"Beauty has a lot to do with character"
About this Quote
In Kevyn Aucoin's world, beauty was never just bone structure; it was behavior made visible. "Beauty has a lot to do with character" lands like a quiet rebuke to the camera-ready myth that attractiveness is a genetic lottery. Coming from a makeup artist who built faces for a living, the line is slyly radical: he’s arguing that the most persuasive "look" can’t be blended on. It’s earned.
The intent reads as both philosophy and professional credo. Aucoin’s genius wasn’t only technical transformation; it was extraction. He photographed and painted people into fuller versions of themselves, often refusing the era’s hardest-edged supermodel sameness. In that sense, "character" isn’t a moral scold so much as presence: the micro-confidence in posture, the willingness to be seen, the way humor or tenderness changes a face before any highlighter does. He’s naming what stylists and casting directors know but rarely admit: charisma is an aesthetic force.
The subtext also pushes against beauty culture’s cruelty. If beauty is tied to character, then it’s not a gated resource reserved for the young, thin, symmetrical, and wealthy. It becomes more portable, less policed - something that can deepen with age, survive bad lighting, outlast trends. In the late 90s/early 2000s, when celebrity image was tightening into a product and tabloid scrutiny turned bodies into public property, Aucoin’s line reads like care disguised as advice. He’s giving people a way to step out of the mirror’s tyranny: be interesting, be kind, be fearless - and your face will follow.
The intent reads as both philosophy and professional credo. Aucoin’s genius wasn’t only technical transformation; it was extraction. He photographed and painted people into fuller versions of themselves, often refusing the era’s hardest-edged supermodel sameness. In that sense, "character" isn’t a moral scold so much as presence: the micro-confidence in posture, the willingness to be seen, the way humor or tenderness changes a face before any highlighter does. He’s naming what stylists and casting directors know but rarely admit: charisma is an aesthetic force.
The subtext also pushes against beauty culture’s cruelty. If beauty is tied to character, then it’s not a gated resource reserved for the young, thin, symmetrical, and wealthy. It becomes more portable, less policed - something that can deepen with age, survive bad lighting, outlast trends. In the late 90s/early 2000s, when celebrity image was tightening into a product and tabloid scrutiny turned bodies into public property, Aucoin’s line reads like care disguised as advice. He’s giving people a way to step out of the mirror’s tyranny: be interesting, be kind, be fearless - and your face will follow.
Quote Details
| Topic | Kindness |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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