Face painting in everyday life?

Hi --

I've seen a few women recently that have applied makeup to their entire face, not quite geisha style but more of a suble ashen color. Is this a new trend??

Here is an ad that I frequently see from Onet that seems to show the same thing:

http://imgur.com/jUWiL

Is this just fashion, or does it have some other significance?

Isn't this just foundation? A lot of women put foundation cream on their face and most foundation cosmetics will whiten the face. Most moisturising skin creams for women on sale in Japan contain some whitening, apparently (I read elsewhere from a non-Japanese woman complaining about the difficulty of finding skin cream that did not contain a degree of whitener).

It is just a bad make up and/or bad photography

Agree with above- bad makeup, bad photography, and add in a dash of photoshop. Most of those are ads where women want to be shown as having super pale skin- the color difference is just bad photo editing where they don't do the whole picture. Women in real life don't look like that.