The spell is common indeed, and in some cases it really borders on witchcraft. I'm not a fan of excessive makeup, fake eyelashes and the sort, I think it's because I draw people a lot and after many years of doing that I've come to appreciate individual unadulterated looks over fake prettiness, and bone structure over surface cosmetics. Talking about RL appearance, not photos that are a rather poor guidance to determine whether someone is attractive or not. Supermodels will look like crap on crap photos and a skilled photographer and stylist can make -almost- anyone appear attractive from a certain angle under certain lighting. Even if it's a lowest common denominator overexposed duckface shot which is an entirely illusory improvement over a straight just got up in the morning kinda shot. Police mugshots are arguably a much better indicator for knowing if someone looks good for real or not :)
Make up is perfectly sensible if someone has heavy acne or eczema in their face but there's no sense in plastering the whole face to iron out every spot and wrinkle, resulting in a non memorable look. Non memorable isn't good unless someone's strategy is to get a ONS via lowest common denominator presentation (possibly aided by alcohol which is even more effective than any make up or lack thereof), of course that works with most people but it has no value for more invested and sustained mating purposes. Also, lowest common denominator means everyone competes in the same pool, because eliminating individual flaws also means giving up on individual perks.
Bone structure can be changed via surgery as is done heavily in countries like South Korea but such surgeries often reduce the harmony of the overall facial composition by making one or two elements more generic and therefor are often no improvement because it's the overall balance that counts. People often ask me which facial element I'll distort for caricature and my answer is I don't just change the nose or mouth, I change the whole configuration. Otherwise it's like plastic surgery in reverse.
It's hard to explain but when you switch to drawing mode, suddenly every person becomes beautiful in an arcane way, even those people who in normal vision mode would be considered ugly or plain. Age, gender, race and outfit become completely secondary. Drawing mode is kind of an abstract mode though and entirely non-sexual. Non-artists find this hard to understand, they think that e.g. nude figure drawing is a sexual thing when in reality the model in front of you turns into a landscape full of rhythms, shapes, form and texture.
Of course, some people are naturally more beautiful than others regardless of whether they're all made up or just got up in the morning. Truly beautiful people (on the outside) look attractive even at their worst in the morning with bad hair and all because nature isn't fair. And no one can be blamed for trying to upgrade their attractiveness via cosmetics and surgery, just as long as they're aware that this only temporarily boosts a person's lowest common denominator attractiveness and does nothing to improve a person's raw attractiveness - a quality that has more to do with attitude, nutrition and exercise than it has with styling and cosmetics.
PS: The make up transformation of that middle aged Asian guy into a young woman (see attached image) is quite hilarious, I doubt it's convincing in RL but on the photo it's quite convincing if it isn't photoshopped to hell or entirely fake or if one ignores the laryngeal prominence which is at too sharp an angle to be that of a female. This can only be dealt with via operation. A much better way to determine whether someone is a woman or a cleverly disguised Asian man is by looking at a person's hands because digit ratio doesn't change even with hormone therapy and as far as I know hand operations are not common when people undergo a sex change and it certainly isn't common for crossdressers so hands are usually a dead giveaway. Just a tip for people who didn't study anatomy and haven't done any figure drawing :)
