Chapter 57

No wonder these college students found it hard to believe Ni Xiaoyu’s ID photo could look so stunning. The Japanese and Korean makeup styles of 2006 were still in their exploratory and developmental phases, and cosmetic trends had yet to become widespread domestically; otherwise, there wouldn't have been such eye-scorching non-mainstream subcultures. Back then, many youngsters considered makeup to mean heavy paint—exaggerated eyeshadow and bold lipstick—paired with wildly teased, explosive non-mainstream hairstyles to showcase a rebellious, untamed soul. In this era, Photoshop photo-editing techniques were commonly used only by certain scenic spots, and even then, restricted to slightly boosting background color contrast or tweaking RGB values, or maxing out the facial skin's whiteness and brightness until everyone ended up with a baby-face complexion. The resulting photos usually looked thoroughly fake, making men and women, young and old, look as though they were cast from the exact same mold.