You’ve just gotten the hang of contouring, when you suddenly hear about the newest craze: strobing.

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I know, girl. I feel you.

Maybe you haven’t even yet tried contouring and are like “wtf is strobing?” (equally likely).
In case you HAVEN’T heard of strobing, here’s the deal. Everyone is legit freaking out about this new technique, as evidenced by articles and features in Beauty High for Style Caster, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and even Good Morning America. Believe me now?

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I’m gonna be frank with you. You’re absolutely right. Strobing is arbitrary and not a revolutionary concept. Basically, in contouring, you add darks and lights to your face to bring back (and enhance) the angles of your face that are typically flattened out by foundation. For a full description, check out Contouring: If your first inclination is to say “what the hell is that?” then READ ON.

Ok, cool?

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Strobing is LITERALLY just the highlighter part of contouring (and, yes, that’s the CORRECT use of the word literally).

So, instead of adding a darker powder/cream to make the fattier (voluptuous?) parts of your face so that they recede in space and then adding a lighter powder/cream to make angles of your face look more prominent (which all are part of contouring), strobing ONLY involves the highlighter part. Strobing allows you to help bring out the angles of your face (aka cheekbones, bridge of the nose etc.) without having to go through all the time and effort of fully contouring your face.

That’s it. The end. Fin. No mas.

People need to calm the heck down. Strobing is merely a simpler, more easy way to contour that takes less time and uses less product. So it’s a good thing, really. Don’t be intimidated by all of these makeup gurus and brands using all of this clever marketing language to make you think you need to go out and spend money on products and learn a new method of doing your makeup.

Girl… you good.

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