I saw this ad for permanent makeup last week in a Las Vegas regional magazine:

Natural Look

What struck me is the way that permanent makeup–that is, tattooing your face so you appear to have makeup on all the time–is being marketed as “natural.”

The phrase “permanent makeup” serves a lot like “cosmetic surgery” does–to obscure what’s really going on. “Cosmetic” surgery sounds harmless, superficial, not like “real” surgery. “Permanent makeup” probably sounds less frightening and invasive to many people than “face tattooing” or “makeup tattoos.” Permanent makeup procedures are now widely available, and in a lot of states there’s not much training required to start doing them (I knew one cosmetologist who had no tattooing experience but took a weekend-long seminar and then was certified to do permanent makeup; I presume in some areas it requires more than that to be certified.). Anyway, I’m just generally fascinated by the way we use language to try to make the often extreme things we do to our bodies seem non-invasive, simple, and harmless.

For another interesting example of how language is used to marketing cosmetic procedures, see our post on Botox as “freedom of expression.”