"Today I see beauty everywhere I go, in every face I see, in every single soul"
About this Quote
It reads like a manifesto from someone who made a living staring - lovingly, critically, relentlessly - at faces. Kevyn Aucoin isn’t offering a bland “everyone is beautiful” bumper sticker. He’s describing a learned way of seeing: beauty as attention, as practice, as discipline. Coming from a makeup artist who transformed celebrities and everyday clients alike, “today” matters. It implies a before. Not innate optimism, but an earned shift after years spent inside an industry that profits off insecurity.
The line also smuggles in a quiet rebuke to the beauty business. If you can “see beauty everywhere,” then beauty isn’t scarce, and it isn’t owned by magazines, lighting rigs, or genetics. That’s subversive in a field built on gatekeeping - on insisting you’re one product away from being acceptable. Aucoin flips the power dynamic: the gaze becomes generous rather than extracting. He’s not just beautifying faces; he’s dignifying “every single soul,” widening the frame from surface to personhood.
Context sharpens the stakes. Aucoin rose in the 1990s supermodel-and-celebrity era, when “perfection” was marketed as both attainable and mandatory. His work often celebrated transformation, but his books and interviews consistently argued that makeup is a tool for self-authorship, not correction. The quote lands as both personal testimony and cultural critique: in a world that trains you to scan for flaws, choosing to see beauty everywhere is an act of resistance - and, for an artist, the ultimate creative stance.
The line also smuggles in a quiet rebuke to the beauty business. If you can “see beauty everywhere,” then beauty isn’t scarce, and it isn’t owned by magazines, lighting rigs, or genetics. That’s subversive in a field built on gatekeeping - on insisting you’re one product away from being acceptable. Aucoin flips the power dynamic: the gaze becomes generous rather than extracting. He’s not just beautifying faces; he’s dignifying “every single soul,” widening the frame from surface to personhood.
Context sharpens the stakes. Aucoin rose in the 1990s supermodel-and-celebrity era, when “perfection” was marketed as both attainable and mandatory. His work often celebrated transformation, but his books and interviews consistently argued that makeup is a tool for self-authorship, not correction. The quote lands as both personal testimony and cultural critique: in a world that trains you to scan for flaws, choosing to see beauty everywhere is an act of resistance - and, for an artist, the ultimate creative stance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Optimism |
|---|
More Quotes by Kevyn
Add to List











