Think India! Think Indian woman! With the traditional red dot on her forehead, this is one exotic beauty whose charms are legendary and the bindi is a very vital part of the makeup routine of the majority of Indian women. It is a fascinating, visually appealing and evolving part of fashion and beauty in the Indian context today.
Bindi Makeup
Madonna is one celebrity that brought the bindi recognition and helped make a style statement of it. While others of her like Boy George, sported the ‘tilak’ –an elongated version in a popular music video, the Hindu male counterparts in India are also not averse to it on religious or festive occasions.
Colors and Shapes
The little red dot has evolved into multi-colored, ornamental decorations today with the advent of skin-friendly adhesive as opposed to the vermilion powder that was used some fifty odd years ago. Not challenged dimensionally, bindi makeup has immense scope as round, oblong, square, heart-shaped, abstract and diamond shaped bindi in a rainbow of colors are doing the rounds of the market successfully. There are bindis with pearls, American diamonds, semi-precious stones and glitter adorned on them that can be made to order at special shops in many Indian cities. Most foreign visitors to the country pick up a few dozen packets of assorted bindis since they are an in expensive and beautiful token of Indian traditionalism packaged in a miniature presentation.
The bindi has long since digressed from a symbol of marital status to being worn by unmarried women and even young teenage girls today and is now an essential part of facial make-up, worn mainly as a fashion accessory.
Accessorizing with Bindi makeup: choosing a bindi
Most Indian women would pick a bindi to match the color of their dress and since the normal range of bindis are so affordable, it is within the beauty budget of most women.
- Make-up experts advise, however that a bindi should be chosen in accordance with not only the color of the dress in mind, but also the shape of the woman’s face.
- A crescent moon, round or large bindi is best suited to a thin face or one with sharply defined features. Those with a round face cut or heavy jaw line can give these shapes a miss since it will only draw more attention to the lack of angularity and play up the roundness of the face more.
- Summer time makeup is usually light-toned and a bindi must complement this while winter or evening make-up allows a woman to experiment with more elaborate bindis to dress up the face.
- Those with a small forehead can make it appear larger with an oblong bindi while a broad forehead looks good with a round bindi.
- A fair complexion is the ideal base for darker color bindis like deep maroon, red and dark pink while those with a darker skin tone can opt for lighter pink, orange or sandal wood base-color bindis.