Makeup Malapropisms

Makeup trends rarely age gracefully. The Western looks of 2005 – bronzed complexions, stick-straight hair, frosted lips – are remembered with a mix of embarrassment and nostalgia. However, as TikTok users follow the “recreating makeup from the year you were born” trend, something peculiar is happening. It seems that the true mistakes lie not in what we wore twenty years ago, but in how we try to recreate them now.

Contour in Disguise

In 2005, bronzer was not contour. Instead of sculping, it was smeared liberally across the entire face, often with patchy results. Today, when a creator on TikTok revives the “2005 bronzer look,” they don’t dare go orange. Instead, they sweep Fenty or Charlotte Tilbury bronzer beneath cheekbones and along the temples, softly blended and sun-kissed.

Technically perfect, but conceptually wrong. The spirit of 2005 was excess, not precision. This isn’t the tango tan – it’s a 2025 contour wearing bronzer’s clothes.

Micro-Engineered Sparsity:

Thin brows of 2005 were often just over-plucked arches, left sparse and fragile. In 2025, the revival is an art project. Bella Hadid–inspired “thin brows” are pencilled with hair-like strokes, laminated into shape, or microbladed with forensic detail.

It looks beautiful, but it isn’t what Christina Aguilera or Lindsay Lohan wore in 2005. The mistake here is turning a careless erasure into an act of precision.

Too Blended for Its Own Good

The iconic 2005 eye was a raccoon ring of black eyeliner, often smudged at 2 a.m. and paired with frosty shadow. Think Avril Lavigne and Gwen Stefani.

Today’s re-creations, however, rely on neutral transition shades, gel liner, and clean blending. What should look messy and rebellious ends up looking red-carpet chic; closer to Zendaya at the Met Gala than Kelly Clarkson at the 2005 VMAs. A smoky eye, yes, but without the smudge that made it matter.

Nude, But Glossy Chic

Back then, concealer lips were chalky, often literally painted with foundation. They erased colour and clashed against bronzed skin. In 2025, “concealer lips” are reborn as Hailey Bieber’s latte lip or Kylie Jenner’s beige gloss – hydrated, lined, intentional.

The use of a brown lip-liner is obviously more flattering, creating contrast between lips and skin, but this was not the point of the nude lip in 2005. Y2K was characterised by wanting to make your lips entirely invisible.

Why Malapropisms Matter

What makes these reinterpretations so fascinating is that they’re not failures of skill, but of context. By 2025, our makeup vocabulary has expanded: we have better tools, formulas, and techniques. However, when we apply them to 2005 looks, we tidy away the flaws that defined them.

In doing so, we produce malapropisms: looks that sound like 2005 but mean something entirely different.

And maybe that’s the point. Nostalgia has always been about selective remembering. The patchy orange cheeks, the flat-ironed hair, the corpse lips – they live on not as they were, but as we wish they had been. The irony is that, in another twenty years, these modern malapropisms may look as dated as the looks they pay homage to.