Blogger's Before-And-After Pics Reveal You're 'Less Likeable' Without Makeup

When I was growing up, my mother always preached that "you should never leave the house without lipstick because you never know who you might run into."

Her wise words have clearly stuck with me over the years, as evidenced by the fact that every purse I own usually has at least 10 tubes of lipstick in it at any given time.

But have you ever wondered just how much makeup can affect the way people see you?

Recently, Francesca, an Indonesia-based beauty blogger behind the Instagram account "Working With Monolids," set out to uncover the truth about the makeup tax on women.

In order to determine just how much makeup affects the impression we make on others, Francesca turned to PhotoFeeler, a website that lets people rate your photos on a variety of personal qualities.

She posted two renditions of the same photo: one that showed the blogger's face sans makeup, and another that had been slightly edited with a makeup app to give Francesca an even skin tone, blush, winged eyeliner and lipstick.

Unfortunately, it turns out the makeup tax is, in fact, a very real thing.

Francesca's experiment suggests that a little lipstick can really change the way people see you as a person because her done-up face was dubbed as more competent, likable, authentic, confident, fun and influential than her makeup-free selfie.

It's pretty sad that this phenomenon even exists. Let's be real: People should be judging you by your personality, not by the evenness of your cat-eye or the shade of your lipgloss.

SMDH.

Citations: Working With Monolids (Instagram)