RECENTLY, MY FRIEND &ndash; who we&rsquo;ll call Amy &ndash; went on a Bumble date. It went something like this: initial attraction, right swipe, some chat, a date, a kiss and then&hellip; nothing. Ghosted. She whatsapped her match &ndash; who we&rsquo;ll call Sam &ndash; to see whether a second date was on the cards. She&rsquo;s persistent, our Amy. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just that you had the audacity to turn up without any makeup on. It&rsquo;s like you couldn&rsquo;t even be bothered to make an effort,&rdquo; he replied. What the&hellip;? Needless to say, that was the end of Sam. And is it really, in the vein of a Jane Austen novel, that audacious to head out to attract a mate with your own unadorned face? The collective outrage this story has garnered from every angle (colleagues, friends, people on the bus) very much points to the obvious misogyny at play, yet it haunts me slightly as I contemplate my own curated Bumble profile. Liking, as I do, to believe the best in humankind, I trust I&rsquo;m unlikely to run into a specimen like Sam. But I can&rsquo;t help wondering: do my six best profile photos faithfully represent an authentic version of me IRL? And, even as someone with the most minimal of makeup routines, would I ever date barefaced?A staggering majority of us now wear makeup regularly, with 83 per cent of women wearing it every day, according to a 2017 Mintel survey. This, perhaps, goes part way to explaining why a lack of makeup, rather than a surplus of it, stands out more in the dating landscape today. Indeed, of more than 1,500 women surveyed, 72 per cent seemed to view makeup as a vital part of online dating, claiming they would &ldquo;never&rdquo; go on a first date without makeup. While wearing red lipstick on a date is hardly a modern phenomenon, this raises the question: do the contents of our bathroom cabinets now carry greater significance, as we aim to live up to the &ldquo;perfect&rdquo; versions of ourselves that we project to our online matches?London-based psychologist Suzy Reading, who specialises in well being, points out the role makeup plays in the specific context of dating. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about making the most of our features and being confident that we&rsquo;re presenting our best self. Makeup boosts self-esteem, helping us feel ready and poised for the demands of the task at hand.&rdquo; The crux of this, of course, lies in the confidence-building aspect of makeup &ndash; ask any woman why she spent 15 minutes this morning individually pencilling eyebrow hairs onto her face and she&rsquo;ll tell you it&rsquo;s for herself. And while the same Mintel survey tells us that 64 per cent of women attest to wearing makeup to feel confident, more than two in five also do so to feel &ldquo;attractive&rdquo;.Despite the age-old wisdom that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it transpires that female attractiveness can &ndash; supposedly &ndash; be scientifically analysed. Biologically speaking, the contrast between lips and the surrounding skin, or dark eyes and the rest of the face, directly correlate with &ldquo;perceived attractiveness&rdquo;, as does the appearance of skin texture. The idea of a holy trinity of socially recognised beauty &ndash; lips, eyes and skin &ndash; is supported by consumer reports, which show that foundation, mascara and lipstick are consistently the most purchased products in the market. So, in the most basic evolutionary sense, makeup&rsquo;s role is clear: it&rsquo;s there to help us attract a potential mate. However, we thankfully no longer live in a time where you fancy someone based entirely on their presumed fertility. Do the people we&rsquo;re dating care about the degree of eye-to-face contrast? &ldquo;By modern society&rsquo;s terms, makeup is an indication of effort being made, but I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;d expect a girl to wear makeup on a date,&rdquo; says my colleague Charlie. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d hope she would just wear as much as she wanted. I might even be a bit put off if they were overly made-up. Surely first dates are the most important time to be as much &lsquo;yourself&rsquo; as possible?&rdquo; The caveat to this statement is that Charlie works in fashion (a business dominated by women), has a long-term girlfriend and spends his nine-to-five thinking mainly about style, so he can&rsquo;t be said to wholly represent straight males.At the other end of the spectrum, in the case of my friend Amy, the man in question was also in all likelihood an anomaly, or a less polite word beginning with &ldquo;a&ldquo;. The general population, however, can give a pretty good indication of the majority view and, when surveyed, 71 per cent claimed they &ldquo;wouldn&rsquo;t notice&rdquo; if a woman turned up to a date bare-faced.The male gaze has been endlessly picked over, but what about the female gaze? Emmanuelle &ndash; a woman who&rsquo;s bisexual &ndash; says, &ldquo;I wear makeup for me. I think on a first date, I&rsquo;d do the same makeup whether I was dating a man or a woman, but I&rsquo;d probably relax my makeup routine more quickly if I were continuing to see a girl. I think women have more realistic expectations of other women.&rdquo;My friend Steph, who exclusively dates women, agrees. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s less pressure when you date a woman, because they know what you look like without makeup on. They understand the transformative nature of makeup first-hand.&rdquo; Whereas with men, Steph says it&rsquo;s the opposite: &ldquo;Men have this misconception that women look a certain way without makeup, but when they see you without it, they&rsquo;re kind of startled.&rdquo;&ldquo;I honestly wouldn&rsquo;t think anything of whether or not a woman wore makeup to a date,&rdquo; says Emmanuelle. &ldquo;In some contexts, if you can see that someone&rsquo;s put more makeup on than usual, you can see they&rsquo;ve made more effort and want to look especially good. You might pick up on something like that.&rdquo; This is a sentiment echoed by 41 per cent of men surveyed, who said that although makeup, or a lack of it, wouldn&rsquo;t particularly bother them on a date; they would view it as an indication of a degree of effort. And while that effort might be either to impress a date or to bolster self-esteem, the ritual of getting ready can carry even more significance for some women. &ldquo;It gives me a sense of stepping into myself,&rdquo; says Rhyannon Styles, former ELLE columnist and author of The New Girl: A Trans Girl Tells It Like It Is, chronicling her transition. &ldquo;I view makeup as an accessory,&rdquo; she tells me. &ldquo;In lots of ways, for a trans woman makeup is a way to represent gender &ndash; it&rsquo;s a good signifier to people that you&rsquo;re a woman.&rdquo;This is not singular thinking in the trans community &ndash; in fact, perceptual psychologist Richard Russell studied the existence of sex differences in the facial contrasts of men and women and found that the degree to which facial features contrast with surrounding skin influences the viewer&rsquo;s perception of masculinity or femininity. This reaffirms the notion that women are often seen as &ldquo;more feminine&rdquo; if they darken their eyes or redden their lips. For Styles, it goes further. &ldquo;For me, when I was dating, it almost acted like war paint, because when I had makeup on, I felt like I had a layer of protection. I&rsquo;m fortunate that I am now able to go bare-faced and still have feminine attributes. But for some trans women, it&rsquo;s absolute survival that they are seen with a face of makeup, because without it they&rsquo;d feel like people would only see their masculinity and not their femininity.&rdquo;&ldquo;War paint&rdquo; is a phrase floating in the foremost realms of my consciousness when, four days later, I find myself heading for a post-work drink with my Bumble match Alex. In contrast to my profile, in which I am golden-hour glowy (thank you, Guerlain), I&rsquo;m not only makeup-free, I am post-facial bare. The facial is not an advantage: rarely do I find that they leave you radiant in the direct aftermath, but rather, vaguely oily. To my mind, I look 12. I feel so vastly, woefully under-prepared that I type out my cancellation message (and delete it again) three times. Of course, Alex doesn&rsquo;t even seem to notice. At one point, I am so desperate for the poor man to comment on my bare face, I want to yell, &ldquo;Look at me! No makeup! Look!&rdquo; But I&rsquo;m pretty sure that wouldn&rsquo;t make for a good date. Besides, it&rsquo;s only under the harsh lighting of the women&rsquo;s loos that I feel in need of a good colour corrector; at 23, it&rsquo;s pretty difficult to look haggard in a dimly lit bar.Toying with the idea of asking Alex whether I look the same as in my pictures, I bottle it. Of course I look the same. Just less filtered, perhaps. Less golden, certainly. But isn&rsquo;t Valencia really just concealer for the Instagram age? Alex himself is distinctively less chiselled than in his photos, yet all the more attractive for it. I arrive home (several glasses of wine later) wondering what all the fuss was about, and feeling mildly smug&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just that you had the AUDACITY to TURN UP without ANY MAKEUP ON&rdquo;about the amount of cotton wool I won&rsquo;t be needing to steal from my housemate tonight. If the people in this piece, and my #nofilter experiment, have taught me anything, it&rsquo;s that makeup&rsquo;s real importance is entirely created by our perceptions and expectations.So would I date bare-faced next time? Not a problem (sorry, Sam). And for the record, come the next morning (the effects of the facial somewhat negated by the cheap sauvignon), I&rsquo;m once again happily blending three shades of highlighter into my Cupid&rsquo;s bow with my pinkie. Because, date or no date, it makes me feel good, and that&rsquo;s the joy of makeup.

Beauty, Bumble & Beyond

English

Spanish(español)

Bengali(বাঙালি)

Gujarati(ગુજરાતી)

Hindi(हिन्दी)

Malayalam(മലയാളം)

Tamil(தமிழ்)

Telugu(తెలుగు)

ELLE Australia

Books: Shelf-Care

Men's Rites

Kick Start

Music: Everything Is Illuminated

SUPER NATURE ESCAPISM WILDERNESS BREATHING INFRESH AIR BATHING IN SUNSHINE

THE big CLEANSE

TALKING to strangers

singled OUT

GYPSY CREEK

DRIVE: DESIGN in motion

1. You agree that the use of Magzter.com, the application and its services, are at solely at your own risk. Neither Magzter.com nor its associates nor employees nor third party content providers guarantee that the service will be completely uninterrupted or error-free or foolproof against miscreant activities. Nor do they warranty that you will get the exact results as expected or promised by the website or product.

11. THE SERVICE AND ALL PUBLICATIONS ARE PROVIDED ON AN 'AS IS' AND 'AS AVAILABLE' BASIS. MAGZTER, ITS AFFILIATES, SUPPLIERS, LICENSORS AND AGENTS EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, NEITHER MAGZTER NOR ITS AFFILIATES, SUPPLIERS, LICENSORS OR AGENTS, MAKES ANY WARRANTY THAT (I) THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS, (II) THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE, (III) THE INFORMATION THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE SERVICE OR THAT MAY BE CONTAINED IN THE PUBLICATIONS WILL BE ACCURATE OR RELIABLE, OR (IV) THE QUALITY OF ANY PUBLICATIONS OR THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR EXPECTATIONS. YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR OBTAINING AND MAINTAINING RELIABLE INTERNET CONNECTIVITY AND YOUR DEVICE. MAGZTER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR INABILITY TO DOWNLOAD CONTENT. ANY MATERIAL DOWNLOADED OR OTHERWISE OBTAINED THROUGH THE USE OF THE SERVICE IS DONE AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION AND RISK AND YOU WILL BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM OR MOBILE DEVICE OR LOSS OF DATA THAT RESULTS FROM THE DOWNLOAD OF ANY SUCH MATERIAL. NO ADVICE OR INFORMATION, WHETHER ORAL OR WRITTEN, OBTAINED BY YOU FROM MAGZTER OR THROUGH OR FROM THE SERVICE SHALL CREATE ANY WARRANTY.

2. You will maintain and promptly update that information to keep it true, accurate, current and complete. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for restricting access to your computer, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account, including the selection and use of all content and services.

2.You will maintain and promptly update that information to keep it true, accurate, current and complete. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for restricting access to your computer, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account, including the selection and use of all content and services.

3. In no event will Magzter.com or any person or entity or third party involved in the creation, production and distribution of the content on the website and the application be liable in contract or legally for any damages, including and not limited to, direct, indirect, incidental, special, and consequential incurred to you while or on using Magzter.com. By registering on the website or downloading the application, you agree that the provisions mentioned in this section shall apply to all use of and content on the website and the application.

3. Without prior written or authorised permission from Magzter, you should not modify, copy, distribute or sell any content obtained from Magzter as everything published here is the proprietary property of Magzter or its licensors. As such unauthorised use may also violate applicable laws including copyright and trademark laws, Magzter strictly prohibits these and will terminate your access and account if any such illegal activity is proved or detected. You should also stand liable for the damages caused by these unauthorised activities. Except as permitted by the Publication's lawful owner, you acknowledge that you do not acquire any ownership rights by downloading Publications accessed through the Service. Except as explicitly required under copyright law or permitted by the features of the Service you may not modify, reverse engineer, publish, transmit, display, participate in the transfer or sale, create derivative works of, or in any way commercially exploit or provide to a third party the content of the App, the Publications, or any portion of them without the express permission of Magzter and the owner of such content. We do not grant you any licenses, express or implied, to the intellectual property of Magzter or Magzter's licensors.

5. You specifically acknowledge that Magzter.com is not liable for any kind of defamatory or offensive or illegal conduct of other users or third parties or their content and that the risk of injury from the foregoing rests entirely with you.

8. Magzter reserves all rights to monitor the content published and inputted by you for the purpose of determining whether you are compliant with these terms and conditions and other operating rules determined by Magzter. Magzter has the right to take decisions about the content and delete them at its own will.

9. Magzter is a distributor and NOT a publisher of the Publications and so Magzter has no editorial control over the content, including opinions, advice, statements, services, offers etc., that is represented in the magazines. So Magzter will not take responsibility for the accuracy or the reliability for any information or facts provided therein or that is made available through the service, by anyone other than authorised Magzter employees who are acting on their official capacities. Accordingly, we have no editorial control over the Publications. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including those made in Publications offered by the Service, are those of the respective author(s) or publisher(s) and not of Magzter. Magzter will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by your reliance on information obtained through the Service or from the Publications. The Service may contain links to other Internet sites and third-party resources and Magzter does not assume any responsibility or liability for communications or materials available at such linked sites. These links are provided for your convenience only. You are solely responsible for understanding any terms and conditions that may apply when you visit or place an order through a third-party site.

Choose your favorite titles from 40+ exciting categories

Details of the objectionable content, including its link on our platform

Download your favorite titles and read them offline, anytime and anywhere

Gift your loved ones with a Magzter Gift Card instantly and give them the freedom to read their favorite magazines and newspapers from thousands of best-selling titles.

Gift your loved ones with a Magzter Gift Card instantly and give them the freedom to read their favorite magazines from thousands of best-selling titles.

Gift your loved ones with a Magzter Gift Card instantly and give them the freedom to read their favorite magazines from {{magCount}} best-selling international titles.

Girish Ramdas is the Co-founder and CEO of Magzter, a New York based startup that has been making waves in the global digital publishing business. Magzter has crossed 80 million users since its inception in 2011 from more than 150+ countries with 1000s of magazines, newspapers and books from more than 4,500 publishers worldwide. He has more than 25 years of experience in cross-platform publishing, including print, mobile, and Web development. During this period, he has co-founded and run three successful start-up businesses. He has enabled magazine companies to go digital and helps them monetize their content across the digital world. Girish's deep industry experience in online, mobile and publishing ecosystems has made him an expert in acquisition, marketing and monetizing digital content across platforms globally.

In the event that you encounter any objectionable content on our platform, we have put in place a grievance redressal policy to address your concerns.

Magzter Inc. (“Company”, “we”, “us” or “our”) knows that you care about how your personal information is used and shared. Please read the following privacy policy (the “Policy”) to learn more about our privacy practices. By visiting any of the websites operated by the Company, and any sub-domains thereof, or using any of our mobile applications and other methods of content distribution (collectively, the “Service”), you acknowledge that you accept the practices and policies outlined in this Policy, and you hereby consent that we will collect, use, and share your information in the following ways.

Magzter Inc. is the World's largest and fastest growing self-service, cross-platform digital newsstand with over 80 million users since its inception in 2011 and thousands of magazines and newspapers across 40+ categories and 60+ languages. Headquartered in New York, Magzter has its local presence in Amsterdam, London, Mexico City, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Singapore, and will soon be expanding to other countries. Founded by global entrepreneurs, Girish Ramdas and Vijay Radhakrishnan in June 2011, Magzter enables magazine and newspaper publishers around the world to create and deliver digital editions of their titles to global consumers.

Magzter is committed to providing a safe and secure platform for our users. Please note that Magzter is merely a platform for publishers to distribute their content. We do not control or endorse the content published on our platform. We cannot be held responsible for the actions of our publishers or their content.

Magzter is not responsible for compensating any party that has suffered damages or incurred costs due to any content, or part of the content, that violates their rights. Magzter is not liable to face any legal action in civil court for any violation of rights caused by any content, or part of the content, that infringes the rights of a third party.

Magzter offers the world’s largest {{allyoucanread}} subscription service called {{gold}} which gives digital readers unlimited access to 9,000+ magazines and newspapers for a monthly subscription price. Magzter also has the largest number of stories in the world with its game-changing ezRead 2.0 feature for its apps, which enables smartphone and small-screen mobile users to enjoy magazine content the way it was meant to be enjoyed, with article text that is easy to read and is accompanied by stunning videos and high resolution photography.

Magzter offers the world’s largest “All-You-Can-Read” subscription service called Magzter GOLD which gives digital readers unlimited access to 9,000+ magazines and newspapers for a monthly subscription price. Magzter also has the largest number of stories in the world with its game-changing ezRead 2.0 feature for its apps, which enables smartphone and small-screen mobile users to enjoy magazine content the way it was meant to be enjoyed, with article text that is easy to read and is accompanied by stunning videos and high resolution photography.

Name

Note: This will only share the cover and the publication information, but not the content.

Please fill out this form if you need any help regarding publishing your content on Magzter

Prior to Magzter, he was the President of Dot Com Infoway (DCI) and Galatta Media. His duties included strategic marketing, partnership development, and monetizing content globally. DCI grew from a small team of 3 in 2000 to 300 by 2011 and was dealing with web, software and app development for clients globally.

Since we launched, Magzter has been committed to partnering with global organizations to provide the greatest possible newsstand technology & service to our customers. Whether you are looking to offer magazine subscriptions to your customer database or just want to learn more, Magzter is committed to helping your business grow. To find out more, please fill out the questionnaire below:

The DMCA allows us to restore the removed content if the party filing the original DMCA Notice does not file a court action against you within ten business days of receiving the copy of your Counter Notice.

This Policy covers Company’s treatment of personally identifiable information (“Personal Information”) and other information about you and your computer or device that Company gathers when you are accessing the Service. We may collect Personal Information from you, as explained in more detail below, and we use this Personal Information internally in connection with our Services, including to personalize, provide, and improve our products, services, content, and advertising, and to allow you to set up a user account and profile, to contact you, to fulfill your requests for certain products and services, and to analyze how you use the Services. In certain cases, we may also share some Personal Information with third parties, but only as described in point 4.

This title is included with your Magzter GOLD subscription

To analyze the quality of content and provide appropriate feedback to publishers

We have designated a Grievance Officer to address any complaints related to objectionable content.

We request that any complaint related to objectionable content be sent to the Grievance Officer through email to the above-mentioned email address. We also request that you provide the following details when making a complaint:

and the App that provides you the capability to order, subscribe to and receive the delivery of various magazines, books, news and magazine and publication related content (collectively known as 'Publications') and to have these digital versions of the Publications delivered to you

c. We also collect information associated with your use of the application in order to make personalized recommendations. If you provide your third-party account credentials to us, you understand some content and/or information in those accounts (“Third Party Account Information”) may be transmitted into your account with us if you authorize such transmissions, and that Third Party Account Information transmitted to the Service is covered by this Policy.

f. The Personal Information we collect allows us to respond to your requests, improve our products and services, customize the advertising and content you see, and communicate with you about new products.

is the World's largest and fastest growing self-service, cross-platform digital newsstand with over 88 million users since its inception in 2011 and thousands of magazines and newspapers across 40+ categories and 60+ languages. Headquartered in New York, Magzter has its local presence in Amsterdam, London, Mexico City, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Singapore, and will soon be expanding to other countries. Founded by global entrepreneurs, Girish Ramdas and Vijay Radhakrishnan in June 2011, Magzter enables magazine and newspaper publishers around the world to create and deliver digital editions of their titles to global consumers.

n. We will also use usage information in order to ensure users adhere to our Terms of Use. For example, a user’s usage information will help us confirm that a user only downloads a magazine or other content a permitted number of times or to a permitted number of devices.

which gives digital readers unlimited access to 9,000+ magazines and newspapers for a monthly subscription price. Magzter also has the largest number of stories in the world with its game-changing ezRead 2.0 feature for its apps, which enables smartphone and small-screen mobile users to enjoy magazine content the way it was meant to be enjoyed, with article text that is easy to read and is accompanied by stunning videos and high resolution photography.

{{magzter}} is the World's largest and fastest growing self-service, cross-platform digital newsstand with over 88 million users since its inception in 2011 and thousands of magazines and newspapers across 40+ categories and 60+ languages. Headquartered in New York, Magzter has its local presence in Amsterdam, London, Mexico City, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Singapore, and will soon be expanding to other countries. Founded by global entrepreneurs, Girish Ramdas and Vijay Radhakrishnan in June 2011, Magzter enables magazine and newspaper publishers around the world to create and deliver digital editions of their titles to global consumers.