OPINION: When did you first learn about what it is to be beautiful?
Maybe it was your mum or your mates - well, for a lot of us, it was the movies. Cue the age-old Hollywood makeover: lose your glasses, let your hair down and put on a fancy dress.
Growing up, that ugly duckling story goes from the big screen to the little hand-held one we spend hours scrolling through each day.
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But quickly, the fairytale fades away and the narrative gets complicated. It's all about the problems you never knew you had, then the products you never knew existed to fix them.
Take a second and think about how much time you spent on your appearance today.
It takes me about 20 minutes at home, but another hour in a chair with a professional before I'm presentable enough to present.
And how much does all that cost? It all adds up; over a lifetime you'll spend about $20,000 - and that's if you're an 'average' woman.
If you're even beginning to dip your toe into the $66 billion world of Fenty Beauty, Kylie or KKW, you could be shelling out $400,000 before you pull off that last fake eyelash and head to the great cosmetics counter in the sky.
$400,000 - you could buy a house in Dunedin for that!
Kylie Jenner could buy the whole town and still have change leftover to get her lip fillers sucked back out.
She's getting rich while we're desperately trying to figure out what the point of primer is, and whether a middle part looks good on anyone outside of France.
And don't worry - if you don't have any problems right now, Kylie is part of a whole industry devoted to thinking up new ones.
Tattoo your eyebrows on! Bleach your skin! Now that we know real-life freckles mean sun damage, replace them with Galaxy Freckles!
Whether you're that high maintenance, or more low-key, if all this stuff is your choice and it makes you feel good - well that's not bad at all.
But if beauty feels more like a burden - and you're spending too much time and money on trying to look like Kylie Jenner - then maybe it's time to stop, because you never will. Sorry to break it to you.
So let's take back the control, rewind the film and get a makeover-over.
Kanoa Lloyd is a host of Three's The Project
