For me, myself and interc*urse
Make-up isn’t just for ourselves. Let’s face it.
I hold my hands up (no officer needed). I freely admit that my own use of make-up, limited to foundation and concealer, is not in any way ‘just for me’. It temporarily erases old burns and zit-borne scars, otherwise confronted by glares, gasps and unkind remarks from strangers. Simply put, I smear on the stuff to look better in front of other people. To make them think my skin, and perhaps the whole of me, is in fine working order, and prevent gazing at me from being an unpleasant experience for them.
Yes, many boys and men wore it in the past, and a few usually surreptitiously do. It has the power to transform an unremarkable face into a versatile canvas. It also supposedly tricks men into finding ‘uggos’ attractive. But the real masquerade here is not even physical; the pretence that women never wear make-up to appeal to men is. The 5-year-old me believed lipstick was just a crayon in sleeker packaging. My mother’s stash of goodies, accumulated from a brief stint at Elizabeth Arden, was a riot of pigments more shimmery and exciting to redecorate our home with than kid-standard pencils and waxen, multi-coloured sticks. I was prepped back then for the outside world’s gaze as every other member of society is expected to. Only now it is with all that colour and glossiness above my neck than on the nearest available wall.
So when did this bare-faced defiance inspire comments about me being uglier and unkempt? No reliable date exists at present but I wasn’t getting them before I sprouted breasts. I naively thought youth made me look healthy enough, no tinted reinforcement needed. The feminism of my adolescence had coddled me from body image pressures. I had come to reckon with the face I was born with. If I could accept being merely fuckable rather than ‘stunning’ who was anyone to tell me otherwise? This facial revolt has unfortunately never been seen as just that, going by the teeth-gnashing it has set off amongst peers, so-called friends and even colleagues.
I am a complete scruff bag, yet I can’t believe that being non-presentable alone is behind the disapproval. After all, not everyone is accused of self-neglect, should their skin and the outside world not be divided by a slick of MAC’s finest. A touch of concealer at work may have hidden my ’knackered-looking’ (according to my former manager) dark circles. A healthy glow, whether natural or otherwise, says ’my body’s efficient, I can graft’. But strip away these more convenient excuses and even the most convincing among them can’t conceal makeup’s least admitted-to attribute.
It is possible for a gal to have some on without being tyrannized by the patriarchy. But her ultimate motivation goes well beyond just radiating wellness or good grooming. Were it just about neatness would it not be incorporated into dress codes for the army? Or schools ? The memory of my childhood self playing with make-up is shared by many girls, albeit with the stuff on their faces and not domestic murals. It is to them a ritual no more coded with sexual meaning than picking their feet. But… attracting (male) paedophiles and older boys is the main fear raised by them wearing it. An act that somehow magically loses erotic appeal on hitting puberty?
Blokes telling us that we should doll up on their behalf is thankfully long gone. 70 years ago the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, declared red lipstick to be a boost to the morale of men and the entire nation. Presenting femininity was held so highly that hairdressers were recruited to war duties far less often than other skilled tradespeople. Ruby lips have since been stripped of their status as national salve. But today’s use of cosmetics can’t disentangle itself from a longstanding feminine trope — (sexual) appeasement.
References to their power lean frequently toward all things lusty. ‘Sultry / smouldering smoky eyes’, ‘sexy red lips’, ‘girly blush’ — the adjectives they are paired with don’t escape being tarted up. The typically made-up female face broadcasts ‘feminine’ alongside ‘in rude health’. The eyes and lips are accentuated, mimicking the greater levels of pigment these areas carry on female faces. Techniques like contouring which sculpt the face also slim the nose, add roundness in the cheeks and to its overall shape. Blusher recreates the redness of arousal but also of embarrassment, a humbling and passive emotional state. Whether improvement or eyesore, slathering it on is enough to earn a rebate from the beauty tax. In many workplaces the lady who pays in bronzer is thought to have good time-management and the courtesy to make looking at her a more pleasant experience.
I wish putting on the warpaint for other people didn’t have the public ‘function’ my own F-&-C habit does. That it instead is a treat or self-care, the way it is sold by make-up artists and some defenders of post-feminist, reproductive freedom. Yet its biggest advantages generally target outside approval. Men’s opinions on it are regularly consulted and guessed at. A major element of the hatred we feel towards our own bodies is from anticipating other people rejecting them. I am not a champion of my face, naked or otherwise. But the thought of anyone outside close family seeing it un-prettified gnaws in a way that me alone seeing it cannot. Cosmetics transform how we feel about ourselves through the likeness they allow us to send into the world. One of our own choosing or plenty different ones, instead of the plain old frontage that is at biology’s mercy.
‘Lookism’ has only recently begun to wreak the same type of psychological havoc on men. But conspicuously wearing make-up is itself the most obvious departure in how each sex is expected to greet fellow humans and communicate sexuality. Its glaring absence from the body image discourse is a niggling hurdle to the overthrow of ‘oppressive’ beauty standards. This politically incorrect motive looms like an elephant in the powder room, ignored, rejected but potent nonetheless. One that I sincerely hope to see trampled.
