Side story about people's perception of makeup~
There was some kind of informal study a while back in which a bunch of men were shown a bunch of women (I don't know if it was photos or the women themselves) and asked to judge on a number of factors including attractiveness and (I think) which women were wearing makeup. The idea was to determine, among other things, whether people who don't wear makeup can accurately judge how they respond to makeup.
The men who claimed they preferred women without makeup in fact judged women with "natural" makeup as more attractive than women with no makeup who they generally rated as plain. Not surprisingly, those men did judge women with strong makeup -- heavy foundation, dark eyeliner, bright lipstick, as less attractive.
Most of the men did not realize that many of the women were wearing light or natural makeup and marked those women as makeup-free but attractive, while marking the women with no makeup as makeup-free but plain.
IIRC one conclusion was that people who don't use makeup often don't recognize light or natural makeup and think only people with heavy, very noticeable makeup are wearing makeup.
Since reading that, I take people's claims that "few women I know wear makeup" with a grain of salt. It's more likely there's more lipgloss, mascara, light eyeliner and so on going on than these people realize. Not all women who wear some makeup do it up like celebrities.
Sadly, the use of
some amount of makeup among women is a cultural norm to the point that people unconsciously judge women without makeup as plain or unkempt in some way.
Of course, there are exceptions. There are women who are blessed with good skin, good color, long dark lashes and so on and can be judged attractive and put together without makeup.
I'd be happy to make do with clean skin and a moisturizer, but the fact is I get treated more appropriately all around if I wear enough makeup to put some contrast in my otherwise monotone pale coloring. I suspect I'm not the only one.