There's a blogger by the name of Rabbit Write, known for exploring topics of gender and interpersonal relations. I don't often read Rabbit Write, but I have added her to my blogroll, as I am interested in those subjects as well. Recently she has put out a call to all women to stop wearing makeup for one week. Her intention in this is to challenge us to examine our relationship with cosmetics.
I don't wear makeup in my regular life. Never have, not a stitch. No powder, no shadow, no liner, no gloss. The only times I ever do are onstage and to go goth. I, then, will examine not why I wear makeup but rather why I do not wear makeup, because many of the same issues are at play.
I used to feel very virtuous and superior about it. I congratulated myself on being free of neurotic concern that I needed makeup to be attractive, that I did not succumb to society's insistence that women must falsify themselves in order to be acceptable. Like it made me more evolved and indepedent. Society has a conflicted view on makeup, and while I do think women are strongly encouraged to wear it so that they look the way they "should," at the same time there's also points awarded to the girl who looks great without it. I still can't help but roll my eyes at the "except" girls-- "Oh, I don't wear any makeup. Except foundation." "Except eyeliner." "Except lip gloss." Don't give me that. Either you get to wear makeup, or you get to claim the status of not needing it, you don't get to do both.
I have evolved in my perceptions since then. I can acknowledge that makeup has a use and a place, and is not inherently a sign of insecurity or of conforming to unfair external expectations. I will probably wear makeup to the next formal event I attend, if only as an acknowledgement of the formality. But still, I don't particularly like it, and for a number of reasons plan to continue my avoidance of it in all but the most specialized of situations.
There are practical objections to makeup, of course. That shit is expensive, especially the good stuff, and when I see the price tags firsthand I frequently am relieved that I don't need to buy the stuff more than once in a blue moon. Makeup is often very toxic, containing trace amounts of any number of unhealthy compounds like lead. And there's the whole feminist angle. Are we making women's bodies unacceptable when we decide they are better when they have a layer of paint on them that makes them conform more closely to a supposed beauty ideal? Are we telling ourselves that are faces are not good enough as they are and need to have redder lips, more defined eyes, and clearer, more even skin? And that leads to an even more basic ethical level where we come back to my age-old opponent, the temptation to place too much stock in the value of beauty. Does makeup encourage vanity and contribute to that notion that beauty is not just something nice, it's something IMPORTANT, and not just important, SO IMPORTANT that we have to do whatever it takes in order to have it, even if that means buying expensive toxic compounds to obscure your real face and make a better false one?
I consider these things. But the most personal level to me, tied up with the things I have the least personal resolution with. For me, it comes down to the fact that even now, I still cannot help but see makeup as "fake." If you find something beautiful about me, I want it to be real. Not something I had to put on, something that without I would not be as beautiful. It's the same reason I don't dye my hair or get extra piercings. I wear my hair in such a style that it looks just as good on me mussed from sleep or wind or activity as it does freshly done. I work to keep my figure in such a shape that I am just as proud of it bare as the day as I do when dressed in the most flattering clothes I own. And by that same token, I wear no makeup because I want you to know that this face is my face, no tricks, no deceptions. One of the most treasured compliments I have ever received was from Jared on one of the earliest occasions we'd slept in the same bed and woken up together. "Wow," he marveled. "You look just as good first thing in the morning as you do all the rest of the day."
And I do. I do wake up looking this good. This is me. Not my clothes, not my makeup, not anything I put on. I really am this beautiful. You could take me in front of everyone I know, strip me down, and blast me with a firehose, such that everything was taken away but me, and I would be ashamed of nothing.
In recent years I made a little joke, designed only to display my own self-confidence, but in practice carelessly cruel: "Makeup is for ugly girls." I would say it with a self-satisfied smile and an arrogant toss of my head, the intention being to say that of course someone as beautiful as me would never need such a thing. I didn't really mean it the rest of it, the implication that clearly there must be something lacking in you if you wore it. It was, like all too many of the things I do, all about me-- without considering that yes, I may be fortunate to look this good without it, but not everyone is so lucky.
And a lot of it is all accidental. Why do I like this natural beauty so much? I tend to prefer to be judged on my merits, and I must admit, my natural beauty doesn't have much to do with anything I do. Maybe I work out and take care of myself, but my good metabolism and pleasant features are things I was born with and had no control over or input upon. Do I really deserve validation for an accident of good fortune?
There is a likely evolutionary explanation. An attractive person is a person whose genes are desirable enough that you would like to combine your own with, as well as a person who is likely healthy enough to bear the offspring. If my beauty is natural, then you have a good basis off which to judge my suitability as a mate. If my beauty is not natural, then to a certain extent you have been tricked, and therefore thwarted in your biologically-driven attempt to find the most desirable genetic material.
Still, it isn't as if I can't relate to some of the things makeup is supposed to provide. Pleased as I am with my appearence, it most certainly isn't perfect. If nothing else, my skin has never been the greatest. I have had acne and blackheads to varying degrees of severity for pretty much all of college, and the tone is somewhat uneven. One of the major things I dislike about the way I appear in pictures is how greasy and blotchy my face appears, way more so than it does to me when I look in the mirror. Probably wouldn't turn out that way if I wore makeup. I certainly have admired in the past when friends more skilled in makeup wear it so well I can't tell whether or not they're wearing it all, like blendedchaitea*.
And it's not like I don't make any alterations to myself in the name of vanity. A different cosmetic choice I make is how I take something of a scorched earth approach to body hair-- get rid of it, all of it, by any means necessary. I am ruefully amused by the contrast sometimes, between my delicate, finely-shape figure and my bear-like level of body hair. So I get rid of it to suit my aesthetic. But that's not very natural, now, is it? "Taking away," I suppose, feels more real to me than "adding." Everything remains is still mine, still real. And for some reason, that matters to me.
Sometimes I do think makeup contributes to society placing too much emphasis on the importance of beauty. Sometimes I think that we'd be better off if we didn't feel like we needed it so much. But I also am fairly certain that my aversion to makeup is not me having any less of a connection to that over-valuing, it's that connection expressing itself in a different way-- perhaps in the way of the "have" versus the "have not." Maybe I should have a Makeup Week to see what the difference would be.
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