Women put on makeup¹ to make themselves more attractive. But a recent campaign in the UK suggests a bare face may be the best look for women.

女性化妆是为了让自己看起来更加迷人。但近日英国发起的一项活动表明，或许素颜的女性才是最美的。

The online campaign was launched in March by charity organization Cancer Research UK, reported The Telegraph. It asked women to post selfies without wearing makeup. The idea behind it was that by removing their makeup, the women exposed their vulnerable, real selves, thereby² visually expressing how cancer can destroy a person’s life.

据英国《每日电讯报》报道，今年三月，英国慈善组织——癌症研究协会发起了一项号召女性上传素颜自拍照的在线活动。旨在通过卸妆，展现出女性真实、脆弱的一面，从而直观地揭示出癌症是怎样摧毁一个人的生活的。

The campaign was a huge success, raising millions in donations, and #nomakeupselfie has since been trending on social media, with men and women alike commenting on how beautiful these bare-faced women look in their photos.

该活动获得了巨大成功，募集了数百万善款，#素颜自拍#也成为社交网站热门话题，男女网友对这些女性的素颜照称赞有加。

Researchers Alex Jones at Bangor University and Robin³ Kramer at Aberdeen University in the UK were intrigued⁴ by the responses. They wanted to find out if we were wrong about the perceptions created by makeup.

人们的这些反应引发了来自错误！超链接引用无效。班戈大学的利斯•琼斯以及来自阿伯丁大学的罗宾•克莱默的研究兴趣，他们想要弄清人们此前对于化妆的看法是否是错的。

They recruited a group of women in their 20s and photographed them after they had just washed their faces. They then gave them a range of foundations, lipsticks⁵, mascaras and blushers, and told them to apply the products as if they were going out to a party.

他们招募了一组20多岁的女性拍摄卸妆照。然后再给她们一整套化妆品，包括粉底、口红、睫毛膏和腮红，让她们画一个派对妆。

Then, with the help of a software package, the researchers created a sequence of 21 images of each model with varying degrees of makeup on.

随后，在一些软件的辅助下，研究人员为每位模特制作出21张照片，每一张照片的妆容程度各不相同。

The researchers then asked another group of participants, including men and women, to browse⁶ through the images and stop when they found the images most attractive.

研究人员又找来另一组参与者，有男有女，然后让他们浏览照片，找出最美的那一张。

Wrong judgment⁷

判断错误

The results were clear, wrote Jones on The Conversation, an online forum⁸: “Both women and men found faces with up to 40 percent less makeup than the models applied⁹ themselves the most attractive, showing a clear agreement on their opinions for cosmetics¹⁰. Less was simply better.

琼斯在网络论坛——“对话”上写道：结果很明显，“男性和女性都认为这些模特画不超过40%的妆时最美，显然他们在化妆品的使用上观点一致。越少越好。”

“However, when they considered the preferences of others, the women and men in our study indicated that they thought other people found more cosmetics more attractive, and this was especially true when considering the preferences of other men.”

“然而，当考虑到他人喜好时，不论男性还是女性参与者，都认为在别人眼中，妆容越浓越迷人，尤其是在男性眼中。”

This couldn’t be further from the truth. The men in Jones’ study consistently chose less makeup as more attractive. Interestingly, they thought other men wanted the women to be wearing more makeup, even when they themselves didn’t.

而事实远非如此。琼斯实验中的男性都认为妆容较淡的女性更迷人。有趣的是，他们则认为其它男性会希望女性化更浓的妆，尽管他们自己并不这么想。

“The take-home message from this research is that our ideas about what the opposite sex find attractive are generally inaccurate,” Jones wrote. “These misconceptions have roots in serious psychological illnesses, and the media intensifies¹¹ some of these. Perhaps images of models with airbrushed skin textures¹² contributed to the apparent overuse of makeup in the study, though I can only speculate on that.”

“这项研究透露出一条关键信息：对于异性在妆容上的偏好，我们统统都错了。”琼斯写道。“这些误解源于严重的心理疾病，一些观点在媒体的渲染下变得错上加错。或许那些美化修饰过的模特照成为参与者过度浓妆艳抹的‘幕后推手’。尽管这只是我的推测。”

So ladies, before you paint your eyes a shade darker, pause to think if you are making up for non-existent ideals.

所以女士们，画上眼影之前，停下来想想你是否正在试图打造一个根本不存在的完美形象。