09/10/2025
I personally love blue eyeshadow 🤷🏽♀️
Blue eyeshadow has always walked a tightrope between tackiness and glamour, falling into one camp or the other depending on who you ask. "But for those on the margins of society who demand to be noticed, it has been a tried-and-true beauty staple," writes Popsugar contributor Devon Preston.
In the 1800s, wealthy Victorian women rejected makeup to distance themselves from "painted ladies" — a term for s*x workers. As time went on, onscreen looks became more theatrical and glamorous, culminating in one of the most iconic displays of blue shadow the world had ever seen: Elizabeth Taylor in 1963's "Cleopatra."
Nowadays, blue eyeshadow has officially gone mainstream, and its originators are finally getting their flowers. In Hulu's series "Faces of Music," Chappell Roan re-created her "Rise & Fall of a Midwest Princess" cover look and shared, "Blue eyeshadow is so stigmatized with s*x workers, drag artists, promiscuous behavior — and it's all connected to why I picked it. Everything I do is a 'f*ck you' to the box that I was so pressured to be put in and a reference to those who came before me."
📷: Getty
