Must we be so 'extra' with the foundation?

Whenever I go home to visit my mother, one of the joys I relish is snuggling with her while watching really-bad-it's-so-good television. I let her take control of the remote control and prepare to be entertained.

Her choices are predictable. When my mother is not watching the news she's watching local reality shows. She introduced me to an entire channel on DStv dedicated to local reality shows; think titles like Ngicishe Ngafa (I almost Died).

My mother is a retired social worker, which adds to the satisfaction she experiences when trying to solve a character's problems, narrating her opinions and suggestions to my amusement.

One evening we were watching a lady tell us about all the reasons she was fed up with her boyfriend. She had called the show to break up with him in front of the cameras. My mother asked in a wondrous tone: "Is that the real colour of her face?" I answered: "Nobody really looks like that. It's just too much makeup."

My poor mother went on: "But look at the colour of her arms and then look at her face again. It's two different people!" She was referring to the sheer amount of foundation and concealer evident on this lady's face.

Yellow and super-matte under the eyes; silver shimmer along the nose bridge and on the cheekbones; a chocolate shade under the cheekbone and along the edges of the face - creating a shadow that gives the face the illusion of being slimmer and more sculpted; lots of lashes; all finished off with lip-gloss.

It's the Kim Kardashian look before she got robbed in Paris and toned it down. It's the Instagram-face look. It's called contouring and highlighting to the max. It's the reason we're all starting to look the same.

If you take a look at the beauty influencer world on Instagram, you soon realise almost every country has its own Kardashian. It also has its own light-skinned, racially ambiguous girl with big, curly, bouncy hair, usually a light brownish colour. The categories go on and on, proving again the need for humans to go off in clusters, to group into little spaces of belonging.

I've been wondering if this idea of everyone starting to look the same is necessarily bad, and I can't decide. I'm tempted to say it can't be a good thing and there should be a limit to how much one can change one's looks, but that would be disingenuous.

I like to think of myself as an independent thinker. If grown people want to look a certain way, it should not matter to me. The overdone look may annoy me, but it isn't harming anyone. Besides, I'm sure the looks I love have many people rolling their eyes. When it comes to feeling good about yourself, it takes different things for different people.

Makeup, much like fashion, can be a great way to express yourself. It should really have nothing to do with anyone else. I draw the line at harming yourself to look or feel good (harmful hair relaxers and skin-bleaching products) but otherwise, we should all be free to look as crazy as we want.

Comedian Amy Schumer said of the Kardashians: "A family of sisters who take the faces they were born with as a light suggestion." I would say not just their faces. But why not? If it's safe and it makes you happy, go for it. Bring on the base, the Botox and the laser.