You can has a pretty either way, IMO

September 7, 2016 11:10 AM

Why You Should Stop Telling People Not To Wear Makeup (slMedium)
posted by Kitteh (188 comments total)

I didn't realize this was such a thing until I started seeing a lot of comments about it from women. I think I once commented on a woman's makeup in terms of my own male tastes once, back when I was in my late teens, and always felt like an idiot for having presumed it was my business.

People do not exist to please me. Their makeup is their business. I would be furious if anybody felt the need to comment on my choice of eyewear or flat caps or whatever.

But, of course, that rarely happens, because how men present themselves is not presumed to be for the pleasure and commentary of others, unlike women.
posted by maxsparber at 11:17 AM on September 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

Hmm. Friends have provided me constant feedback on my hair and clothing choices throughout my life. I wouldn't walk up to someone at random and tell them something looked better or worse, but saying what you believe about someone's fashion choices is part of being friends.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:31 AM on September 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

To be fair, there was an earlier wave of feminism that consciously rejected makeup as being a subtly self-undermining ritual for the benefit of men (according to the logic that women only wore makeup to please men and emphasize that femininity should be concerned with looking good rather than accomplishing things), so I think it's fair to say the culture is evolving on what the correct way to view makeup is. That said, why make it your business anyway? Agreed it's not really something that should be policed either way by men.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:33 AM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

My Warped Tour experience this summer involved working and living in close quarters with several makeup wearing individuals, my education-in-makeup-by-osmosis experience culminating in a trip to Sephora with a friend and tourmate as she went to replace her makeup after her bag got stolen a few days before. Looking at all the neat colors and fun products with her, it really dawned on me how unfortunate it was that the way masculinity operates in our culture had kept me, a grown adult, from understanding a powerful mode of expression that is pervasive in our culture on even a basic 101 level.

Waterproof makeup is a very real thing and a lot of us have perfected a full face of it.

My experience on Warped Tour (spending days in the sweaty sun) confirms this.
posted by Gymnopedist at 11:34 AM on September 7, 2016 [14 favorites]

OMG we're so close. One day this will happen.
posted by asockpuppet at 11:39 AM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm going to make an anti-makeup argument that the writer doesn't address: The fashion makeup industry, like all industries, exists for the purpose of extracting profit. It creates demand for its product by preying on insecurity and convincing women that they are bad if they don't use its product. I pass no judgment on anyone who wishes to wear makeup, but I can't endorse this morally evil industry, so I suggest either manufacturing your own pigments at home or simply shoplifting.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:39 AM on September 7, 2016 [29 favorites]

Inside Amy Schumer's "Girl, You Don't Need Makeup" realizes there are good reasons people wear makeup.
posted by Margalo Epps at 11:40 AM on September 7, 2016 [11 favorites]

It creates demand for its product by preying on insecurity and convincing women that they are bad if they don't use its product.

I...don't feel that way when I buy makeup. Sry.
posted by asockpuppet at 11:40 AM on September 7, 2016 [56 favorites]

People do not exist to please me.

When I imagine our utopian future pledge of allegience, this is definitely in the first five lines.
posted by selfnoise at 11:43 AM on September 7, 2016 [27 favorites]

The makeup scene is one of conspicuous consumption. However, so are a lot of hobbyist scenes, and the makeup scene shouldn't be singled out as particularly exploitative just because its main demographic is women.
posted by theraflu at 11:43 AM on September 7, 2016 [50 favorites]

When an FPP comes out about those scenes, I promise to condemn them too.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:45 AM on September 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

Why You Should Stop Telling People Not To Wear Makeup

Heavens, it would never occur to me.

(Not even in a "Darling, you're an Autumn. Why are you wearing Summer colors-way.")
posted by octobersurprise at 11:48 AM on September 7, 2016

Here's a few threads about industries that exist to extract profit. 1. 2. 3. Admittedly, two are about fans of films, but I only got partway down our front page before I felt like I had made my point.
posted by maxsparber at 11:50 AM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

I was hoping for more from TFA: the gender neutrality started strong but did not last very long. Men's cosmetic use has an interesting in/out of fashion quality and dang, ain't nobody told don't wear makeup like a straight cis male. Stop telling those people what to do too.

Frankly the 21st century has been plain boring so far: I thought we'd be all be gearing it like Merrill Garbus by now.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 11:51 AM on September 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

Thanks for this. I think I've heard every permutation of these complaints and maybe more; make up makes women look whorey or clownish, "natural looks better", how bad would you have to feel about yourself to wear it every day, and bonus, its anti-feminist and you're betraying the sisterhood/perpetuating patriarchy. When make up is brought up on mefi it's usually a race for people to compete with who wears the least like that makes them morally superior.

I think if you're artistically bent, make up is a fantastic medium to work with. When I started playing with it as a teenager in my bedroom I was stunned with how dramatically it could change your appearance, and by how many different combinations could achieve radically different results. You can literally change how the shape of your face looks! The size and shape of your lips, how big your eyes are, erase scars and pimples etc. You can use it a visual reference to the past, your winged eyeliner can be 60s, or your lipstick shade 80s. You can vary it according to subculture - gothic or preppy etc. I like the way this feeds into the question of identity, transformation, authenticity and artifice.

I'm older now and the way I wear make up has changed, if only because now I'm starting to deal with fine lines. But I still consider it a creative/artistic outlet a lot like my clothes. I enjoy beautiful, or colourful, or interesting ways of dressing and presenting the body. I love the manipulation of appearance that makes us reassess our judgements of a person (part of why I love actors is their physical transformations that go with different personas and thinking about how their physicality affects my perception of them). I'll never be a woman who dresses or does make up to be pretty-pretty (though I understand these pressures and can't blame any woman who does), but maybe I can be more of an Iris Apfel.
posted by everydayanewday at 11:53 AM on September 7, 2016 [45 favorites]

I pass no judgment on anyone who wishes to wear makeup, but I can't endorse this morally evil industry, so I suggest either manufacturing your own pigments at home or simply shoplifting.

Sorry that I don't meet your high standards, but I've got better things to do with my time.
posted by peacheater at 11:54 AM on September 7, 2016 [59 favorites]

It creates demand for its product by preying on insecurity and convincing women that they are bad if they don't use its product.

I get around this mostly by never reading "women's magazines", where 99% of that happens.

No one could ever tell when I was wearing makeup or not, unless I put it on too heavily, so I just gave up on it. As a hobby, I find it as mystifying as people who make fishing lures for fun, or collect stamps. But also as harmless.

I occasionally wear some eye makeup for fun (that's the "for me" part, it feels like a Going Out ritual) but I find I don't miss base+powder+blush at all, and have ceased to mourn the fact that I was not born with poreless, doll-smooth skin that flushes delicately only at the cheekbones.

I would like to see how men would take to wearing it, though. Could be interesting.
posted by emjaybee at 11:55 AM on September 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

I don't feel that way when I buy makeup. Sry.

Yeah, but if you ever cared about a woman who did feel this way, it might be understandable for a guy to express the opinion without its intent being to police or control anything, but to be a supportive ally to their friends who do have this kind of relationship to makeup. Women who feel that way (or did, at various times in their lives) definitely do exist. I've known some and they told me so.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:55 AM on September 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

I was a teenager in the 80s (a time of serious makeup wearing) I definitely wore makeup out of a sense of insecurity (omg can't leave house without it) BUT I also LOOOOOOVED putting it on, playing with it etc.,

when we had dance recitals we were allowed to load it on and it was sooooo fun!!!

I don't really wear makeup much these days but I definitely own a bunch, for dress up, when I feel like it. and I cannot walk through a drug store without passing the makeup isle for a look. so many pretty colors!! glitter!!! it's like how I felt as a small child opening the new box of 64 Crayola. a beautiful array of opportunity.

makeup can be performative and an intrinsic component of playing with identity. I have a bunch of friends who cosplay and the amount of work and creativity they put into their outfits is incredible. they absolutely create themselves as works of art!

and ultimately: let's stop policing women re their looks. it's your face: do what you want with it!
posted by supermedusa at 11:56 AM on September 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'll give you a "makeup fuck yeah!," sockie. Some mornings, when I don't feel like I have my head on straight (not enough sleep or caffeine, allergy season...), putting on some lipstick makes me feel much, much better. Makeup can be a form of self-care that grounds people. Like getting a massage or meditating for a couple minutes each morning.

As someone with perpetually shaky hands, I've gotta say, I'm in awe of elaborate looks. That's an art, my friends.
posted by giraffe at 11:57 AM on September 7, 2016 [11 favorites]

Metafilter: I suggest either manufacturing your own pigments at home or simply shoplifting.
posted by fixedgear at 11:58 AM on September 7, 2016 [27 favorites]

saying what you believe about someone's fashion choices is part of being friends

And this article, and the concept, really isn't about friends. Part of the intimacy of friendship is being able to talk about things that wouldn't be appropriate from a stranger or acquaintance, but even friends can say terribly hurtful things to each other on purpose or accidentally, and people can cross lines, so it is good to be sure you know how welcome your comments are before you make them to a friend.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:02 PM on September 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'm a woman. I HATE how made up faces look on other women, but I don't care enough to say anything about it in public.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:03 PM on September 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

"My Mom told me recently, 'Honey, when you don't wear makeup, you look mentally ill.' So now when I go home I'm certain to wear thick green eye shadow and a line of lipstick around my lips. 'Baby look pretty now, Mommy?' " (Maria Bamford)
posted by Auden at 12:05 PM on September 7, 2016 [42 favorites]

I HATE how made up faces look on other women, but I don't care enough to say anything about it in public.

Also, it would be none of your business and if you did say something, you'd be a jerk.
posted by Kitteh at 12:08 PM on September 7, 2016 [67 favorites]

Sure the makeup industry, like all industries, exists for making a profit. However, there are brands who have other interests, like Elixery which has a not-money-first habit of routinely pairing with artists or activists or others to make colors associated with the thing they want to fund or promote, or Besame, which has a not-money-first goal of exploring and recreating historic cosmetics. I'm certain that there are cosmetic companies associated with other non-money-grubbing ends (like, maybe, scar coverage, or changing how the industry views packaging) because businesses do come in a variety of types.

Oh and all the indie nail polishes which are largely small business women, exploring a creative outlet

I mean, business is gonna business, but not every cosmetic company out there exists to make us all hate ourselves in the interests of pocketing huge wads of cash, moistened with the despair of humanity. And are we really still having to argue about the real meaning behind what women do with their bodies?
posted by crush-onastick at 12:08 PM on September 7, 2016 [22 favorites]

Honestly, this article gives me the same vibes as stuff about "thin-shaming," in that it seems to be taking place in a complete historical vacuum in which all kinds of criticism are equivalent and comparable. Is the author not acquainted with industries where women are essentially required to wear makeup and judged harshly if they don't? How many women with makeup-less "bad skin" do you see on magazine covers? These factors play significantly into some women's conflicted feelings about makeup.

I mean, she zips right past this:

It’s actually been proven that women who wear makeup in the workplace and in public are treated better than women who don’t because they look like they “take care of themselves.” Is that fair? Of course not, but our society puts a reverence on makeup whether we realize it or not.

Of course dudes shouldn't tell women what to do or how to look. Of course women shouldn't be shamed for using makeup. But the expectation to wear makeup has received deserved feminist criticism, and I think she's skating right past all the complexity of that issue here.
posted by thetortoise at 12:15 PM on September 7, 2016 [90 favorites]

And here I was just ginning up an FPP on Alicia Keys. Heh.

And honestly, most people already know they look amazing without makeup: they just choose to wear makeup because they like it, it's fun, they're good at it, it highlights their favorite features or it makes them feel good. Simple.

They like it, it's fun, they're good at it! Simple! OK, moving on. Ten sentences later:

It's actually been proven that women who wear makeup in the workplace and in public are treated better than women who don’t because they look like they "take care of themselves." Is that fair? Of course not, but our society puts a reverence on makeup whether we realize it or not.

With all due respect, the juxtaposition of these points is a great example of my least favorite thing about individualist feminism. How can we insist that people women "just choose to wear makeup because they like it" while simultaneously acknowledging that women who use it are statistically treated better in public and the workplace? It's an illusion of free will, like if I said the only reason I put on pants before I go to work every day is because I really, really love to wear pants; nothing to do with the fact that walking out the door pantsless leaves one vulnerable to an arrest for public indecency.

I see modern feminism as toothless and spineless for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it casts all individual choices as equally feminist and thus ultimately unthreatening to the status quo as a whole. It doesn't offer any room for a critical examination of how we wound up here -- say, in a patriarchal culture that systematically destroys the self-worth of girl children and tells them they would do well to starve themselves and paint their faces in hopes of regaining it -- in the first place. And I get it, I get why those examinations are so painful; it feels like the pit of your soul is being excavated and interrogated, but that doesn't mean we can afford to write it off wholesale. Because these days, the modern "choice" to wear makeup must first be completely stripped from its historical and sociological context before it can be discussed at all, which undermines any hope of critical analysis regarding its use as a tool of gendered oppression or its service as a marker to identify obedience in women and deviance in men.

So here's the message I get from missives like this: Wear makeup or not, who cares! No one cares, because no individual choice has any effect on anyone outside of ourselves! We can't pause to examine why so many women feel inadequate or ugly without makeup because it's not feminist to look at the foundation of any woman's decision-making process under any circumstances. Replicating harmful power structures in order to benefit you and yours is not a thing, makeup is just a fun thing to wear. Heteronormativity is not a thing, women just want to look pretty. Inculcating pre-verbal female children into the doctrine of traditional femininity is not a thing, and even if it was a thing, it couldn't be that harmful, because girls and women are still choosing it, and as long as we appear to be freely choosing something, it's A-OK, and there's definitely nothing innately poisonous about the conditions under which those pseudo-choices had to be made.

Somehow I feel like the embrace of the ~$10 billion makeup industry isn't exactly in danger of being erased or negated by those of us who have a political disagreement with the premise...
posted by amnesia and magnets at 12:17 PM on September 7, 2016 [161 favorites]

I suggest either manufacturing your own pigments at home or simply shoplifting.

Harper Pitt: I have emotional problems. I took too many pills. Why are you wearing makeup?
Prior Walter: I was in the process of applying the face, trying to make myself feel better. I swiped the new fall colours at the Clinique counter at Macy's.
Harper Pitt: You stole these?
Prior Walter: I was out of cash. It was an emotional emergency.

posted by octobersurprise at 12:20 PM on September 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

I can go either way on wearing makeup - I wear it 2-3 times a week on average. I will spend a couple hours a week on my nails but spending time on face makeup just annoys me.

However, I want to say: MEN IN EYELINER FOREVER. Loved that when I was 10 years old and it still makes 43 year old me tingly.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 12:21 PM on September 7, 2016 [17 favorites]

The article I'd really like to see: "Why You Should Stop Telling Other People What To Do, PERIOD."

One of the things I have really grown to hate about the Web is the preponderance of content aimed at telling people what they should or shouldn't be doing. Nobody knows what drives another person, and nobody knows what somebody's experienced.

Tough to sell ads on "Mind Your Own Business," though.
posted by chinese_fashion at 12:28 PM on September 7, 2016 [13 favorites]

Hmm. Friends have provided me constant feedback on my hair and clothing choices throughout my life. I wouldn't walk up to someone at random and tell them something looked better or worse, but saying what you believe about someone's fashion choices is part of being friends.

Cool. I didn't get the impression from reading the article that it was talking about feedback from friends, though. Unless, like, you're into telling your friends that you think they only wear makeup because they hate themselves and want the attention of a man. Then it was definitely talking about the kind of feedback you're referring to.
posted by palomar at 12:33 PM on September 7, 2016

The article I'd really like to see: "Why You Should Stop Telling Other People What To Do, PERIOD."


Amen, brother.
posted by humboldt32 at 12:34 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've linked this comic before on MeFi, and I'll link it till the day I die. (tag yourself i'm "you look weird") There's a difference between "you shouldn't wear makeup because the beauty industry preys on women's self-esteem" and "you shouldn't wear makeup because natural beauty is so much prettier!" There's two problems with the latter: one, it's still emphasizing beauty, specifically someone else's beauty standards; two, most people see well-applied and well-blended makeup as "no makeup."
posted by Metroid Baby at 12:35 PM on September 7, 2016 [20 favorites]

I'm pretty sure I hear more complaining about being told whether/how to wear makeup than I see comments actually critiquing a woman's choices wrt to makeup. I mean, obviously it happens. Male gaze, patriarchy, internalized misogyny etc. But there are so many of these articles that it's hard not to get the impression that women who choose to wear makeup are insecure BOTH about how they look without it AND their choice to wear it.

The biggest problem that I have with makeup is that because it's so normalized for women, choosing not to wear it (especially in a professional setting) has become a political act. I would love to live in a world where I was the "normal" one, and the people who choose to augment their faces are seen the same way as people who choose to dye their hair in unnatural (for them) colors. Not that I have a problem with people rocking purple hair (if they like it, it's awesome!), but I don't feel pressure to dye my hair purple for a big meeting with a client so that I can look "right."

I see this a being on the same spectrum as non-femme women dealing with being in wedding parties/special occasions. It sucks that dresses are considered the norm for, say, bridesmaids, so if you don't like dresses you need to "suck it up" or wear something you like but stand out. But, it's also not fair to say Wedding dresses suck! Stop wearing them!

So yeah, ladies who wear make-up on the regular, more power to you. But please don't pretend you're getting the short end of the stick here.
posted by sparklemotion at 12:36 PM on September 7, 2016 [30 favorites]

I wish people would stop attacking women's choices, whether they are wearing makeup or not. Stop telling other people what to do or not do with their own faces.
posted by all about eevee at 12:38 PM on September 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

So, to be clear: I agree with TFA, and I understand that it's none of my business whether or how someone chooses to use makeup.

However, I think it's important to realize that this:

... we do not only wear makeup to impress others. ... [people] choose to wear makeup because they like it

...is not necessarily obvious to folks (meaning dudes, mostly) who have never been initiated into makeup culture.

I only realized this a couple of years ago, actually. That may sound absurd to folks who are into makeup – but, I mean, no one had ever told me before. I had never considered that there would be any reason to put oneself through the trouble and expense of makeup other than reluctant adherence to patriarchal norms. I didn't know that people did it for the sake of aesthetic enjoyment, or as a form of self-expression. I thought it was something that people only did because Society™ told them they had to – like starving oneself in order to be model-thin.

Or, as saulgoodman put it:

there was an earlier wave of feminism that consciously rejected makeup as being a subtly self-undermining ritual for the benefit of men (according to the logic that women only wore makeup to please men and emphasize that femininity should be concerned with looking good rather than accomplishing things)

That was the feminism that I had inherited: that makeup was a bullshit patriarchal yoke imposed upon women, just another way of telling women that their natural bodies were hideous and unacceptable without artificial intervention.

So, if my past self encouraged people not to wear makeup: I wasn't trying to tell anyone what to do. I was just saying: hey, you don't have to do this, if you don't want to. It had just never occurred to me that anyone might truly want to.

Again: I understand this now, and so I STFU about makeup. (I mean, I don't really understand it, but I understand that it is true, and that therefore I should STFU.) I'm just sayin': maybe give people a little benefit of the doubt, instead of assuming that they're trying to tell people what to do. I guarantee that at least some of the people who say things like "you look better without makeup!" would be as surprised as I was to learn that, hey, some people enjoy wearing makeup for its own sake.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 12:39 PM on September 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

One of the most wonderful things about getting older is that I care so much less about what other people think. Oh, you don't like it when you see a woman with a made-up face? Cool, then don't fucking look at me when I'm wearing winged eyeliner and a super goth matte lip color, and we can both die happy. Gracious me, I'm wearing a garment mentioned on a list of things no woman over 30 should wear? Who died and made some Elite Daily freelancer the arbiter of what I put on my body? Fuck ALL that shit. I live for ME. I put on eyebrows this morning for me, so that when I see myself in reflective surfaces today I'll smile and think "yeah girl, work that drag face", because that's what I need to get through today. And my ass works from home. I never even saw another human being yesterday but I still put on a little makeup, solely because I wanted to. I felt like indulging in self-care by taking the time to make myself look how I wanted to look, for no one but myself.

I'm not insecure for wearing makeup, nor am I insecure for defending myself for wearing it. Mostly I'm just fucking sick to death of the attitude that I must only ever indulge in cosmetics because of some deep fundamental flaw that I'm trying to hide. Take that nonsense off me, it belongs to you and I don't want it.
posted by palomar at 12:45 PM on September 7, 2016 [31 favorites]

First paragraph of the article:
"honestly, most people already know they look amazing without makeup"

Second paragraph:
"Most of us have acne, blemishes, dark under eyes, uneven skin tone, light eyelashes, and undefined cheekbones. Some of us would rather not go out in public with a natural face."

Hmm.

I am of course willing to be educated on this subject, and humbly apologize for my ignorance.

It seems to me that men do not wear makeup. I'm a man who has been on the planet for half a century, and I have neither known nor even heard of a single man who wore makeup, people making television appearances excepted. I inhabit lower-to-middle class environs in the Great Northeast, and when I go out to the supermarket or for pizza or to rob banks or whatever I may do, I don't see men wearing makeup. Perhaps they're all such skilled practitioners that I'm deceived, but this idea is frankly a hard sell.

So--by all means, people should manage their appearances in whatever way makes them happy. But when I read the bit about acne and blemishes and so on, I can't help but wonder why it is that all male faces are perfectly acceptable without makeup, but female faces are not. I, myself, have "acne, blemishes, dark under eyes, uneven skin tone, light eyelashes, and undefined cheekbones," not to mention bad teeth and a lousy personality; and I "would rather not go out in public with a natural face," but that being what I've got, I see no alternative. The cultural requirement is that I NOT wear makeup; in most of the places I have had to appear for most of my life, showing up in makeup would have been the quickest way for me to get my ass kicked by perfect strangers.

Given that only women are asked to regard their un-made-up appearances as unacceptable for public viewing, I find it EXTREMELY difficult not to regard the whole thing as an oppressive idea perpetrated by... I don't know who, The Patriarchy?, or whatever characterization you prefer for the forces that make these kinds of rules. You may want to say 'Just stop telling other people what to do,' but... is the idea that women need to wear makeup not a culturally-enforced double standard that is already telling people what to do?

Again, humblest apologies for my ignorance.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 12:45 PM on September 7, 2016 [23 favorites]

Reading through this thread, it looks like the first four comments are from men (apologies if I'm misgendering anyone); although the comments are supportive and I don't object to the content, I kind of feel like men coming in to share their opinions on this issue, on an article written by a woman primarily, as I read it, addressing other women, sets the tone for the conversation. It also makes it feel like conversations among women about issues affecting women are just more chances for men to make themselves heard, even if what they're saying is 100% supportive of women making their own choices.

I am really, REALLY not saying people can't participate in threads like this, so please don't read it that way! And please don't get mad at me for making this observation! I'm really not trying to attack anyone, I just want to point out that (for me! Maybe not for other people!) these conversations already feel pretty fraught because there is so much in terms of context and pressure both to and not to wear makeup, and when they become an opportunity for men to demonstrate how feminist they are it takes away some space to talk about this stuff.

Really, genuinely not trying to be difficult or make anyone feel badly, I just want to be aware of whether voices that are more tangentially affected by this issue might be blocking out the voices of some people who this affects personally.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:48 PM on September 7, 2016 [22 favorites]

The article makes the point that it is a personal choice, but that is seldom the case.
Most girls are painted by their mother before they are old enough to walk never mind have an opinion.
By the time they ARE old enough the habit is so ingrained that there is no chance of them making up their own mind.
posted by Burn_IT at 12:49 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

One of the things I have really grown to hate about the Web is the preponderance of content aimed at telling people what they should or shouldn't be doing.

I very seriously believe this is aggravating lots of identity crises in people with emotional and psychological vulnerabilities and contributing to an ongoing, destructive breakdown/decohesion in our society. It's a constant assault on everybody's sense of identity, accidental gaslighting on a massive scale. A lot of the articles are well intended, but psychologically unsophisticated and definitely insensitive to individual differences in circumstances and personal emotional needs.
posted by saulgoodman at 12:50 PM on September 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

I wear makeup. I am almost always striving for a "natural" look. I do not LOVE makeup. Just like other "choose your choice" feminism topics, I may be performing a socially accepted norm but I don't feel like it was entirely my enthusiastic choice. I won't pretend that it is. I have a daughter who watches me like a hawk and she's fascinated by the makeup I put on and she's also really bothered by it. And her questions and bothering make me uncomfortable. Because it absolutely is a patriarchal social norm. Though in some ways, it has clearly transcended that. I don't have the best answers for my daughter. I sometimes get a little snappish about it because while the Dad would probably look a little more well-rested and youthful with some "natural" makeup, he just never does. I mean, where are his naturally rosy cheeks and full lashes? Couldn't his skin tone use a little even-ing?

I tell my daughter that I wear it to look nice. That not everyone wears it. Some people, mostly women, wear a lot of it. I tell her it's very expensive so don't play with mine and that she can decide how, if or when she wants to wear some when she gets older. And then she wanders off and I wonder, WTF?
posted by amanda at 12:50 PM on September 7, 2016 [22 favorites]

Most girls are painted by their mother before they are old enough to walk never mind have an opinion.

lolwut
posted by asockpuppet at 12:51 PM on September 7, 2016 [64 favorites]

I have neither known nor even heard of a single man who wore makeup

There was one pictured in the article linked. Also, you've heard of Boy George, right? He wears makeup.

Googling "men who wear makeup" brought up over 13 million results, with links on the first page bearing titles like "I'm A Man and I Wear Makeup".

Not a new phenomenon, just one that you haven't noticed.
posted by palomar at 12:51 PM on September 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

Sonnet 127

For since each hand hath put on nature’s power,
Fairing the foul with art’s false borrow’d face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profan’d, if not lives in disgrace.
posted by adept256 at 12:52 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I absolutely agree with the author's point -- let's put a firm kibosh on what appears to be a god-given freedom to say to women, "Hey, you'd look/sound/be better if you only did ______." At the same time, I really wish that this wasn't one of her arguments:

Women do not wear makeup to impress men. Some men cannot tell the difference between many products and techniques, so why bother? Women mostly wear makeup to impress other women.

Because that's not okay. Women shouldn't have to impress men, and they also shouldn't have to feel pressure to display the exactly correct signifiers that say to other women, "I'm one of you. I'm worthy." It's all part of the same problem. Women's criticism of other women is no less bad than men's criticism of women. It may be born of a different perspective, but it's every bit as harmful, and it shares responsibility for perpetuating this notion that women have to look or act a certain way in order to be good women.

It's just Mean Girls shit, and we ought to grow out of it by the time we reach adulthood.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:56 PM on September 7, 2016 [17 favorites]

on an article written by a woman primarily, as I read it, addressing other women

Was it? I felt like it was primarily addressing men (e.g., me). That's why I felt like it was reasonable for me to tender a response.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 12:56 PM on September 7, 2016

>Not a new phenomenon, just one that you haven't noticed.

Well, okay. I live in Pittsburgh. Maybe someday if you're in this part of the world you can take me around and show me the guys who are wearing makeup. I'll give you a buck for every guy who is if you give me a buck for every guy who isn't.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 12:56 PM on September 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

"To call X a feminist issue did not then mean that there was a good way to do X and a bad way, and that we were trying to replace X with the good way. X was a feminist issue because it was the locus of various social pressures (which it made visible) and those social pressures were what feminism was all about. Makeup, for example, is a feminist issue not because using makeup is anti-feminist and scrubbing your face is feminist but because makeup is compulsory," as Joanna Russ writes in "News from the Front." And this is what's a bit frustrating; I feel like to mostly choose not to wear makeup is to mark oneself as a relic from the Bad Old Days Of Feminism where lipstick was Ungoodthink; I feel like, for those of us who genuinely don't like pressure to look pretty or perform a certain standard of femininity, that compulsory thing still hasn't gone away, we've just added to it the pressure to phrase it in terms of self-empowerment.

And at the same time, I genuinely enjoy it when people get into makeup as a thing that they enjoy and that makes them feel good about themselves, I like seeing my friends get excited about their cool new eyeshadows, and I'm not secretly side-eyeing them for their complicity with The Patriarchy. I recognize that the way I feel about makeup is just the way I feel about makeup, not the way that every woman feels about makeup.

So I want to attack the compulsoriness of makeup without attacking people who wear makeup, without making it seem like not wearing makeup is the Cool Liberated Choice and wearing makeup is the Patriarchy choice. (I'm not Cool and Liberated; I'm mostly just lazy.) And it's genuinely complicated. But I don't think it's helpful to pretend that we live in the world where it's a totally neutral thing that women can opt out of without getting judged.
posted by Jeanne at 12:57 PM on September 7, 2016 [37 favorites]

I wear makeup. I am almost always striving for a "natural" look.That is , in my opinion the funniest comment you can hear about make up.
Even the marketing people make themselves sound ridiculous by using the terms "natural look" and "you won't know your wearing it"
posted by Burn_IT at 12:59 PM on September 7, 2016

The one thing that worries me a little bit about make-up as it's currently used is the creation of a cultural sense that women and men "normally" look really different. I was looking at the photos of Alicia Keys, who went to some big awards show nominally without make-up [but probably with concealer/foundation/powder] and it did strike me how much more "like a man's" her face looked - by which I just mean how much more "without mascara, eyelash extensions, lip color, etc" her face looked, because that's how men's faces look. It's not that we all consciously believe that women's lips are really magenta and that the skin over women's orbital bones has a fine shimmer built in; it's more a matter of repetition of what is normal.

I feel like in mass media, there's this visual dialogue about women versus men - women have very large eyes, very long lashes, ultra-smooth skin and very red/pink mouths, while men have smaller eyes, shorter lashes, skin with more texture and less red/pink mouths. Women's faces are very high contrast, men's are lower contrast. It's particularly noticeable to me right now because make-up for really big eyes is so fashionable and that tends to be such a contrast with average-sized eyes. (Obviously men on television etc do wear make-up, but it still preserves the big eyes/average eyes, high-contrast/low-contrast distinction.)

That does seem a little weird to me, along with the persistence of all the things that we're supposed to do to make it seem like men and women are very, very physically different - women's shoes mostly make your feet look small, while men's shoes tend to elongate and widen the feet; women's clothes narrow the shoulders and men's broaden; women's clothes cling much more than men's, etc.

This is one of those things where I'm not sure what the answer is - it obviously doesn't lie in saying that women shouldn't wear make-up any more than it lies in pressuring men to wear make-up.

I end up feeling funny about it as I try to think through my own gender identity stuff. It leaves me feeling really weird, because I feel like there's such a strong cultural narrative which says that there are two and only two normal ways to look, each extremely different from the other.
posted by Frowner at 1:01 PM on September 7, 2016 [49 favorites]

I had never considered that there would be any reason to put oneself through the trouble and expense of makeup other than reluctant adherence to patriarchal norms.

OTOH, you did demonstrate a prodigious grasp of the doctrine of false consciousness.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:02 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

It's actually been proven that women who wear makeup in the workplace and in public are treated better than women who don’t because they look like they "take care of themselves." Is that fair? Of course not, but our society puts a reverence on makeup whether we realize it or not.


What wearing makeup signals is much more complex than making someone look like they "take care of themselves." My workplace is about 75% male and I pay a lot of attention to how other women here navigate the competence/likability trap. One theory I have is that wearing makeup (which I do) can be viewed as a signal that the woman in question is willing to perform femininity even if the rest of her self-presentation is "aggressive" or "competent" enough to otherwise sabotage her "likability."

Am I perpetuating the culture which pits competence and likability against each other in how women are perceived? Probably. But I also like makeup. I think it's fun. I dont think being shamed for wearing it makes any more sense than shaming women who drop out of the workforce because culturally and politically we pressure women to choose between child-rearing and white collar workforce participation.

In both cases I'd much rather see people work toward detaching gender norms from makeup-wearing and child-rearing than pressure anyone to abstain from either.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 1:03 PM on September 7, 2016 [14 favorites]

OTOH, you did demonstrate a prodigious grasp of the doctrine of false consciousness.

Wikipedia's tl;dr for this term is a bunch of Marxist gobbledygook, so I'm just going to assume you mean that I'm a terrible person because I once didn't understand a thing.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 1:04 PM on September 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

Well, okay. I live in Pittsburgh. Maybe someday if you're in this part of the world you can take me around and show me the guys who are wearing makeup. I'll give you a buck for every guy who is if you give me a buck for every guy who isn't.

Or, you could just try accepting that there's something some men do that you never noticed before, instead of getting weirdly combative when it's pointed out.
posted by palomar at 1:07 PM on September 7, 2016 [25 favorites]

My God, seriously, how is this conversation already so much about men, both in terms of "who wears makeup?" and in terms of "who wants to share their opinion on whether women should present themselves in a certain way?"?
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 1:11 PM on September 7, 2016 [52 favorites]

Translation of "false consciousness" Marxistese: Capitalism encourages people to identify with various identity groups and exaggerates minor cultural differences between the different groups to the level of serious social conflicts in order to keep them from seeing how much they actually have in common (all having to work for someone else with capital to make a living, for example) and banding together to further their true, common interests.
posted by saulgoodman at 1:12 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

The thing about makeup is that it's coded so, so "feminine," and that might be because caring about your appearance in general is coded "feminine." See also "metrosexual" where even straight, manly guys were considered more feminine for caring to groom themselves.

A woman can wear conspicuous makeup, and it might invite some negative comments, but her femininity will never be questioned. On the other hand, men's makeup short of specific war-related situations like camouflage or war paint? The Patriarchy punishes that hard.

Makeup is going to live at that awkward intersection of choice and society expectation until we get around to allowing (and possibly expecting) men to groom themselves the same as we expect from women.
posted by explosion at 1:13 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

>Or, you could just try accepting that there's something some men do that you never noticed before, instead of getting weirdly combative when it's pointed out.

Look, my point was that there is a culturally enforced standard which says that women are expected to wear makeup, and men aren't. Are you really contesting that? 'Cause it seems like kind of an uphill battle.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 1:15 PM on September 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

Sometimes after I've picked up whatever I actually need at Target and am just drifting around the store in a florescent haze, I'll stop in front of the e.l.f. makeup section, remember the magazine tip I read twenty years ago on the playground about replacing your mascara every 6 months, and buy a new tube for $3 to replace the old one I used maybe once. But I need it just in case, right? I like to think I'm paying into a Patriarchy Social Security account. (That will never pay out.)
posted by book 'em dano at 1:20 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

For various reasons I took a very different career path in my 20s than most of my friends did. They were in grad school--especially in economics and the sciences--and those parts of academia certainly have standards about How Women Are Supposed to Look. I was not. I was working in places that were somewhat academia related, but had very different How Women Are Supposed to Look standards. Oh, realities collided when I tried, in my ignorance, to tell my friend she could get a Business-Type Dress that she could wear both to economics conferences (with blazer) and to my wedding (with flower decoration.)

So for various personal, professional, and aesthetic-choice reasons, I had a very different look from the rest of my social circle (even though I never went Full-On-Hotel-Staff-High-Maintenance-Haircut-&-Manicure.) I would meet up with them after work in the suit and makeup, or a dress and makeup, that I needed to be taken seriously, and they wore the jeans and sweatshirt and no makeup that they needed to be taken seriously. Sometimes, the Gray Pantsuit of Female Academic Seriousness.

I really liked the friends I made during that time, because I met a lot of people who judged me by my appearance, and they didn't do so.
posted by Hypatia at 1:20 PM on September 7, 2016 [13 favorites]

amnesia and magnets, I wish I had more faves to give you.

I'm a lifelong non-makeup-wearer and non-body-hair-remover and just in general my performance of femininity is pretty lackluster, tbh. I've never told other people how to look but I'd be lying if I said I never noticed how differently I've always been treated by the large percentage of the population who does associate the performance of femininity in women as synonymous with worth as a human. Though I'm over 40 now, and a mom, so I'm quickly tipping over into the abyss of unpersonhood anyway. I guess you can't let yourself go if you were never hanging on in the first place, right?
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:24 PM on September 7, 2016 [12 favorites]

I thought this was a pretty jejune article, and I say that as someone who buys and wears a lot of makeup. More than any of my friends, I would guess - in other words, my relationship with makeup is exactly the kind that draws the "You look so much prettier without it" or "You really don't need all that" comments*.

While I find those comments clueless and/or irritating, that doesn't mean that there aren't larger questions to be asked, as amnesia and magnets and Sing or Swim pointed out.

Yes, I love playing with all the different sparkly colors and the tiny brushes, and yes, the power of transforming yourself is appealing to many, and yes, the positive feedback, if any, I get on makeup is mostly other women, not men, and so on and so forth. But I don't think that my choice to wear makeup, or the fact that I happen to find it fun, exist in a vacuum outside of our society's expectations and mores. And those expectations and mores can and should be questioned, I don't care whether by women or by men or whatever.



*to be clear, my friends are not the ones making these comments
posted by Aubergine at 1:27 PM on September 7, 2016 [12 favorites]

I don't care about makeup per se but there's a shallowness in her analysis that's troublesome. When everything is reduced to the personal level, we miss patters of injustice. Things that can only be fought collectively.

But maybe I am wrong and misrepresenting her perspective. Maybe the feminism and marxism of the past decades have been an intellectual dead end. Maybe that's why I find feminism increasingly useless in understanding social problems.

People who wear makeup should not shame those who don’t and those who don’t shouldn’t shame people who do. Find the love within yourself and you’ll be able to spread that love to others.

Live and let live? Maybe that's good enough, I don't know.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:28 PM on September 7, 2016

people who choose to augment their faces are seen the same way as people who choose to dye their hair in unnatural (for them) colors. Not that I have a problem with people rocking purple hair (if they like it, it's awesome!), but I don't feel pressure to dye my hair purple for a big meeting with a client so that I can look "right."

Yeah. Hair. Thirty-odd years ago, dyed hair was pretty rare. It was expensive and touchy.

Thirty-odd years ago, my blonde streak was consistently complimented on by strangers. "How striking! Does it run in the family?" See, I was born with a shock of blonde hair down the middle of my otherwise dark brown head. It makes choosing how to part my hair pretty easy, because there's only one way to do it that I like (most of the blonde to the right, a few accents on the left).

Once hair dye became a thing. Oh. My. God. It was like a switch flipped.

"What on EARTH did you do to your hair??"
"Who did that to you??"
"Why did you do THAT?!"
"LOL can't wait to see the roots" (bahaha you never will)
"Oh... wow... lol someone needs to learn hair styling 101"
"Why haven't you grown it out yet?? Seriously, that is just... I don't even know what it is..."

I have no idea how I've paid for it, though with one manager it was front-and-center. She (yes, sorry, it was a woman) could NOT get over why I was showing such terrible taste in hair colors. "You really need to fix that. It's totally unprofessional."

The pressure to look a certain way is absolutely there, and "that way" is currently with makeup and "proper" hairstyling+dyeing, which I have no idea what it is because I've never dyed my hair and never will. I have three natural hair colors now that my grey is coming in, and am totally loving it because it's STREAKS. It's like fuck yeah punk hair at no cost. As it's become more noticeable in the past few months, there's been a sharp drop in people remarking on it. Score one for getting out of the uncanny valley, I suppose. Now I'm definitely canny, eh.

On preview – was also about to say that there are places where "no makeup" is actually coded as more serious for women. IT (at least all the offices I've worked) can be one, though it very much depends. Interestingly, I've never once had any remarks about my makeup or lack thereof. I wear none. Don't know why hair is so coded, but as I mentioned, I kind of purposefully avoid figuring it out as it won't make a difference for me.
posted by fraula at 1:29 PM on September 7, 2016 [26 favorites]

My (not officially but basically ex-)wife was an anti-makeup sort almost the entire 20 years I knew her, then suddenly about two--three years ago started getting really into makeup and being girly-girl. Not sure why, but I was worried people had been shaming her at first. A lot of the friends she made over the last five years seem to think I was the one who hated makeup and shamed her into not wearing it, but she was already that way when I met her.
posted by saulgoodman at 1:31 PM on September 7, 2016

Yes wearing makeup is a choice, but it's a choice where you'll be punished socially and financially for making a different one.
posted by CarolynG at 1:34 PM on September 7, 2016 [24 favorites]

Or, you could just try accepting that there's something some men do that you never noticed before, instead of getting weirdly combative when it's pointed out.

literally every single public figure on earth, celebrities, politicians, newscasters, musicians: every single one of these men wear makeup. and you can't tell.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:34 PM on September 7, 2016 [19 favorites]

I feel like this thread became yet another "let's share our feelings about makeup" thread instead of about the article.
posted by agregoli at 1:34 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

One of the reasons I'm excited about switching professions is that I can finally do my makeup the way I want to -- which generally means The Kind of Makeup Men Hate.
posted by Hypatia at 1:34 PM on September 7, 2016 [12 favorites]

not just on camera but in person. i have seen so many random male movie stars, heterosexual men presenting as masculine, wearing more makeup in person than i would wear to be a bridesmaid in a wedding.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:35 PM on September 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

I suggest either manufacturing your own pigments at home or simply shoplifting.

I suggest putting your money where your mouth is and either manufacturing or shoplifting pigments for everyone that you are going to pester with your opinion on the topic.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 1:35 PM on September 7, 2016 [22 favorites]

I like the intent of this article (as a female makeup-wearer), but I agree with some of the critiques that it's a bit surface level and at times contradictory. It is like the author wanted to respond to all the possible criticisms levied at women for wearing or not wearing makeup, but didn't really consider that some of those responses didn't necessarily make sense w/r/t each other.

It's okay to acknowledge that an argument has some truth ("Some women feel pressured to wear makeup, overtly or at a more subconscious, societal level") without having to concede that means we all have to toss our makeup in the bin.

It's a complicated, fraught thing. I really enjoy makeup a lot. I've finally (at age 40!) gotten good at winged eyeliner even with my hooded lids and I rock that look a lot. I have definitely used lipstick (which I don't typically wear) as an extra pick-me-up to my day. I enjoy more elaborate eyeshadows and fancy looks for a special night out.

But I also feel a bit naked if I go out with a completely clean face, so I usually have at least a little makeup on. I started filling in my brows lately and now my face looks especially bare without it. While I do sometimes go to the store or to run errands without any makeup on, I don't know if I would *ever* go to work without it.

Both of those things can be true: that I enjoy makeup for itself AND that there is societal pressure for women to wear makeup. The latter doesn't negate the former, but nor does the former negate the latter, and that's what I feel like this article kind of missed in favor of an "everything is okay no matter what!" rah-rah narrative.
posted by misskaz at 1:35 PM on September 7, 2016 [23 favorites]

not just on camera but in person. i have seen so many random male movie stars, heterosexual men presenting as masculine, wearing more makeup in person than i would wear to be a bridesmaid in a wedding.

It's certainly a start, but appearances among those in the visual and performing arts can't really be extrapolated to the rest of society.
posted by explosion at 1:41 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Look, my point was that there is a culturally enforced standard which says that women are expected to wear makeup, and men aren't. Are you really contesting that? 'Cause it seems like kind of an uphill battle.

Your point came off more like "I have never seen this, therefore it doesn't actually happen". And given that it's 2016 and men have been out there wearing makeup for decades at this point* , it reads as either being faux-provincial to make a point, or hopelessly out of touch in the same way a comment about how cat-calling is a compliment would be in a thread about street harrassment.

*seriously, I was first aware of men wearing makeup over 30 years ago, when I was a first grader attending an extremely conservative religious school. Pittsburgh ain't no backwater, son, no matter how hard you want to pretend.
posted by palomar at 1:41 PM on September 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

Realising at age 28 that men can wear spot cover up for blemishes makes me wish I had done it earlier. I keep a tiny bottle around for acne and such. It's nice not having a big ol' red spot on your face.
posted by Ferreous at 1:43 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

This has been a really disappointing and upsetting thread for reasons that are really difficult for me to articulate. There are men all over the place wearing makeup. Probably men that you work with. They're so good at applying makeup - which is really an art form - that you have no idea they're wearing it.
posted by all about eevee at 2:02 PM on September 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

Someone I follow tweeted today that "ALL your faves are problematic" and yes, I guess this is true with makeup also. You can make a good feminist case against it. You can also make a good feminist case for not shaming women for something they enjoy/rely on for the umpteenth time because my god, they have enough to deal with. Feminism is a land of contrasts.

On the other hand, men's makeup short of specific war-related situations like camouflage or war paint? The Patriarchy punishes that hard.

Only since the 19th century. 18th-century noblemen, as well as women, wore makeup.

It would be more accurate to say "Men deviating from whatever behavior is deemed masculine? The Patriarchy punishes that hard."

It's just that every century or so, what that is changes. But given the adulation and grief over Bowie, a man who knew how to wield a makeup brush, I'd say that the Patriarchy is selective and erratic in which men get punished for wearing makeup.

But men, even straight ones, are certainly not exempt from the desire to ornament themselves and be flashy and admired. I have no doubt more of them would wear face-paint of some kind if they could get away with it.

I do wonder if tattoos aren't an attempt at getting around the no-ornamentation-for-men rules. They are coded "tough" and so ok for a man to put on his body, even if they include flowery script and roses and so on.

I guess I am falling into the "what about the men" aspect here, so I apologize for that.

One of Angela Carter's essays from the 60s laments the turn away from experimental, shocking makeup--red eye shadow, black lips--to a more delicate, flowery, feminine look of the 70s. She wrote a lot of good essays on dress and makeup, actually, I recommend reading her collection Shaking a Leg for those.
posted by emjaybee at 2:08 PM on September 7, 2016 [17 favorites]

I feel like it might be worth discussing what kind of make-up men are able to wear, and why. It might also be interesting to compare sales of make-up marketed to men to that of make-up marketed to women - some men probably wear make-up marketed to women because it's more widely available, but the comparison might give us some starter ideas of the size of the market.

It sounds like all concur that if men are wearing make-up in any quantity, they are wearing ultra "natural" makeup, not noticeable eyeshadow, winged eyeliner, bright lipstick, etc. Men's make-up sounds like it is often focused on the "natural" and "invisible" and the standard for "natural" is different than the standard for women's "natural" makeup. If one wears a discreet but visible pink lipstick and one is a woman, that's within the realm of "natural"; if one wears a discreet but visible pink lipstick and one is a man, it's not.

I also want to think this through a little bit in terms of people who are gender-non-conforming and wear make-up. I don't know any femme guys or AMAB genderqueer people, etc, who wear eg lipstick or eyeliner on the street on a daily basis without harassment.

It seems like if one is going to discuss men and make-up, which make-up, when and with what consequences are important starting points.
posted by Frowner at 2:13 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

to riff off your point frowner, I wonder what percent of women stick towards just concealing type make up and avoid the more "ornamental" elements?
posted by Ferreous at 2:16 PM on September 7, 2016

I feel like this thread became yet another "let's share our feelings about makeup" thread instead of about the article.

To some extent, I think that's just the nature of FPPs like this. It's a fairly narrow article, whose basic premise ("don't tell women what to do") is pretty obvious and universally agreed upon (at least here on MeFi). We could sit here and cheer the article on and say "yes! I agree!", but that's not why I come to MeFi – I'm looking for a nice, hearty plate of beans to tuck into, y'know? So we're kinda left talking about the stuff around the article.

There are men all over the place wearing makeup. Probably men that you work with. They're so good at applying makeup - which is really an art form - that you have no idea they're wearing it.

That may be the case. Really – it may be. I would be surprised, but I've been surprised before.

If it is the case, though: how do you know? Serious question. Are you saying that, although these men's makeup is visually undetectable to the makeup-naïve (such as myself), you are able to detect it because you're more familiar with makeup? That'd be a valid answer, of course; I'm just trying to figure out where you got this (possibly correct) idea that there are significant numbers of men out there wearing makeup. Have they told you, or what? I've never even seen man-makeup for sale – I mean, I'm obviously aware that it exists, but at the very least the market for it is vastly smaller than the market for female-gendered makeup. (Do we at least agree on that point?) Or perhaps all of these men are ordering their makeup furtively online?

I should also check my assumption that we're talking about the United States here, or at least Western culture. (Are we?)

Because, as an American man, I have known literally zero men who admit to wearing makeup (other than the intentionally obvious, ornamental, goth variety). (Yes, makeup for stage/film/TV is a thing. No, that's not the kind of makeup I'm talking about.) Obviously there are some men out there who do. But if I've ever known any of them, they've been really good at applying it discreetly, and generally keeping that fact hidden.

Maybe this is a generational / regional thing? I'm 39, and I spend most of my time in the 'burbs. What are the rough demographics of this legion of makeup-wearing men? Because it's obviously news to a lot of us men.

(I, for one, am not trying to make the thread "about men" – I'm just responding to those comments that I have a response to – and would be more than happy to read more not-about-men comments from those who would prefer for the discussion to go in that direction. We can and regularly do have multiple strands of conversation within the same thread.)
posted by escape from the potato planet at 2:49 PM on September 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

i have nothing really to contribute other than that my boyfriend has eyelashes that are way longer and luscious than mine even when i wear mascara and i always tell him i'm going to steal them while he's sleeping
posted by burgerrr at 2:50 PM on September 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Men who wear makeup aren't legally prevented from buying makeup marketed to women, just like I'm not legally prevented from buying the razors or shower gel I like just because they're marketed to men.
posted by palomar at 2:52 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Of course they aren't. Is that what is happening, then? Significant percentages of men are purchasing and wearing makeup that is marketed to women?
posted by escape from the potato planet at 2:53 PM on September 7, 2016

Weirdly, I've been coming to terms with some gender stuff and it's led me, a cis woman with genderfluid leanings, to actually embrace makeup more than I ever had before. I think I always felt uncomfortable with it because I felt insecure about how to express my gender. Now that I know myself better I'm like "think Imma throw on some mascara today and enjoy my sweet sweet gender conforming privilege while this femme phase lasts" which would have been a super uncomfortable thing for me even a couple years ago. It's fun! It's nice to feel pretty and aware that it's because of my work and skills that I feel pretty, not because I won some genetic lottery.
posted by the marble index at 2:54 PM on September 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

I think men who wear makeup just buy whatever stuff matches their skin tone. If you're already at the stage where you're okay with wearing makeup, you most likely aren't the type who's going to freak out because there isn't AXE BRAND ULTRA DUDE BRO EXTREME NO LADY ZIT CAMOUFLAGE.
posted by Ferreous at 2:58 PM on September 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

I have no doubt more of them would wear face-paint of some kind if they could get away with it.

Don't, like, some dudes wear football paint to football games? (I don't see enough football to know if this is actually a thing or just on TV.)
posted by octobersurprise at 2:58 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I keep coming back on this in my head to Kylie Jenner (whose "lip kits" I'm only vaguely aware of and am not entirely sure they don't also include botox..?) who is a young person living on the bleeding edge of hyper-feminine, Los Angeles lifestyle makeup and how there is like this ever-thinning line between Kardashian representations of femininity and full-on drag. I personally have always looked a little uneasily at drag in and of itself because while I see the fun, the shock, the performance, the total transformative nature of it, there's a part of me that goes, "You're kind of just making fun of us, aren't you?" Sort of like Dave Chapelle's feelings that he wasn't quite sure if his audience wasn't laughing at him a little bit more than they were laughing with him.

There's was a time when Kylie Jenner was sort of rebelling against that. She made comments on their show kind of throwing shade at her older sister's ambitions to be a model and then she turned completely inside-out and is now the face of this...thing. Trend.

And all these YouTube videos and this whole industry that seems to just be pumping along with no end in sight is both perverse and fascinating to me. I went to a Sephora for the first time a few months ago. I was looking for a transformation. But I don't really talk the talk or even know what I want so I left with some really expensive cream. I did have a fascinating discussion with the cream rep who was totally lovely and very interesting and did not act like my face was an affront to Sephora (which surely it was).

Female drag queens are something I find very interesting and I've actually thought of having that style of makeover just to experiment. There's just a really fascinating kaleidoscope of gender going on right now in the world and most especially on the internet. It almost feels like something pretty explosive might be on the verge of happening. But, then again, I don't know...you still have very, very strong conservative social norms at play. Those norms still favor men and they still favor gender normativity.

And, I feel bad about Kylie Jenner. It's not makeup's fault. But, it's also not not makeup's fault. I feel bad for all the young women trying to achieve Kylie Jenner and not measuring up. It's a way higher bar than existed when I was her age. I also have no intention of shaming anyone for their makeup choices or suggesting that they don't. But there's a part of me that looks at this and at Kylie and a lot of these other Instagram/YouTube stars and goes, "Is everything okay?" Which is very different than, "You really don't need that makeup, sweetie." Which is very different than dudes being baffled and thinking they have some say on it. This level of makeup, especially like that shown in the article, is really so far beyond what dudes think of it.
posted by amanda at 3:08 PM on September 7, 2016 [11 favorites]

I think that there is a distinction between "natural for you" makeup, and "ornamental" makeup, and I'll admit that I definitely think differently about women (and men) who veer towards the ornamental.

I have no quarrel with folks who say: "I spend time putting on makeup that looks natural for me because [reasons], please don't shame me for it."

But folks who say: "I spend time putting on makeup that calls attention to itself, please don't shame me for it" seem like they are protesting a bit too much. Obviously, it's ok to like blue eyeshadow, it's also ok to like blue tuxedos. I don't think it's necessarily wrong for society as a whole to push back on the wearing of either of those things in situations where they would be "inappropriate."

It's the difference between "grooming" and "primping" to me. And sure, some folks like to primp, and that is awesome for them. But just like any optional activity, I don't think people get to declare their rights to do so free of judgment*.

*not that "judgment" needs to go beyond silent eye-rolling most of the time -- unless a person's appearance is actually your business somehow (they are modeling for you, they want you to date them, they will be interacting with your customers) there's no reason to share your opinion of their chosen activity unless you're asked for it.
posted by sparklemotion at 3:12 PM on September 7, 2016

The last time I went to Sephora (as a woman who's had a fraught relationship with makeup, never seen my mother wear any, and was told I looked like a clown early on by my big brother - but wears some for work now) I got a salesdude who was very helpful. And I realized after talking to him about what I was looking for in a lipstain ("no, really, I eat All lipstick off, it has to be like a marker to last a few hours") that he had Amazing brows. Of course! He works in a makeup store, he must be wearing makeup! I wouldn't have thought about it of noticed it if we hadn't been in a makeup store, I would have just thought he was very handsome.

And I love the brow-filling stuff he sold me after I complimented him. Make-up will always be fraught, but Gosh, I feel more confident with a little bit on!
posted by ldthomps at 3:13 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

I think there are interesting and valid feminist critiques of makeup, but an awful lot of the "you shouldn't wear makeup" stuff that I hear isn't coming from a feminist perspective at all, and also isn't coming from people who I trust to determine who is and isn't wearing makeup. It's coming from guys who want to date beautiful women who always look perfect but aren't "high-maintenance." Which brings me to the amusing Buzzfeed listicle 20 People Who Are Very Confused About What “No Makeup” Looks Like. There's a certain kind of guy who likes to claim that women shouldn't wear makeup, but what he really means is that he wants women to get out of bed in the morning looking like a woman wearing extremely artfully applied "natural" makeup. And I am sorry, but if you want women to look like they are wearing extremely well-applied makeup, you're going to have to put up with us wearing makeup, because nobody in the world looks like that naturally.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:27 PM on September 7, 2016 [36 favorites]

But folks who say: "I spend time putting on makeup that calls attention to itself, please don't shame me for it" seem like they are protesting a bit too much. Obviously, it's ok to like blue eyeshadow, it's also ok to like blue tuxedos. I don't think it's necessarily wrong for society as a whole to push back on the wearing of either of those things in situations where they would be "inappropriate."

Gosh, I'm utterly crushed that you disapprove of my bright lavender lipstick. Good thing that to me its subtext is "I'm not here to look pretty for you" rather than "I am a brainwashed sheep reflexively performing societally-dictated femininity.

Seriously, where the hell do you get off even "pushing back" on somebody's blue eyeshadow, blue tuxedo, or any other grooming choice they've made? The arrogance is amazing.
posted by Lexica at 3:39 PM on September 7, 2016 [32 favorites]

I dunno – I mean, we're allowed to have (and appropriately express) varied responses to aesthetic and cultural phenomena (music, art, film, food), aren't we? What makes fashion or makeup different? I thought sparklemotion was pretty clear that her "disapproval" was more of the mild "I think this band you love is hella corny" variety, not some kind of condemnation.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:46 PM on September 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'd sum up my feelings about makeup, and how other people feel about me wearing it or not, as a statement for the general public to stop telling me how I should fucking look in order to satisfy their own personal agenda. That goes for the "You need makeup" crowd and the "You shouldn't wear makeup because it violates my morals about feminism/the patriarchy/etc" crowd. I do not exist for the purpose of being a walking example of some random stranger's idea of what's right and good about the state of the world. I'll wear makeup if I damn well feel like it.

Someone could make an argument about a lot of daily habits, ranging from buying food that has to be shipped a long distance, to driving a car, to buying clothing or electronics manufactured in third-world sweatshops, to eating meat, and they would have a point. A lot of these industries do cause damage in the form of economic suppression or exploitation or pollution. Even buying makeup, back in the days when testing on animals was commonplace. But wearing makeup? Give me a break. I am not ruining society by deciding to wear makeup any more than I'm doing it by deciding between pants and a skirt. Or deciding how long to wear my hair. Or whether to color it. Or what kind of shoes I fucking wear--the flats, or the boots with the chunky heel? Or by how much I happen to weigh. If you're attaching politics to any aspect of my appearance, you need to knock it the fuck off and mind your own business.

Nor will I take up manufacturing my own pigments, when I can just go to the store and buy a high-quality product already made by professionals. Note the operative word "buy". I don't run off to the dairy farm and milk my own cows either. I don't weave my own fabric, I don't sew my own clothes, I don't cobble my own shoes. I didn't build my own house or engineer my own car. I buy these things already made, and the money I use for this purpose was earned writing code for other people who don't know how to write code. Hurray for capitalism.

As it happens, I wear makeup to work and generally go makeup-less the rest of the time. I don't have the bone structure for super-creative looks, and just stick with a neutral palette that draws attention to my best features (my skin texture and my eye color). Voila. I have an overall aesthetic that has its roots back in the grunge era, and that's just how I like to look. Don't like it? Don't look.
posted by Autumnheart at 4:12 PM on September 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

Voila. I have an overall aesthetic that has its roots back in the grunge era,

Oh I feel you. At least L'Oreal released a matte foundation which isn't too far off from the late, lamented Mattique. I am so ready for contouring to be over.
posted by asockpuppet at 4:20 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yes, men wear makeup that is marketed to women. Jesus Christ, did I wander into 2004 Metafilter, or what?
posted by all about eevee at 4:23 PM on September 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

If you're looking for men who wear makeup, check out Tynan Sinks.
posted by asockpuppet at 4:25 PM on September 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

The main purpose of foundation is to even out your skin tone and provide some sun protection. A lot of men just wear that.
posted by all about eevee at 4:28 PM on September 7, 2016

I haven't doubted that some men wear makeup, or that some men wear makeup marketed to women. Obviously some do, and I've said as much. What I'm asking about is the claim that this is a common and widespread phenomenon. Because folks in this thread have repeatedly assured us that it is – and I'm willing to entertain the possibility, but the claim runs so contrary to my own observations and experience that it demands comment.

Perhaps I'm an out-of-touch yokel who needs to get out more. (In a similar vein, perhaps your own experience is not a representative sample of US culture at large.) Whatever the case, I think that many men – many people in general – when presented with the notion "use of makeup is common and widespread among men", would react with "um, cite please?". It's a reasonable question.

Among other things, I've asked:

• how people know that this is the case (since this makeup is apparently invisible)
• what particular demographic circles, if any, one is likely to encounter this in (since I certainly don't see it in my own circles – so maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place)

Instead of answers, I've just gotten exasperated cries of "Jeez, how can you possibly be such a clueless Neanderthal?" So I guess I'll just have to remain clueless, since my questions are apparently unfit for answers, and I sure can't see any support for the claim in my own experience.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 4:43 PM on September 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm always curious what the "makeup is bad" folks think that trans women should do, in particular those who transitioned later in life. I don't identify as a woman myself, but I'm trans enough that I often wake up and think "gosh, today I really wish I could pass". For the most part I have the kind of AMAB body that might let me pull that off, but my hair is dark and my beard shadow is noticeable even after I shave. If I really did want to pass, I'd have to look into colour corrector and foundation at a minimum. But realistically, a purely natural look wouldn't work all that well, because the last thing I'd want to do is call attention to the more masculine features of my face. Personally I don't know how comfortable I feel with doing that, so I've never really tried to pass. Still, I can't help but feel sympathetic for those trans women who really have to rely on makeup or other gender performances that code as stereotypically feminine. More generally, I guess it feels kind of dismissive to ignore the fact that in practice makeup is more a necessity than a choice for a lot of people. I'd love to live in a world where that necessity didn't exist, but for now we're stuck in this one and I'm not okay with making people feel bad for doing the things they have to do just to get by.
posted by langtonsant at 4:54 PM on September 7, 2016 [9 favorites]

I thought this article was old, as I thought I had read it before, but I see it was just published a few days ago. I guess maybe I've seen many of the sentiments on Tumblr already (being serious, not snarky.)

I think it's a bit thin as an article to discuss here, if one wants the discussion to stay on the article. It's a rant, it doesn't have a focus as to who the You is that is being addressed, and it doesn't show a particularly deep knowledge about the beauty industry.

In terms of make-up, I'm much more interested right now in Alicia Keys choosing to not wear make-up, and how that contrasts to the hyper-made up performance of femininity coming from the Kardashian crowd, and what people might be saying about Alicia Keys, than a random blogger yelling, "Don't tell me what to do!"

But I agree overall with chinese_fashion above - we shouldn't tell people what to do, or what not to do, just because they aren't to our tastes, and we should mind our own business.
posted by Squeak Attack at 4:58 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

From amnesia and magnets:

With all due respect, the juxtaposition of these points is a great example of my least favorite thing about individualist feminism. How can we insist that people women "just choose to wear makeup because they like it" while simultaneously acknowledging that women who use it are statistically treated better in public and the workplace? It's an illusion of free will, like if I said the only reason I put on pants before I go to work every day is because I really, really love to wear pants; nothing to do with the fact that walking out the door pantsless leaves one vulnerable to an arrest for public indecency.

This. A thousand times.

And then repeat another thousand times* or however long it takes to focus the discussion on the core issues you brought up in your comment.



*I suspect that won't be enough. Christ, it's 2016 and I still hear women (!) say they are reluctant to call themselves "feminist" because the word has so much "baggage".
posted by she's not there at 5:04 PM on September 7, 2016 [15 favorites]

Google gave me some stats on men wearing makeup.

A 2013 (?) survey of 1,000 US and UK men found that 9% use foundation, and 10% use concealer. (They list other types of products, as well – but those are the two that I would consider "makeup".)

"A recent survey of a thousand millenial-age men". (Apparently a different one? This article was published within a couple days of the previous one, but it doesn't get any more specific about the survey, so who knows.) "As many as 60 percent of men now use women’s skincare products, with 14 percent okaying nail polish, 18 percent foundation, and 12 percent eyeliner."

I was specifically wondering about foundation and other non-obvious makeup, since (of course) the fact that some men wear ornamental makeup comes as no surprise to me. I have to say that those numbers are much, much higher than I would have guessed – I'd have said about 1–2%. (FWIW, I informally polled my friends on Facebook. Answers ranged from "almost none" to "about 10%". So I'm not alone in being unaware of this phenomenon.)

The second link, at least, suggests that, yes, it's a snake-person thing (which would explain why I'm not aware of it, since there are few snake people in my life).

I'm done beating this poor horse now.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:08 PM on September 7, 2016

Glad you realized you were unaware. As people already pointed out to you.
posted by agregoli at 5:27 PM on September 7, 2016

Ok, from my own observations/experience. Men don't wear "makeup" they wear chichi "tinted moisturizer" and it's rampant in the corporate world with VP, SVP, and C level men. It looks good. Also, they deffo get their eyebrows shaped and sport brow gel.And clear nail polish.
posted by asockpuppet at 5:29 PM on September 7, 2016 [9 favorites]

Because of this thread, I've been thinking a lot today about my relationship to makeup. When I was little, I really liked it! I had such pure enthusiasm for the stuff and just loved to look at lip gloss and eye shadow; what kid doesn't like sparkles and shimmer and paint?

But I remember very clearly when my feelings started to change. I wore makeup rarely in my teens and early adulthood, mainly because of sensitivity/allergy issues, and people made such a big deal about it when I did. "You look so nice! It's so great to see you like this!" It was like I suddenly leapt into visibility for a bunch of people. I could feel them treating me differently. And the difference seemed to be tied into an adequate performance of my assigned gender, because it's the same way people would act when they saw me in a dress or a skirt. Like, "oh, good, you've finally gotten it right!" Granted, I grew up in a conservative family in a conservative area, but it's been a consistent enough thing in my life that I'm quite sure I'm not imagining it. And it's not just the novelty of dressing-up, either, because I get a distinctly different reaction when I'm all dapper in my best suit. I've never felt as visible or as "acceptable" as when I was thin, young, made up, and feminine-presenting (i.e., gender-conforming). I've never forgotten that feeling.

That's been a lot of my experience of gender as a woman. Perform femininity and beauty adequately and you become visible, an object to be commented on and critiqued, something that represents an ideal but can easily fall short of it. Fail to perform it adequately and you remain invisible and unrepresented, feeling like you don't matter to society at large.

This is why the article frustrates me. I accept the core of her thesis, of course: people's grooming choices are not yours to comment on, and women do just fine without men's approval of their makeup techniques, thank you. But there's something in her rhetoric... she's in such a hurry to depoliticize makeup, to render it value-neutral, and I don't believe you can do that. Obviously some folks feel differently, but a bottle of foundation will never just be a bottle of foundation to me.
posted by thetortoise at 5:38 PM on September 7, 2016 [29 favorites]

I'm kind of really pissed that the idea of a kid liking makeup must be because I painted her.

I think, in the seven years she's been here, I've probably applied makeup maybe a dozen times? She's seen my sister and one of my friends put makeup on (sister: 'ostentatious' friend: 'natural'). She still loves the stuff. I mean, she does weird stuff with it (like the runes she painted on one time for some reason) but she is absolutely drawn to the art of it, the same way she is for fashion. Yesterday as part of a costume she wore some sparkly false lashes and a few swipes of black eyeshadow.

But when was the last time an FPP about male-identified art and fashion went firepit like this? Because while there is absolutely an element of femme presentation and sexism and misogyny at a cultural and economic level*, there's an element of it in attacking artistic mediums associated with that presentation too. Somehow a tooled leather belt and the work that goes into that is more acceptable than mineral foundation and the work that goes into that. Sure leatherwork sticks around for a while, but the level of expertise is no different. Or male grooming - is all the fetishising of razors and beard care any different to makeup? Yet somehow makeup simultaneously legitimises women as women AND delegitimises them as human.

I don't wear makeup, as a rule. Yes, my spots and my dark circles and my incipient wrinkles and my epic frown lines and my lopsided mouth and uneven skin tone and scars are all on open display. I don't wear tinted moisturiser, although my favourite lip stuff is a tinted Burt's Bees balm (I chew my lips otherwise). I rub my eyes too much to wear eye stuff, although I did go an get my brows professionally done for the first time this week (threaded and tinted, it's pretty awesome but I don't think I'll tint again). I'm never going to make it in, say, admin looking like this. But the career I've chosen + where I live? If women wear makeup it is completely understated, or lipstick + mascara. I'm also the resident butch/masculine lady type, so that helps.

The art and artistry of makeup ranges from the ostentatious to the natural and BOTH require a significant skill set and an understanding of the medium (from the tools to the products to the skin it's being applied on). To pretend otherwise is asinine. But to pretend the effects of makeup only go one way - in that to be femme presenting and 'professional' requires makeup is at the very least cultural blindness if not highly specific to certain spaces (employment, geographic) - because at the very same time those women are expected to wear the makeup, they're expected to never ever show that it is work or art. It is meant to be invisible and somehow effortless.

I like watching makeup videos, even though I don't wear it. They're soothing, like a lot of art process videos or cooking videos, but they also make it clear that this is work. That's the great crime of both makeup 'culture' and to a certain extent even talking about it - femmeness is supposed to be invisible and silent and effortless. Makeup culture (videos, tutorials, obvious presentations of those things) show how the sausage is made, so to speak. Which is why we end up here with so many 'ew makeup is gross' pouting, because suddenly that smooth skinned dark eyed girl with the full lips isn't a miracle but someone who put work into her appearance and you're no longer allowed to pretend femmeness is the natural state of women.
posted by geek anachronism at 5:40 PM on September 7, 2016 [17 favorites]

Check out color theory in makeup too, geek anachronism. Its abs fascinating. Also if you follow a fashion blog like Tom and Lorenzo you'll be able to spot why someone is sporting a particular face with particular clothing. The professional artistry side is amazing.
posted by asockpuppet at 5:52 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Ok, from my own observations/experience. Men don't wear "makeup" they wear chichi "tinted moisturizer" and it's rampant in the corporate world with VP, SVP, and C level men. It looks good. Also, they deffo get their eyebrows shaped and sport brow gel.And clear nail polish.

I don't interact with that social world, but even in my social life of much less groomed men, I could easily imagine the approximately ten percent citation above holding true, especially if products like "tinted moisturizer" are marketed less as makeup and more as "manly dude grooming product."
posted by Dip Flash at 5:55 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Most girls are painted by their mother before they are old enough to walk never mind have an opinion.

Obviously just anecdotal, but this is not my experience, at all. Makeup is what grown-ups wear, some more than others. Mostly women, really, don't know of men in my family/friend's families applying make-up. If they were wearing it they didn't apply it with their kids around, like the moms did. So being allowed to wear make-up= adulthood, which has it's own allure.

My mom wears make-up most of the time, a few swipes here and there so her light eyebrows/eyelashes are visible and she doesn't get "what's wrong!?" All day (she's pale). Luckily, she didn't really pass on that pressure. I didn't ever wear makeup in HS. and undergrad. I think both of my sisters did. So makeup wasn't really pushed, but it was around. Some friends definitely had more pressure from home as teenagers (generally in the form of now you're X age you get to wear makeup, isn't that fun), but childhood "painting" wasn't the norm.

I generally only wear foundation when I'm going to work (I prioritize sleeping in over doing more), but will do more on days off. It's fun for me. Sometimes "no makeup makeup." Sometimes more. Can't speak for everyone, but go ahead and roll your eyes. It's for me, so anyone elses approval is immaterial. It sucks that there's pressure for people, especiall women, to do stuff they don't want to (and generally it's to wear makeup more so than not-to, with some exceptions), so if rolling your eyes makes you feel better/helps you fight the patriarchy it's really no skin off my back. We're all just trying to get through the day.
posted by ghost phoneme at 7:16 PM on September 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

I have an art background and for me it's like I love the way this coral lip pencil looks with this dark blue shirt and should I pull the red accents in this dress with a bold stila lippy? Do I want to smoke my eyes out for a low light dive bar? It's so much about completing a look and playing with a look for a context and I'm the canvas and I have so much FUN with it. PS I am 40.
posted by asockpuppet at 7:28 PM on September 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

But when was the last time an FPP about male-identified art and fashion went firepit like this?

Probably just about any discussion of fedoras, anything vaguely "hipster"-identified, and every discussion of Jeff Koons.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:47 PM on September 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'm always curious what the "makeup is bad" folks think that trans women should do, in particular those who transitioned later in life

If you think makeup is going to make any difference in that regard for a lot of us, you're rather mistaken.
posted by Dysk at 8:13 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Why Saying 'It's My Choice' Doesn't Necessarily Make Your Choice Feminist

When she’s with peers, she keeps getting comments about how tired she looks, even questions about her well-being. Her resume gets her lots of interviews, but she still has trouble getting a job. Then she starts wearing makeup. Even just a little foundation and mascara makes a difference. People talk about how good she looks, how healthy. She gets a job. She chose to start wearing makeup, but it wasn’t to fulfill her own desires so much as to better her situation.
posted by a strong female character at 8:17 PM on September 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

Dysk: "If you think makeup is going to make any difference in that regard for a lot of us, you're rather mistaken."

Yes, I definitely didn't mean to imply that it would! It's an option for some, but it's absolutely not an option for all. Nor - of course! - should it be a requirement for those trans women who could pass with the help of makeup etc that they should feel obligated to do so. My apologies if my comment read that way.
posted by langtonsant at 8:26 PM on September 7, 2016

It's so much about completing a look and playing with a look for a context and I'm the canvas and I have so much FUN with it.

This has been part of it for me, at times. Again with the what-about-the-men, I guess, but I don't envy the lack of makeup and fashion choices available to them. (I mean I'm pretty boring at the moment, but my god, I'd be depressed if I were stuck with a lifetime of brown or blue striped sweaters. Every year I've been alive and had to buy presents for men types, there have been - almost only! - brown or blue striped sweaters. Plaid, sometimes. Pink button-downs for the brave.)

Impossible to ignore how weighted and compulsory these choices are for women, but all cultures, at all times, have afforded at least one group the opportunity (yes, burden, but also, opportunity) to show their feathers. Pretty sure beauty (variously defined) has always been valued, because beauty is pleasing to behold. Makeup is a democratizer of beauty (mostly for women, here [presumed MeFi audiencewise] & now. Although, escape from the potato planet, off the top of my head, I can think of five men in my personal acquaintance who wear eyeliner that's meant to be noticed.) I'm pretty sure all humans are fundamentally self-obsessed, too, and that pleasure or at least acceptance of, or comfort with our visual presentation informs self-esteem to a reasonably important degree, even if our sense of ourselves is refracted through others' perceptions of us. (Which it can only be, really.)

(I do wear makeup to conceal, because I have rosacea. I think it's *great* that I don't have to live with the look of it if I don't want to. And I don't want to! And, I don't believe any kind of deity put it there, for example, like it's mine, so I feel like I've got the right to paint it. Fetishizing "nature" is fundamentally undemocratic.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 8:49 PM on September 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

geek anachronism, I really like your take on it.
posted by emjaybee at 9:12 PM on September 7, 2016

My god, it is tiresome to have it constantly thrown in my face that I only like makeup because I'm brainwashed into thinking I need it, I'm a tool of the patriarchy, whatever. It's fine. You hate makeup and you think people who wear it are too stupid to know why they wear it, they're just being good little mindless automatons who can't possibly be feminist because of eyeliner. Maybe just own up to that and save us all some time.
posted by palomar at 9:24 PM on September 7, 2016 [11 favorites]

And here I was just ginning up an FPP on Alicia Keys. Heh.

Makeup has shipped from my house, directly to the makeup artist of Alicia Keys, specifically for whatever awards show she was just on where everyone decided she wasn't wearing anything.

I don't follow the issue, but according to my GF, a pro artist rep for MUFE who shipped said makeup, Keys is wearing much less than she used to, but she is definitely wearing all kinds of stuff.
posted by sideshow at 9:27 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

As I was just bemoaning on the recent FPP about being single, I'm largely invisible to men (or the kind who are discerning about things like makeup, anyway). My mother was never into makeup when I was a kid, and I grew up in a pretty non-frilly household all around, so I feel like I missed out on a lot of the fun and skill-growth of playing with makeup when I was younger. But I definitely wear some almost everyday now, and yeah, it's for me. I'm the one who spends far and away the most time staring at my face, after all. I like how I can get rid of the rosacea patches and minimize the traumatic scar and make my eyes sparklier or brighter or more mysterious, depending on my mood/venue/outfit, whatever. I'll never have the skill or the patience to go full on Sephora Employee, but I enjoy this as a part of my routine. It's a brief bit of daily time I get to be happy about looking at myself, and I refuse to be told that it's a bad thing.

(Relatedly, I'm the only one who lives with my own legs 100% of the time and damn do I love how they feel when freshly shaved. Do what you want with your own hair, but allow me the courtesy of enjoying what I like to do to mine...)
posted by TwoStride at 9:49 PM on September 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

In theory I'd probably look better with makeup on, but in practice it's a creasy, smudgy disaster that looks even worse the next morning due to my consistent inability to get it all off. I'm so fair that anything I put on becomes Very Obvious. It also makes my skin break out.

I guess what I'm saying is it's never felt like a choice to me. It's just something I obviously shouldn't do. I'm sure if I went for the most expensive stuff and practiced techniques it would Change My Life Forever, but I'd rather spend my time/money/effort on other things. If it looks like I don't take care of myself, oh well. I'm too busy focusing on my exercise/nutrition/sleep schedule (not to mention trying to do an awesome job at work, keep my house clean, and occasionally have a social life) to mind.

As for others, I'm kind of whatever on the subject. I don't even want to say "whatever makes them feel pretty" because I know being pretty isn't near the top of everyone's list (which is another thing I'm whatever on... whatevers all the way down).

I actually don't know if I could tell you who among my colleagues wears/doesn't wear makeup. I guess it's not something I pay attention to.
posted by mantecol at 10:25 PM on September 7, 2016

Thank you, Amnesia and Magnets. Thank you. Yes.
posted by greermahoney at 11:49 PM on September 7, 2016

chinese_fashion: "The article I'd really like to see: "Why You Should Stop Telling Other People What To Do, PERIOD.""

Written by someone who can still get away with telling you what to do, I guess.
posted by chavenet at 3:25 AM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

I suggest either manufacturing your own pigments

To be honest with all the time I spend mining and smelting copper so I can build my own computer to post to MeFi, I'm not sure I have time to make all the makeup pigments too. How do you do it? Got any tips? If you could explain how you fit it around keeping your power supply maintained that would be great. Oh btw, do you use renewables (what sort of furnace do you use to refine the silicates?) or refine your own crude oil? I have more questions but I need to go and empty the rainwater reservoirs so I can irrigate the crops.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:04 AM on September 8, 2016 [11 favorites]

My thoughts on make up are pretty much like my thoughts on workplace clothing in general. If you're a man, you've got very little work to do -- professional looking clothes are easily available, even if they all look fairly similar to each other. If you're a woman and you enjoy putting color combinations together and staying in touch with fashion, you may enjoy assembling a wardrobe.

I don't. I -- despite being very much cis-gendered -- am unendingly envious of the boring, homogeneous, and unarguably professional appearance of men's business casual clothing, most of which seems to be available at clothing that stores that only sell women's fast fashion. I hate shopping for new clothing, and I'd much rather be able to reach into my closet and pull out one of a dozen button-up shirts.

I've learned to use makeup because I have to, and I need to learn to use it better than I do now. It's a burden that falls almost exclusively on women in the business world, and it's one that only escalates as I get older.

Framing this as a choice is stupid. No one should be telling me not to wear makeup, for the exact same reason why no one should be telling me not to wear work-appropriate clothing -- yes, there are people who like work-appropriate clothing, but, more importantly, it has to be worn in many fields.

I despise makeup. I'd burn it to the ground if I could. But I can't, and so I won't, and so this entire article seemed to completely beg the question of why I choose to wear makeup.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 4:40 AM on September 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

I would love to live in a world where I was the "normal" one, and the people who choose to augment their faces are seen the same way as people who choose to dye their hair in unnatural (for them) colors

In the late 80s and early 90s, that WAS the norm. The beauty ideal of that time was the face without a scrap of makeup - very difficult to sustain without shame for me as an acne sufferer, since my face was a bottomless pit of sepsis at the time. I know people claim the sufferer is the only one who cares about this, but when you are sporting obvious infection right out in the open people will openly treat you as if you are dirty, they'll deny anything is wrong with your skin but treat you as contaminated in all other respects.

Once I had finished the extremely difficult, ever-to-be-repeated task of covering the infection, I would add a little color to make the whole exercise less depressing. That was openly frowned upon, though, and was certainly a class marker (as my friend said "most middle-class people don't wear makeup, it's mostly Sharons and Traceys") which probably permanently damaged my lifetime earning potential in ways I have never recovered from.

When Kevyn Aucoin did some "let's go all out with some extravagant looks" makeovers for Allure magazine - which would look pretty basic by today's standards - there was condemnation in the following month's letters to the editor, of which a typical one was "it takes longer to make toast than to do my face".

Now that my skin is perfect as long as I spend at least 30 minutes a day on it, I can safely say I do wear makeup purely for fun. In some ways it is a shame that the polarity has reversed and drag makeup is now a norm, but that doesn't mean demanding natural beauty is any less oppressive. Getting skin diseases under control is extremely, extremely, extremely difficult and very, very time consuming - acne doesn't go away because you decide not to have it any more - and demanding that we walk around with it all on display isn't really any less oppressive than demanding we all go around with Kardashian face day and night. At least not in my experience.
posted by tel3path at 5:13 AM on September 8, 2016 [11 favorites]

Severe acne has been correlated with depression and suicide risk in adolescents (e.g. 1, 2, 3). Suffering from judgement and ridicule in those formative years, when people are learning to present themselves (ie their face) to others, has consequences. (I know one person who never got over it, and did end up taking their life much later... There were other contributors, but the experience marked them deeply, they still talked about it as an adult.)

Obviously this is grounds for supporting early dermatological treatment, but if people (women or men) want to lean on makeup to get by, insisting on going au naturel is indeed cruel.
posted by cotton dress sock at 5:49 AM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Waterproof makeup is a very real thing and a lot of us have perfected a full face of it.

My experience on Warped Tour (spending days in the sweaty sun) confirms this.

Ok someone please tell me more about this sweat-proof makeup because one reason I gave up makeup is I moved to the South and my face melted off in the humidity.

Oh and if there's sunscreen that I can put on my forehead without having chemical burns in my eyes a couple hours later, that would be nice too. "Waterproof" sunscreen apparently =/= sweatproof.
posted by Jacqueline at 5:55 AM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

And I want to add that even grown people who want to wear makeup have their own adjustment reasons. Maybe it is about improving their odds of finding or keeping work. Maybe it's about being able to just feel comfortable and settled with themselves when they look in the mirror and begin their day. Wearing makeup may not be feminist, as a strong female's character's cartoon suggests, but to insist on political consistency as it manifests on one's face (which the cartoon doesn't recommend, btw), is to prioritize ends over means - for others - in a really chilling (to me) way. I mean, yes there are interesting implications and complications involved (I like what Frowner was saying above, about makeup freezing and perceptions of gender difference, further essentializing them), but there have got to be more important battles to be concerned about.
posted by cotton dress sock at 6:04 AM on September 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

This is what I got judgement for in the late 80s and early 90s, when the natural look reigned supreme and my acne raged out of control and my skin literally dripped with grease.

And to give some more perspective about the natural look, I briefly had a job in department store perfume sales where by the nature of the job we were literally required to wear a full face of makeup, including a minimum of three eyeshadows (no contour or false lashes, though - those were considered extreme, not everyday techniques). The boss, though, who had a back office position, went completely barefaced and boasted that she did so. She was representing the highest ideal, the rest of us were representing the ideal that was commercially necessary in context.

ANYWAY. Here is what I got shamed for, back in the day:

1. having acne.
2. believing I had acne.
3. trying to treat my acne.
4. trying to treat my acne with pharmaceutical treatments instead of changing my diet to eliminate all refined sugars, meat, dairy, fat (it was the low fat dieting era too) salt, flour/gluten, potatoes, shellfish and caffeine and failing to drink at least two litres of water per day.
5. not wanting to treat my acne with either tiny doses or massive doses of tetracycline or erythromycin (dosages/types of antibiotic were changed after I protested when they failed to have any effect at all after two months).
6. putting myself through the fasts required to time the dosages of said antibiotics (two hours after a meal or an hour before a meal, don't take it with milk, the massive doses had to be taken four times a day).
7. taking hormonal birth control to treat the acne ("oh I'm loath to put anything unnatural into MY body")
8. spending time trying to treat the acne
9. spending money trying to treat the acne
10. wanting to treat the acne for my own satisfaction
11. imagining others were thinking less of me for having the acne (in many cases they didn't, but I did also get some unmistakably disgusted reactions, which are hard to avoid when your skin is oozing pus or dripping with grease despite your best efforts - it's considered "paranoid", a sign of mental illness, to acknowledge this though, in the same way getting a repairman to fix a gas leak is considered "OCD" - as I also experienced many times, regardless that there was in fact a gas leak each time)
12. applying makeup in an effort to cover up the acne
13. applying makeup for ornamental purposes
14. applying the wrong colour of makeup in an effort to cover up the acne (which was fair comment, the problem was that nobody manufactured concealer in the right colour until Prescriptives became available in the UK, and even then I had to coordinate it with foundation which oxidizes to orange in reaction to my skin chemistry even if it starts out as the right colour)
15. spending money on makeup
16. spending time on makeup, especially, repairing makeup as it slid off my greasy skin, which it did within 15 minutes of application - I really had to restrain myself to keep it to twice a day
17. spending too long in the shower (~10 mins each morning)
18. washing my hair daily
19. using hairspray
...etc.

And sometime in the middle of this I had to start factoring sunscreen into my hard won routine, which made it an order of magnitude more complicated.

Still, at 46 I finally have nearly complete control of the acne - I no longer even get acne on my scalp - and am able to get washed and dressed and styled, from soup to nuts, in a span of one hour each morning, even if I'm wearing full makeup (which I do about every third day) and full-body sunscreen (which I often do during the warmer months). I've also gotten scorn for going to that much trouble, which is why I will never again try to share what I've learned from experience about how to coordinate this extremely complex set of variables. I'm not 19 any more and so I no longer need to listen to superior comments about this from anyone; they just go straight into my Rolodex of the Rude with no credence given. That is one of the great pleasures of being over 40, which more than compensates for the fact that despite what I was told in an effort to discourage me from seeking treatment, my "teenage" acne has never gone away and still requires constant vigilance and effort to control.
posted by tel3path at 6:23 AM on September 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

AND I should add that that was also the era in which I read Susan Brownmiller's "Femininity" and found it enlightening and essential reading, though it didn't make me want to give up makeup. I agree, now, with the analysis but not the conclusion that it is antifeminist to wear makeup; at the time it just added to my guilt. I would still put that book on my list of recommended reading though.
posted by tel3path at 6:34 AM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh, and it is a relevant point that much of the shaming I got for time spent on this was based on other women's assertion that their lifestyles were superior because they were spending their time caring for others instead of in front of the mirror. Which I don't disagree with, I think other women's lifestyles are probably superior. I always have known I wasn't a proper woman for not having the same life experiences the prototypical woman is expected to have. At the same time, I might've liked to get married and have children too, and that's not gonna happen for me now, and spending less time getting dressed won't change that.
posted by tel3path at 6:38 AM on September 8, 2016

I think there's a temperament issue that gets mixed up in these conversations, and it's a temperament issue that does present a political complication:

Many women like at least some aspects of wearing makeup; some women hate pretty much all aspects of wearing make-up.

If you like some aspects of wearing make-up, there's a little joy to be recuperated even in the most mandatory, blah, work-appropriate applications; even if you're picking a new work-appropriate lipstick it's at least somewhat interesting to see all the different shades of coral/pink/ that are available and to check out the new formulations. If you don't like make-up at all, there's not, and the whole thing feels like a horrible chore.

Similarly, because I am a clothes horse, even shopping for something really boring or hard-to-find has an element of interest, and even planning blah, femme-passing outfits for an annual work shindig has a glimmer of interest. People who really just want to throw on a tee shirt and jeans and call it a day don't experience that.

It seems like there's always a big split in these conversations between people who hate make-up and people who like at least some aspects of it. It's easy to say that this should not matter (and I think we have a broad consensus on metafilter that telling other people to wear/not-wear make-up is wrong) but there is a real issue for the people who just hate it.

Why? So if I decide I'm going to break down and wear make-up, I have to do something I really hate every single day and I have to be conscious enough of my make-up (which I wore regularly in my teens and early twenties) to maintain it through the day. I don't get the little thrill that people who like make-up get; it's just something I hate, on my face, every day, that I have to shop for and maintain and fuss with and update so I don't look risibly dated. It's a very intrusive beauty thing if you don't like it, and it's something that you are doing exclusively to pass. It's also something that men don't have to do, so you're constantly looking at people who face no penalty when they avoid this horrible, boring chore.

And if I decide that I'll wear make-up only for job interviews, well, I either have to practice a lot to get good at it, or I run the risk of applying it badly day-of and looking wrong, and there's a penalty for that.

We know that women who don't wear make-up are treated less well and have career effects - saying "you do you, don't wear make-up if you don't like it" is probably the only reasonable thing to say, but there's a real cost.

The normalizing pressure exerted by this is a real thing that really does make one small but intrusive aspect of daily life worse for women who don't like make-up, and yet it's obviously not something that can be addressed by telling people not to wear make-up. It does seem like a largely intractable problem, though - just saying "be yourself, small percentage of women who really hate wearing make-up, change the social norms by being yourself!" has not worked well that I have observed over my lifetime.
posted by Frowner at 6:40 AM on September 8, 2016 [21 favorites]

It's not only that, it's that there are literally no right choices to make. Wearing makeup is bad and wrong, not wearing makeup is bad and wrong too. The only consistent social norm is that women are doing female embodiment wrong.

I mean The Beauty Myth does grate a little bit in hindsight (another early 90s book) but it was undeniably right about this.

Faced with such a no-win situation the only choice I can make with any real integrity is to do whatever the fuck *I* want, even if my reasons for wanting it are not pure; after all, they literally can't be. You can't make a legal move when the system is in an illegal state.
posted by tel3path at 6:46 AM on September 8, 2016 [21 favorites]

Severe acne has been correlated with depression and suicide risk in adolescents (e.g. 1, 2, 3). Suffering from judgement and ridicule in those formative years, when people are learning to present themselves (ie their face) to others, has consequences.

A girl I dated in high school offers a slightly different twist on this: she suffered from acne that was aggravated by sensitivity to makeup. She wore makeup initially because it was the socially approved thing to do to be a woman, it caused her to develop acne, and from that point on she felt caught in a trap, using makeup to conceal the harm the makeup was doing. (That, incidentally, is also in a lot of ways how addictive disorders work in their acute stages, in my personal experience.)
posted by saulgoodman at 6:56 AM on September 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

I guess I'm just really skeptical of the idea that you can choose your way out of patriarchy. I don't think that I enjoy wearing makeup for some pure, non-patriarchal reason: my entire psyche is colonized by patriarchy. I don't know that anything that I think or do is totally pure. But I also don't think that I can just choose not to wear makeup and be done with it: I've chosen the feminist choice, so yay! I think that patriarchy also influences the idea that makeup is bad: it's associated with femininity, so it must be vapid and wasteful. I think that wearing makeup can feel like armor and give me confidence to do things that, possibly for reasons of patriarchy, I am reluctant or scared to do. I think that, like most things in life, it's complicated, and I don't feel like I even totally understand my own choices around makeup, let alone feel comfortable judging anyone else's.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:58 AM on September 8, 2016 [20 favorites]

If you're over (I want to say), 38, saulgoodman, when you were in high school, a lot of the drugstore formulations were atrocious. OTC skin care amounted to face-brutalizing products like Noxema or Sea Breeze, which a lot of teens applied with a shame-infused vigour that tends to worsen skin issues. These days, even OTC products are more sophisticated, and there are easily accessible places (blogs, review sites) that help even teens make more informed choices. No longer do they have to be slaves to marketers.

(The comparison to addiction - sorry, haven't consumed enough coffee to respond appropriately.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 7:01 AM on September 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

My god, it is tiresome to have it constantly thrown in my face that I only like makeup because I'm brainwashed into thinking I need it, I'm a tool of the patriarchy, whatever. It's fine. You hate makeup and you think people who wear it are too stupid to know why they wear it, they're just being good little mindless automatons who can't possibly be feminist because of eyeliner. Maybe just own up to that and save us all some time.

A political critique or school of thought that happens to rough up against one or more of your personal preferences is not equivalent to being told that you're a "good little mindless automaton who can't possibly be feminist because of eyeliner." It just isn't. Who here has said anything like this? Stupid? Brainwashed? If you think there are certain practices that are genuinely above examination, you can just say that; you don't have to put words in anyone else's mouth to do it. I am a big "personal is political" proponent but ymmv.

For real though, if you're a grown woman in the United States who has figured how to insulate yourself from the effects of the patriarchy to such a degree that you consider yourself to have utterly free will specifically when it comes to using cosmetics, I am a) indescribably fucking jealous and b) desperate to know how you did it. Because I've been awash in hardline feminist and separatist thinkers since birth, I've spent my whole life failing at gender, and I consider myself a bona fide misandrist, but I'm still only just now - after 34 years! - getting to a point where I feel like I'm not necessarily making decisions based on what men want me to do. I don't even really interact with men outside of work, and I actively want them to leave me alone, but an abiding awareness of their preferences (not to mention my failure to meet them) is still buried inside my head a la this Atwood quote:

Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.

Analyzing the tendency of society to present women with a set of false choices in many arenas, especially aesthetics, doesn't involve cordoning off a subset of us as "tools of the patriarchy." It only has to do with recognizing that we live in a world where certain choices are encouraged so much that they're made out to seem inevitable. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the most readily encouraged, seemingly inevitable choices tend to align with the best interests of male supremacy. If you want to personally disclaim the deeply internalized and subconscious nature of so many forms of patriarchy and misogyny, feel free, but I just don't understand how acknowledging the existence of myriad pressures to [in this case, wear makeup] could be considered an accusation that you've been brainwashed into it.
posted by amnesia and magnets at 7:21 AM on September 8, 2016 [19 favorites]

Saulgoodman, I am *not* saying your gf's experience that makeup caused acne isn't true, if that was her experience I believe it. Skin problems are idiosyncratic, which is why they pose such hard problems for us all. I'm about to speak from my own experience, not presuming on anyone else's. With that said, here I go:

I was *told* that makeup was the cause of my skin problems, and that my insistence on continuing to try to use it constituted an addiction. Add that to the fact that I was also told I was paranoid (for thinking that others sometimes perceived me as dirty for having acne) and OCD (for perceiving gas leaks and getting them fixed) we now have three mental illnesses, or symptoms thereof, that I was routinely accused of having *just for trying to live my life* as a young woman. COINCIDENCE?!?

I'll also say, on a purely pragmatic note, that I did have an issue with this which resolved when I figured out a technique of washing my face *twice* at night - once for removing makeup and *then* for getting it clean. Yes, I did get pushback from people who caught me doing it and were like BUT DON'T YOU KNOW OVERWASHING IS THE ACTUAL CAUSE OF ACNE (which maybe it is but I wasn't overwashing) and I also got a comment from my GP that "there's no evidence to suggest that the way you wash it is essential" which, okay, at least she was arguing from evidence, (though in my anecdotal experience actually getting my face *clean* was essential, and I had at least found a technique for achieving that).

But anyway, yeah, now that I've reached a point in life where I rarely get accused to my face of being crazy and apparently am not presumed to be such by the majority of important people in my life, it sure is remarkable how often my behaviour was pathologized in the past. And I mean I don't doubt that makeup *is* an addiction for many people in one way or another and I wouldn't want *that* to go unacknowledged. At all! (Anyone read Marilyn French's The Women's Room on this subject? It rings very very true, the fact that some women hate their faces without makeup; my nuance was more that I hated my acne, and I hate my face, but I don't hate my face without makeup per se...) I also think it's noteworthy that women get called crazy, A lot. And that routine feminine practices get pathologized. A lot. Whether or not they actually are in any individual case.
posted by tel3path at 7:34 AM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean I've had such a nexus of experiences around all this and thought about it so much over my lifetime, and in so many ways, it's an argument where everyone is right. (Except outright deliberate misogynists, who don't count.)

I always liked the episode of Babylon 5 where Delenn has metamorphosed into a humanoid woman from her original Minbari form. I was going along expecting the transition to be completely frictionless, since that's how metamorphosis stories usually go in sci-fi and anyway Delenn was someone who was always utterly poised and in control.

Instead, we got a Delenn locked in mortal combat with her hair, and being completely undone by her inability to control it. She begs Susan Ivanova for help, and it turns out she's been trying to wash her hair with her usual Minbari exfoliant. Then she asks Susan to explain why she's been getting these odd cramps.

The episode was written by Peter David, a dude who obviously really gets it about how feminine (even female) embodiment doesn't just happen out of the box, the struggle is real.
posted by tel3path at 7:46 AM on September 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Take the blue eyshadow, you wake up in your bed believing what you want to believe. Take the red lipstick, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes...
posted by tel3path at 7:51 AM on September 8, 2016

Here's the thing, amnesia and magnets: I really am not making my makeup decisions based on what men think. AT ALL. I truly do not give a shit what some rando thinks of my looks. If you need to paint this as me denying that I'm succumbing to male fantasy, then I guess do whatever you need to, but I reject this line of thought.
posted by palomar at 9:10 AM on September 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

Good on you, for real. I've just never encountered anyone else who has so totally immunized themselves to internalized misogyny before, or anyone at all who frames their thought processes as having come to fruition fully independent from a patriarchal framework. For any individual to have the ability to state with absolute certainty that the male gaze has not influenced them or their decisions in any way is completely novel to me, and I spend a ton of time in the company of lesbian separatists. Feminists have been trying to figure out how to excise the patriarchy's most insidious tentacles from our collective psychology for generations, and it hasn't exactly been easy... or successful. So to say the least, I'm intrigued by the notion that a woman who wants to opt out of one or more of the patriarchy's effects on her life needs nothing more than to make a conscious decision to stop giving a shit about it.
posted by amnesia and magnets at 10:04 AM on September 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

amnesia and magnets, it's been a long time since I've thought about this with any precision, and the analogy to sexuality may not be perfectly comparable, but (in my foggy, webby recollection) it seems to me (and according to some) that reducing choices about self-presentation and self-enactment (and related pleasures) to either/or - oppressed and self-denying, or actively resistant, may not be desirable or even possible. (And what concept of femininity, or just being, is wearing makeup opposed against? What virtues are engaged by that position, are they absolute or natural? Ever?) As people have said, it's a rigged game, we're all kind of playing it the best ways we can. And our playing is motivated by things like survival (as an economic fact as much as on the terms of ego) as much as delight (or pain). And it's possible to play with some awareness of the rules, hating the rules as much as you (also) enjoy what they make possible.
posted by cotton dress sock at 10:28 AM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm intrigued by the notion that a woman who wants to opt out of one or more of the patriarchy's effects on her life needs nothing more than to make a conscious decision to stop giving a shit about it.

What else would we possibly need? I'm baffled that you seem to think we would need something other than a distinct lack of fucks to give.

Sure, I gave a shit for a while when I was a teenager. Then I moved abroad for a while, realized I didn't have to put up with that nonsense, and have not put up with it since. Not even from my husband. He used to sometimes remark on not liking this or that thing that I wore, and learned to shut up after a few times of flat "That's nice, dear.", followed by me not changing what I was wearing.

Now, at 46? I REALLY have no fucks to give. I can't be bothered to live my life for others, I'm way too busy living it for me.
posted by MissySedai at 10:29 AM on September 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

I mean, what authority do you think I need to get permission from in order to not give a shit about what people think? WHY is my own authority on this matter not enough?
posted by palomar at 11:16 AM on September 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

What else would we possibly need? I'm baffled that you seem to think we would need something other than a distinct lack of fucks to give.

I'm baffled that you seem to think whether or not any woman personally, consciously gives a fuck has anything at all to do with whether or not the growth and development of her psychology took (/continues to take) place in a male supremacist society. I feel like we're talking about two different phenomena: individual experience and class analysis.

If we aren't, can other oppressed classes opt out of other types of prejudicial treatment through sheer force of will, or just this one? We'll have to agree to disagree that a woman can exempt herself from misogyny's effect on her life simply by changing her own mind, but I'm curious to see how it would play out in other arenas. I don't put up with shit either, but I wouldn't dream of declaring that my personal refusal has had any material bearing on the fact that doors in life are regularly opened and closed to me and other women based entirely on our acquiescence (or lack thereof) to men's preferences about how we look, speak, act, eat, sleep, fuck, and think. I don't give a damn what men think about... well, anything, because they're 100% irrelevant to the trajectory of my life, but I'm also painfully aware that what men think about everything has been influencing me since before I was old enough to speak.

Echoing ArbitraryAndCapricious, my entire psyche is colonized by patriarchy. No matter how deftly I fortify the boundaries of my heart and mind to minimize its influence, making a decision (especially an aesthetic decision) that could be honestly considered wholly unaffected by it... I dunno, it just doesn't feel like a realistic possibility to me, and I'm moving to a goddamn lesbian commune.
posted by amnesia and magnets at 11:23 AM on September 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

Yeah, I think we're talking about ourselves and you're expecting us to answer for all of society. Which isn't working out well.
posted by palomar at 11:32 AM on September 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm not expecting anything of you! Jeez.
posted by amnesia and magnets at 11:37 AM on September 8, 2016

I feel like there's an interesting question here which gets missed, partly because it's very difficult: How to get at ways in which we're affected at an unconscious level by patriarchy when they are, after all, unconscious? And maybe also the question of how to describe ourselves if "totally colonized by patriarchy" doesn't seem sufficient?

For example: I used to think that I, unlike many other people read as women, was totally unafraid to walk around alone. I mean, I walk around alone at night all the time. I never worry about being sexually assaulted. I rarely even worry about being mugged. I put this down to somewhat weird socialization and being a blocky, wide-shouldered person.

And then I realized (because of metafilter, actually) that without even being conscious of it, I am always doing a bunch of things: constantly scanning the area for people while appearing to stare into the middle distance; keeping track of where everyone was around me at all times (I'm very hard to surprise when walking); being very careful to keep my facial muscles relaxed and neutral so that my expression could not become an excuse for someone to interact with me; and never making eye-contact with passers-by while giving the impression that I am looking at something fascinating nearby rather than ignoring them. And that I did these things far more intensely around men.

Actually, I am afraid to walk around alone, but I learned to manage this fear so early and so automatically that I don't even think about it.

So to my conscious mind for most of my adult life, I was giving zero fucks about men while walking around alone. Unconsciously, it was all fucks all the time.

I tend to think that we're all socialized by patriarchy in these ways that are very tricky even to notice because they're rooted so deep. Up to a point, I think we can surface these things and either neutralize them by rendering them conscious or uproot them - that is, get to the point of giving zero fucks.

But there's a lot of stuff that is so embedded in how we interact with the world (like walking around!) that it is very difficult to truly give zero fucks, even if we're sort of automated the mental/emotional process so that the giving no longer takes up much mental space.

It seems very tricky to me because we come into being through these social systems - racism, patriarchy, homophobia, class inequality, and because of this I think it's hard not to think of ourselves EITHER as totally free because we consciously choose our freedom OR as totally unconsciously constrained because we come into being through these systems.

If you're pragmatic, you think "we're all doing the best we can, clean living under difficult circumstances and so on" and go on with your day. It just gets tricky when one tries to think it through.
posted by Frowner at 11:58 AM on September 8, 2016 [21 favorites]

Mod note: Couple of comments deleted; this clearly got more personal than intended. So palomar and amnesia and magnets, probably best to just let it rest between the two of you.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:59 AM on September 8, 2016

It seems obvious to me that it's impossible to generate completely novel ways of being, behaving, thinking, ex nihilo. Everything we do or think is a response to and constrained by what's prior to / co-existent with us. We have to respond (or "innovate") on those terms. Usually in some determined way (because the things we want are determined by prior wants, none of which anyone chose... cultural associations mix and reconstitute themselves in a more or less naive, or at least seemingly spontaneous, expression, through individuals, organized around their driving motivational and emotional logic, and filtered through the logic of their time, all of which are also not "free"). But so what, in a way? We push and improvise and resist and comply, and over time (and sometimes in bursts), changes happen.
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:14 PM on September 8, 2016

It's a bit like being a brain in a vat: even if I could figure out I'm stuck in a vat, I'm not really going to be able to do much about it, so proceed as if everything is normal. I can't opt out of being judged for my appearance. So if I'm screwed either way, I don't worry about that too much.

If I try to think through what I want, big picture, I don't want to do something because patriarchy (if I can avoid it). But if I choose to do always do/not do something just to push against patriarchy, then I'm still doing something because patriarchy. I would like to avoid that too, if possible. So doing my best to do what makes me happy in the moment whenever I can is the closest I'm going to get. Sometimes that means wearing makeup, sometimes not. I'm lucky that I can generally do what I want without too much in the way of direct negative consequences (like poor performance reviews or something), and the rest I don't have the temperament to care about.

If anything, I've been in circles where the overt push back is against being too overtly feminine (wearing noticeable makeup etc). I recognize that's not everyone's experience, but it's mine. What seems fairly universal is being judged for not doing it right no matter what you do.
posted by ghost phoneme at 12:33 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

tl;dr we can make choices, but we can't make the world.
posted by tel3path at 12:35 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've always been bad at makeup. Really bad. (My kid, who is female, loves makeup and is great at it and I enjoy seeing what she does with it.) Anyway, I tried makeup briefly when I was 14 or so and then gave up on it, mostly, until I met a lover who was really into it. So at 50+ I starting wearing makeup and coloring my hair again because I nearly did not get a job offer because my gray hair made me look too old (not making this up, my future boss told my references I was too old).

Fast forward ten years. I stopped wearing makeup when I broke up with that guy, years ago. Broke up with my most recent lover 6 months ago. Got a buzz cut. Pondered a big birthday coming up. As I explained to a male friend, I'm trying to (forgive me) look as unfuckable as possible. I am trying to learn how to live a life that is all about pleasing myself rather than someone else. "In other words," he said, "you want to live like a man." Yup, I want to live like a man. But my contract is about up so I need to find another job. My outdated LinkedIn profile pic shows me in femme mode, with colored, mid-length hair. Do I dare replace that pic with an updated photo? Probably not. If I try to, will I be wearing makeup with my buzz cut? Absolutely.

TBH, I don't fucking care what choices other people make around their physical presentations, although it made me super happy the three or four times I've seen men wearing skirts or dresses in an everyday context. Anyway, I wish we all had the freedom to be ourselves, however that expresses itself, at work, within reasonable business norms (which I don't think exist in most companies). Alas, there's an actual price that I will most likely pay if I don't wear makeup to job interviews and if I don't look particularly femme. Which I don't. That fact enrages me but it doesn't make me want to tell other women what their makeup habits should be. (Mostly I worry about the potential health effects of wearing makeup as well as the environmental effects but that's how I am about everything.)

I hate how women are so very good at ripping into other women. (#notallwomen, yadda yadda) It's like we're the fiercest enforcers of the patriarchy. Meanwhile, guess I have to go over to Sephora with the gift card a friend gave me 5 years ago (a hint, perhaps?) and figure out how to paint myself up for the coming job search ordeal.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:37 PM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'd like to tack on another dynamic here, which is self-expression vs level of effort.

There are people who are intrinsically neat. They have to keep their place clean; they have organized furniture and well-arranged bookshelves and sparkling clean countertops. Place them in a messy apartment and they'd feel the urge to clean it. I assume there are people who are the opposite -- people who would be so discomforted by a clean, well-organized apartment that they would have to leave things on tables.

I'm not discomforted by neatness. The rare times my apartment has been organized, it feels fantastic. But I'm not the kind of person who instinctively puts in the effort to clean my apartment -- and so it becomes messy, not because I identify as a messy person but because I put effort into other things.

The same goes with makeup and nice outfits. The times I manage to get myself together, I look great. I might favor certain styles, but the fact that I dislike makeup? That's not an expression of my gender identity or some intrinsic meaning. It's an expression of how I would rather do something else with my life.

(Which makes me deeply uncomfortable with saying that I need to do what makes me feel comfortable. Fuck that shit. If I could wake up with blow-dried hair and a full face of makeup, I'd gladly wear it. But the time it takes to put it on is time I'd rather dedicate to other things. That's my issue here.)
posted by steady-state strawberry at 1:08 PM on September 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Which makes me deeply uncomfortable with saying that I need to do what makes me feel comfortable.

Yeah, but you don't need to. Totally possible (and permissible) to be uncomfortable because one doesn't value or have the time for the work required to become comfortable. And sometimes being uncomfortable is useful in unpredictable ways.

(I'm messy by nature, but have come to value a clean place, because of 1) well, hygiene, pests etc (I won't stop if I start on that, so better not), 2) am also highly prone to procrastination, and cleaning is my #1 easy-reward avoidance mechanism (would like to minimize avoidance opportunities), 3) I find that other things that are more challenging than staying neat, like getting places on time, are made vastly less angsty if my laundry's been done and I can find my keys. But, if my place is messy, my discomfort might push me to just get the hell out and try to do what needs doing at a new and (turns out) excellent coffee shop. Being uncomfortable with one's presentation might encourage more interesting compensations. Depends on the cost/benefit balance, I guess. I'm just a little too uncomfortable with visible telangiectasias to be effective at pushing boundaries and whatnot as far as self-presentation's concerned.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 1:26 PM on September 8, 2016

I feel like we're talking about two different phenomena: individual experience and class analysis.

Of course I'm speaking only for myself. I don't have the authority to speak for anyone but me.

Agency is A Thing. I have it. You have it. Yes, we live in a patriarchal society, but that doesn't mean any of us have to quietly go along with it. So I actively choose not to.
posted by MissySedai at 1:43 PM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Thought experiment:
If women truly wore makeup for themselves, with zero influence from the pressures of marketing and culture, they would be equally satisfied with wearing makeup on a hidden body part. Why don't we wear makeup on other parts of our body? Why do we only makeup/paint/polish parts of our body that are part of the marketing/sexual vernacular?

No doubt, by some fluke, such women do exist, just as there are men who feel equally pressured to wear makeup (say 0.1% of the population). But this dialogue is not geared towards them because they aren't influenced by the pressure/dialogue in the first place, and the criticism is that the pressure is causing the makeup, not the makeup in itself.

Can we say that breast augmentation is a choice? How come stilettos aren't marketed towards/pressured on men, even though tall men are considered more good-looking, and cute butts on men are more desirable?

Simple: men are enough without makeup or the peacock routine. Men still judge themselves based on their accomplishments. Women still judge themselves based on whether they are desirable to the other sex.
posted by kinoeye at 9:19 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Please. How do you know that someone isn't wearing a cosmetic on a non-visible body part? It's not visible, which means you can't see it, so...
posted by palomar at 9:24 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

(Can you provide any kind of cite for "cute butts are more desirable on men"? Because, honestly, wtf.)
posted by palomar at 9:25 PM on September 8, 2016

Why don't we wear makeup on other parts of our body? Why do we only makeup/paint/polish parts of our body that are part of the marketing/sexual vernacular?

I think the easy answer to this is that covering makeup with clothing is a good way to get make up all over the inside of your clothing.

On the other hand, take the smearing aspect out and it's plenty easy to find women with hidden/hideable tattoos and fancy toenails under socks and closed toed shoes.
posted by sparklemotion at 9:26 PM on September 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

There would be more evidence of it in the literature/shops/internet/everyday conversation etc etc

Cute butts, as opposed to uncute butts are more desirable on men. Disagree?

Oh and yes, I did go witness a four-year social experiment related to this issue: at the women's college I went to, my peers wore little to no makeup (except for co-ed nights). Post-graduation, so much makeup and dyed hair in their daily lives.
posted by kinoeye at 9:28 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Nails, just like so-placed piercings, hair extensions and waxed body parts, are deemed to enhance sexual attractiveness.
posted by kinoeye at 9:32 PM on September 8, 2016

Still not getting the cute butt thing. Why are you comparing cute vs uncute butts on men and only men? I thought you were saying cute butts are more desirable on men than they are on women, since you were wondering why only women wear high heels. Not making a whole lot of sense here.
posted by palomar at 9:33 PM on September 8, 2016

...my covered toenails are a sex object? What?
posted by palomar at 9:34 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Why don't we wear makeup on other parts of our body?

What makes you certain women don't adorn themselves in hidden places?

My ideal tattoo would never be visible to others. (Needles and I are not friends. It's still on the bucket list.) My DIL's tattoos are all hidden, and they all hold meaning for her. I paint my toenails, even though no one sees my feet all winter. I love loud colors on my toes, they amuse me.

Hell, even makeup on my face is largely "concealed". I work from home. No one sees me but my dogs. I'll still put on a little eyeshadow, though. That little sparkle when I pass the mirror makes me smile. The dogs don't seem to care, they just lick it off when I sit on the couch during my lunch break.

Women still judge themselves based on whether they are desirable to the other sex.

Why the insistence that women are unable to choose for themselves what to care about? Is it an age difference? A matter of who you socialize with? IDGI.

I mean, I was brought up to not give a shit. It drove my Opa batshit that I did care for several years. Then I moved abroad, spent all my time with people similarly devoid of fucks, and thus have I remained. This cranky old broad does not have "desireability" anywhere on her List of Things What Matter.

Palomar and I can't possibly be Magical Unicorns.
posted by MissySedai at 10:02 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ah man, tel3path, story of my life right here re: the policing of one's morning routine. I wrote an essay in high school about it, and things haven't changed much. I've just gone from my father being exasperated with my taking more than 10 minutes in the shower in high school to roommates in college being annoyed by the length of my showers to my husband complaining about the amount of time it takes for me to get ready. If you saw me, you would not think I look high-maintenance! I also just am not some kind of beauty queen in general, and I feel like it's always taken more effort on my part just to look OK than it does for others to look stellar.

I also had some bad acne at times in college, and I have experienced some serious new skin problems in the years since. So now yeah, while it's long taken me almost an hour to get ready, these days there is almost no way that it will take me less than that.

1. Get up and use the restroom
2. Tweet dream if I have time, or turn it around in my head through my shower if I don't
3. Undress
4. Remove eyebrow pencil with both sides of a tea-tree oil cleansing wipe while the shower warms up
5. Get in shower
6. First round of two-in-one shampoo and conditioner; let this stay in my hair
7. Wash body with body wash on a bath puff, being careful not to bend too far over to keep shampoo out of my eyes
8. Rinse hair
9. Wash face with body wash
10. Wash remaining area with body wash
11. Second round of two-in-one shampoo and conditioner; my extremely fine hair is dirty and fuzzy without this
12. Wash feet with body wash
13. Use Salux cloth with body wash to scrub and exfoliate back and other oily parts of my body
14. If it's the weekend and I feel like I actually have time, shave various areas
15. Rinse all soap off, rubbing face gently with my fingers to exfoliate a little as needed
16. Dry off in shower
17. Brush teeth
18. Brush wet hair, to set part and help hair fall naturally later
19. Apply deodorant
20. Apply hemp body lotion all over; without this I get dry, itchy, flaky skin and rashes
21. Put on underwear and/or the rest of my clothes so I can sit down. Deal with any sanitary needs at this time
22. If I'm itching a lot, it may be due to athlete's foot, to which I now get an id reaction; sit down and apply antifungal foot spray or cream while wearing disposable gloves, then wash hands if I do so
23. Carefully put on socks and sandals or shoes, so potential foot fungus doesn't get tracked anywhere
24. Wash my hands, so I don't spread potential foot fungus to my face, which is up next
25. If I'm really itching a lot, take Allegra with water
26. Get up again and put on all-natural face lotion. I used to use Lubriderm, and then I was diagnosed with an allergy to formaldehyde resin, which means I break out when I use a lot of lotions on the market that include formaldehyde-releasing products as preservatives
27. Fill in my eyebrows with eyebrow pencil. I used to use eye pencil and a darker shade of foundation to line my eyelids too, but I quit doing that regularly years ago
28. Put on light foundation to even out my skin tone and cover any blemishes
29. Pluck or shave any stray facial hairs as needed. Ponder again the notion that shaving part of one's face as a woman will cause some irreparable damage
30. Brush my hair again
31. If i'm feeling up to it or I will be going out or otherwise seeing people later, blow-dry my hair. I've increasingly been cutting this out of my routine; everything else takes long enough
32. Either way, style my hair with hair spray, brushing it into place
33. Wash sticky hair spray off hands
34. Spray glasses with lens cleaner and wipe them down
35. Get a yogurt, caffeine water, and a vitamin D supplement
36. Put on bare minimum jewelry: a necklace with my wedding rings
37. Sit down at my desk for the day. I'm tired already. If I'm lucky, it's only been an hour

And I still get misgendered, especially if I decide to skip this for a day and I leave the house. On one hand, I care less about that than ever, since I have certainly embraced my genderqueer nature. On the other hand, it makes me mad that I have to go through all this just to hit baseline, then people still get it wrong when they look at me some percentage of the time. Going for a walk, I get to be self-conscious about this and my weight. I've occasionally passed people on the street and hit a double with that, overhearing some weird comment about my weight and whether I look like a guy.

Anyway, there are reasons for all of the items on the list, and one of the things you have to know and accept about me as a person is that it takes me this long to get ready. I hate it, but I hate anyone who gives me shit about it, too. At this point in my life, I'm not very interested in anyone's ideas about how I could allegedly make my morning routine more efficient. Anyone who's ever worked with me will tell you I am a ridiculously efficient person. Efficiency is not my problem. I also increasingly find myself skipping days of this routine, because believe me, I want to get done with this and get to work as fast as I can, while also sleeping as long as I can. As you can tell, I'm a night owl. Thankfully I work from home and I can be who I am on all fronts without issue. And thankfully I now live somewhere with two bathrooms, so I can complete my morning routine in one space while the other space is in use.

Anyway, many thoughts, and thanks for this post.
posted by limeonaire at 11:13 PM on September 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Women still judge themselves based on whether they are desirable to the other sex.

idk if you're aware but gay people exist, gay women are called "lesbians", you can google the word for more information.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:17 PM on September 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

Coming at this from a different angle, some (most?) inexpensive makeup (i.e. the stuff teens would buy) contains toxic ingredients. It is a public health issue and we should be talking about it. (That's the first time the word "toxic" has been used in this thread.) I don't know a lot of specifics because I just stay away, but I think it's sad/scary to think that half of us are encouraged to apply health-compromising compounds to our bodies while the other half are not.

I wonder whether, if makeup were something that men typically wore, there would be more of a push for regulation and preventing bad products from flooding the market.
posted by mantecol at 11:22 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Women still judge themselves based on whether they are desirable to the other sex.

Transphobia is everywhere!
posted by Dysk at 11:53 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm actually fairly certain that being attractive to men is not the reason I paint my toenails. And I don't think that I do get a ton of social validation for my home pedicures, which no one sees for months out of the year and which are typically in colors that probably are considered not age appropriate. I enjoy the ritual of painting my toenails, and I get a kick out of having toes that are sparkly and/or purple.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:04 AM on September 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

the only thing i do specifically for men is get ripped so i can crush them like puny grapes with my thighs if i need to
posted by poffin boffin at 12:47 AM on September 9, 2016 [9 favorites]

I know a handful of men who paint their toenails. What fun little assumptions can we make about why they do it, and who they're doing it for?
posted by palomar at 6:36 AM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

This thread is basically the conversation that I've been having in my head since I was about fourteen years old. At various points "wearing make-up" has been replaced by "dieting/not dieting," "dressing in a conventionally/unconventionally feminine way," "styling hair certain way," "shaving legs/not shaving legs," "high heels/not high heels." I think I've been on both sides of all debates at the same time all the time for most of my life since puberty (hell, since before puberty). I respect everyone's opinions on the matter and decisions to do what they choose. Everyone should be able to do/wear/style/present as what they choose.

But from a personaly standpoint? I'm forty years old, forty fucking years old, and I like to pretend that I don't give a shit (fake it til you make it, right?, and most of the time I do a good enough job that I sometimes fool myself. I say I look this way entirely because I want to. That's not true though. Not really. Because I still have the occasional teenage-level meltdown about having nothing to wear. And I still avoid looking too long at my naked self in the mirror because that way lies madness and endless self-recrimination. And I still pose and want to put on lipstick when people take pictures of me, even if we're in the middle of the woods and filthy and it doesn't fucking matter. I still wonder all the time whether I'm lonley or unhappy or unsuccessful because I'm not beautiful or, you know, not beautiful in the right way.

I come from a family of pretty powerful women that also happen to be conventionally beautiful. Or conventionally beautiful women who also happen to be pretty powerful. I don't think the two points are unrelated. They are powerful because they are charismatic and likeable and convincing. And they are those things, in part, because they are attractive and confident and people like looking at them. Mine was a matriarchal upbringing but among matriarchs who were all about working the patriarchy. Sure you should be smart and be yourself, but you catch more flies with honey, so why don't you put on a little blush and some lipstick, then make sure you smile and just toss your hair around a little bit To my face, they would tell me a person's appearance didn't matter and then they would speculate that if your friend Frances would just lose a little weight and do something about her eyebrows, she'd probably find a boyfriend and maybe have an easier time finding a job with benefits as well. And it sucked and it was shitty, but guys, they're not stupid and I'm not blind, and, 99.9% of the time it's true.

Stream of consciousness self esteem crisis aside: I don't think there's anyway to divorce make-up, as conventionally worn, from its bullshit patriarchal heritage. Because when I put on lipstick and think I look pretty, it's a pretty that's been defined by someone else. I had no say in it. Even if I've long since, unknowingly adopted as if by osmosis that standard of pretty as my own and I like looking that way, it doesn't change the fact that it's not my pretty. I don't know how to disentangle myself from it. I don't even know how to determine what my pretty is. Or even if pretty is a thing I aspire to. I'm an ex punk rocker. I've chosen, at points, to be reactively ugly. I keep my hair short and wear party dresses. I like giant rhinestone earrings and sensible shoes. But I have to live in this world, and even in my world, which is mostly full of artists and academics and activists, who'd publicly roll their eyes at any notion of keeping up appearances, it matters. I dream of a world where it doesn't. We're not there yet. Maybe we'll never be there. But a girl can hope, and until then, I cannot with good conscience, tell you that make-up is my choice.
posted by thivaia at 7:07 AM on September 9, 2016 [12 favorites]

I'm sorry, but I truly don't understand how something is not your pretty if it's something that you are choosing to adorn yourself with. You're choosing the lip color and you're the one applying it to your mouth, why are you claiming that you have zero agency in that decision?
posted by palomar at 7:13 AM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have plenty of agency when it comes to shopping for a lip color I like and choosing to wear it. I like doing both things because I like how I look when I do. However, I had zero agency in developing the long held, widely embraced notion that women's lips should be shiny and plump and well shaped, usually red or pink or brown(though other colors are acceptable so long as applied neatly) and nobody wants to see those unsightly hairs on the upper lip. And thus, I think I look pretty when I look like that, but only because my lips then conform to a definition of pretty that was written decades or centuries or eons ago. Not because I'm like "Wow, rosy brown lip sheen* really speaks to my innermost soul.

* I do like** it when it has the gold flecks in it, though.

**Am I conflicted? Do I equivocate? Does my clear fondness for the sparkly, scented, nougaty, I dream of Sephora shopping sprees high tide of ambivalence keep me from coming down hard on one side or other? Yes To All.
posted by thivaia at 7:49 AM on September 9, 2016 [10 favorites]

Can we say that breast augmentation is a choice?

Yes? I haven't had it. Have you? If so, why? Bodily Autonomy, like Agency, is A Thing.

I know a handful of men who paint their toenails.

My son does. Because he can't paint his fingernails - health department would kick his ass. He's a chef, so no polish chips in the food, please! Sometimes he'll paint mine for me, when the arthritis is being an asshole and I can't do it myself. He's also the only man I pay any mind to when it comes to makeup. "Ma, you're gonna poke your eye out. Let me do that."

I cannot with good conscience, tell you that make-up is my choice.

Why ever not?
posted by MissySedai at 8:08 AM on September 9, 2016

You know, we see a lot of evidence that the "unseen hand" forces all kinds of opinions in other areas of life - internalized homophobia about appearance (gay men worrying about looking too femme; gay women who don't want to look too butch, plus plenty more assorted variety anxieties) and colorism spring readily to mind.

Surely we're not arguing that a young woman in a society biased against dark skin who buys products to make her skin look lighter is only responding to some soul-deep desire to be pale. Or that a woman in a society where women are supposed to be fine-boned and flat-stomached who buys clothes to make her wide shoulders look narrower or buys pants with those "tummy panel" inserts is purely responding to some pure, unmarred internal identity.

I am a gender-non-conforming masculine spectrum person who - with very rare exception - is not romantically interested in men. I have an awesome vaguely Kate-McKinnon, vaguely men's style-blogger alternative lifestyles haircut. Even as we speak I am wearing a button-down, men's pants and minimalist sneakers, plus zero make-up. I am considered a sharp dresser in my social circles.

And yet I still, occasionally, really wish that I was pretty so that men would like me and I would feel validated. Even though this would do nothing at all for me sexually or romantically and would involve a return to clothes and body homework that I have long since very happily abandoned (and that didn't suit my body or face even when I worked at them).

One is naturally not supposed to admit this, because men think it's a gotcha ("Frowner - only queer because UGGGGGGGLLLLYY, lol!!") and women think you're feeble.

I am unconvinced by the "make-up is 100% freedom" narrative because I can't find any other aspect of appearance that is 100% freedom.
posted by Frowner at 8:14 AM on September 9, 2016 [18 favorites]

You guys are all making me want to go out and buy lipstick.
posted by amanda at 8:55 AM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

You guys are all making me want to go out and buy lipstick.

In case you want some recommendations…
posted by Lexica at 10:50 AM on September 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

I just got hooked on the lipstick from Besame Cosmetics. All their shades are reproductions of popular lipsticks from previous decades -- I think my favorite is Victory Red, from 1941.
posted by palomar at 10:55 AM on September 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm usually more into dramatic eye makeup, but when it comes to lipstick, I am all over Urban Decay. The new Jawbreaker and Pandemonium are killer, and my old standby of Cruel is always fun. Sephora's in-house line is pretty great, too. I've got this gothic purple one that I adore, and it works well with silver shimmer laid over.

But seriously? Eye makeup. *rowr* So much fun to play with.
posted by MissySedai at 11:00 AM on September 9, 2016

I am unconvinced by the "make-up is 100% freedom" narrative because I can't find any other aspect of appearance that is 100% freedom.

No makeup isn't really freedom either. Which you may be right, we really are never free from judgement. I think most people here talking about freely choosing to wear makeup aren't saying that that is true for everyone, just for them personally.

And some people definitely do have more freedom regarding how they manage there appearance. I like to wear makeup sometimes, so I wear it then.

But I also know that there are people who feel forced to wear makeup and dress a certain way, either because of direct consequences (such as not getting a job, etc) or social pressure (which some people are more susceptible to for many different reasons). As with anything, it's vaguely annoying to be told you're only doing X because youthink you want to, but in the grand scheme of things I know I'm lucky that I generally get to manage my appearance how I want to. (Actually, in an ideal world where I could live within reasonable commuting distance, had more free time, and had a slightly different work environment, I'd probably wear makeup a bit more often. But I'm very lucky overall so not much to complain about).

It is definitely not true that everyone has the freedom to manage their appearance how they see fit 100% of the time. And it's important to believe those people as well when they say they feel pressured to perform womanhood in a certain way.
posted by ghost phoneme at 11:16 AM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

I think most people here talking about freely choosing to wear makeup aren't saying that that is true for everyone, just for them personally.

YES.

I don't have the authority to speak for anyone else but me, and I've been more than "vaguely" annoyed to be told that no, I really don't have any agency in the decisions I make about myself, Because Patriarchy.

That's...well, not to put too fine a point on it, some bullshit right there.

I certainly do believe the people who say they feel the pressure. The thing with that pressure? We've all felt it. Some of us, however, have actively chosen to wave the Traffic Finger at it, and get on with life on OUR terms.

Are there consequences? Sure. But every woman has to choose for herself whether or not to give a shit about those consequences. I have chosen the IDGAF path, I'm happy there, and I'd like to invite everyone to join me. I only get one go 'round on this rock, and I'll be damned if I'm going to live based on whether or not some dude thinks I'm fuckable. There's too much else that I'm infinitely more interested in.
posted by MissySedai at 2:18 PM on September 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing that wearing makeup equals the wearer having no agency whatsoever and just being a mindless tool of the patriarchy. That's a black-and-white and very unfair interpretation. After all, in some patriarchal countries, like Saudi Arabia for example, women are told they SHOULDN'T wear makeup or do anything to "show off their beauty". Misogyny comes in many forms.

But in the US, the choice to wear makeup or not does not exist in a vacuum, which is the argument that the article I linked upthread is trying to make. You choose to wear makeup, of course, but not everyone makes that choice for the same reasons.
posted by a strong female character at 5:00 PM on September 9, 2016 [9 favorites]

Are there consequences? Sure. But every woman has to choose for herself whether or not to give a shit about those consequences. I have chosen the IDGAF path, I'm happy there, and I'd like to invite everyone to join me. I only get one go 'round on this rock, and I'll be damned if I'm going to live based on whether or not some dude thinks I'm fuckable. There's too much else that I'm infinitely more interested in.

Well, good for you. I'm curious about what consequences you're paying for your choice.

E.g., I also don't give a hot damn whether or not someone thinks I'm fuckable. However, I am 62 years old, job hunting, and simply cannot afford (literally) the potential consequences of not wearing makeup. So, for the first time in years, I'll be wearing foundation, lipstick, and mascara to every job interview and in other potentially professional settings.

And, frankly, this does not feel like a "choice".
posted by she's not there at 5:54 PM on September 12, 2016 [8 favorites]