the psychological effects of applying makeup.”

Jun's results came from a survey of 511 female middle and high school students in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province last September. Questions were based on makeup uses and the emotional outcome that they felt by applying makeup.

More than half of the respondents ― 61.4 percent (314 students) said they used makeup regularly, while only 7.4 percent (38 students) said they did not wear makeup.

Among the students who said they used makeup, 45.5 percent said they did so to “look beautiful,” while 27.4 percent said they wore makeup to cover skin blemishes.

A total of 78.4 percent (276 students) said they started wearing makeup in middle school, while 8 percent (28 students) said they started in elementary school.

Students gave a wide variety of reasons for using makeup: wanting to follow friends and/or sisters, interested in cosmetics, wishing to look more mature, and imitating celebrities on the Internet or television.