Do I Ever Really Have A Choice Not To Wear Makeup?

The other day I couldn't be bothered to wear make-up, I bundled myself on to the train with my face full of the blemishes that you see on the average teenage girls face (see my 'My Imperfections' post to hear my outrage on this subject), my eyes squinty without mascara and  eye-liner. And I felt like shit for the rest of the day. I didn't have my make up bag, so I avoided looking in mirrors, in fact I didn't even go to the toilet in case I saw my face. I know, so pathetic. I know exactly what you mean, if I don't wear make-up I feel like people are talking to my spots or just generally staring. It is probably all in my head but girls most definitely do pass judgement. I personally think they are all secretly jealous they aren't brave enough to ditch the slap. 

In most if not all contexts, I don't really think wearing makeup is a "choice." At least, it's not a choice in the sense of a decision where the branching options are neutral and equally weighted and carry few, if any, negative social consequences, the way making the decision of what to have for lunch for example. Culturally speaking, the playing field is tilted pretty heavily in makeup's favor. Often, if I don't wear make up people actually comment that I look ill, or tried. This is so true, and then there is nothing worse than after a stint of not wearing make up you do wear some and everyone comments on how nice you look, how pretty you look today as if they are rewarding 'the effort' you have made. It just makes you feel worse about your ACTUAL face. I can't concentrate on my work because I feel uncomfortable. I'm not comfortable in my own skin without a  layer of gunge caking it.

In many ways, I wear make up for myself, to make me feel better. Sometimes, even if I'm not leaving the house I can waste away hours playing with make up, just for the fun of it. This is make up at it's best, when you experiment and do things you probably wouldn't actually wear out on a normal day because even make up wearing has its regulations. But this is enjoying it for what it is and I think that is okay. Yet I also admittedly wear it for others, so that I look good in their eyes. And that kind of makes me feel ashamed. I probably wear it because a life-time of exposure to society has taught me that make up = pretty, and being pretty = being liked. If you look at TV show depicting a successful business woman they invariably have red lips and carefully coiffed hair, they don't 'slum' it make up-less, society therefore has taught me that successful women wear make up. Also make up is a waste of ten to fifteen minutes in the morning that I could have eating breakfast or in bed, I use dead time on the bus to do my make up which is also met by equal amounts of judgement. It is as if it is supposed to be a secret ritual everyone knows happens but never witnesses in public, so basically we have to do it but then pretend like we haven't. This is all so messed up.  Make up is, for women, is considered standard in the 21st Century. A certain amount of make up is "good grooming." It's the default. As women, we don't have the choice to engage with the beauty industrial complex: it's so ever-present in our lives that women who don't wear make up are commonly taken as defining themselves against it. To not wear make up, for many women, is to invite misunderstanding or, worse, judgement.

I also think it's telling that society encourages women to frame wearing make up only as a matter of simple personal choice — and as something that indicates self-love ("Because You're Worth It").  Adverts suggest that Make up is a treat, a way of expressing some self respect. That we are letting ourselves down by not treating ourselves to some new eyeliner or blush. The ideal is always supposed to be "natural,"  every skinny actress is always supposed to tell her interviewers that she eats burgers and milkshakes and never really works out. I'm sorry guys, if I need to say in shape,  I go to the gym, and to look good I need to wear make up , and I can accept that. Beauty, at least societies view of it is not really 'natural'. The desire to appear as though we all haven't tried and just wander around looking excellently groomed but putting no effort in is the ridiculous ideal being sold to us. I am done buying in, I don't look like shit because I am not wearing make up, I look like myself as all my REAL friends and family see and have seen me thousands of times. If society can't cope with this then society can just go away because for every tiny, flawless, beautiful movie star there are millions of real, intelligent women . It is called perspective. 

Dorothy and Daphne

MY IMPERFECTIONS or so they have me think

I just want to lead with this. I have spots. I have lots of spots I am not just a whining teenage girl, I really do have acne and it makes me very sad quite a lot of the time. It makes me super insecure and I wear make-up to cover it which really just makes the situation worse. This got me thinking, why do I feel like I should wear make-up to cover my spotty spotty face when boys can just have it all out, spots and all and seem to come out of the 'spot phase' quicker than women. I will tell you why, because if you listen to adverts for foundation (especially recently with the 'blemish balm' foundations) we are being told they are imperfections. WHO DECIDED THAT SPOTS MAKE ME LESS PERFECT? 

All I can think is that the girl they put on the advert is who the company (or its respective advertising agency) deem perfect. The girl who's face I should aspire to have. Let's have a look shall we...

So our first offender being the ambassador of a brand I personally cannot afford. But I Do get the gist of what I am being told by this - 

BE JULIA ROBERTS, YOUR UN-AIRBRUSHED SKIN IS UGLY, followed by oh we want it to look like you aren't wearing make-up when really you are in order for you to look like what we deem perfect. (Julia Roberts) I actually think this advert has been banned because it's so ridiculously airbrushed .

This is one of the revolutionary BB creams, it is a 'skin perfector'. Thank you advertising for reminding me that unless my skin looks like peach silk I will never be perfect. Might I add that her 'perfect' face doesn't once utter a word during the television version of this advert, she just smiles and giggles like a mute wind up doll.

Ooh look this one is 'beyond natural' and it gets my 'exact skin tone', so does my skin, the skin I am not allowed to have because it is too much like real skin and not the fake real skin that Jessica Alba has. Jessica Alba's perfect fake real skin is probably even more fake because that photo is air brushed within an inch of its life.

Yes Maybelline, what is more beautiful than natural skin? Well it looks like you want me to buy your foundation, so I am going to go ahead and say, my skin with your foundation on it? Bonuses include hydrating, freshening and mattifying - things I probably wouldn't need to do if I had been a sensible young lady and not used the stuff in the first place.  Wow, Why do  Make up companies think we all need to be 'mattyified' and things? 

Finally we have Britain's sweetheart, the chocolate eyed geordie that can do no wrong. Of course we aspire to be this pint sized beauty why wouldn't we want to have skin like an ex-wag, ex talent show judge girl band member? Why shouldn't this be an aspiration of all young ladies nation wide? This one matches our EXACT skin tone, once again we are being encouraged to recreate our skin on our skin. Well that is an offer I cannot refuse. 

Really if these foundation adverts aren't offering us a face transplant we are just going to buy into the market for years to come, regretting every single purchase and lamenting over our bank balance as we try tonnes of different lotions and potions. Can someone explain the purpose of Toner to me please? Still don't understand.

But can you blame us? Being told we are imperfect, that natural unavoidable features of youth or stress or environment are 'blemishes' and something we should be ashamed of and hide. Surely it is hard to ignore such absolute nonsense, I know I buy in entirely, but as a good friend once said to me 'the people I love don't care so if they don't think they should waste their time caring why should I?'. I think she has the right idea, her skin is far from 'ad perfect' but from where I'm standing it looks bloody marvellous. 

Can we all stop pretending that humans aren't meant to have pores. Because they are, face it makeup people: Humans SWEAT.

Daphne and Dorothy

Now Sylvia Path is 'Chick Lit'.

So previously we weighed in on the issue of 'chick lit' and how it tend to be demeaned by the wider literary community.  Now Sylvia Plath is involved. Personally, she is not my favorite writer, I enjoyed 'The Bell Jar', but I know people who hold her as something of an idol. So now that Sylvia Plaths' novel 

The Bell Jar has had a 50th anniversary makeover, many of these people have been in up roar at what they see as a belittlement of Plaths' talents. Plath's fans guard her legacy fiercely and many believe that this new cover turns her book into 'chick-lit'. Said incriminating cover is a bright bubblegum pinky red (above), contrasting with a 1950s style photo of a young woman patting powder from a compact onto her face, with her lips reflected in its mirror. It's color's seem traditional to those associated with chick lit, so many have calling it an insensitive choice for a book ground-breaking for detailing the suffocating power of gender stereotyping.

 Jezebel writes: “If Sylvia Plath hadn't already killed herself, she probably would've if she saw the new cover of her only novel The Bell Jar. For a book all about a woman's clinical depression that's exacerbated by the suffocating gender stereotypes of which she's expected to adhere and the limited life choices she has as a woman, it's pretty fucking stupid to feature a low-rent retro wannabe pinup applying makeup.”

Sorry Jez, I normally quite enjoy your wit, but I think your wrong, In defense I think it captures the essence of the book well. At the beginning of the book, The Bell Jar’s protagonist Esther Greenwood is working as a writer on a New York magazine; she and the other girls are given  freebies which include cosmetics such as the compact on the cover; and they are living and working in an environment concerned with glamour and fashion. So really the cover art is relevant to the book's content.Plus, the entire book deals with appearance and reality; Esther's outward appearance belies what is happening within. Knowing that she has to look and behave in a certain way. The woman on the covers powder and the lipstick are a mask, an image that is projected to others irrespective of inner turmoil'. The fact the mirror is in there invites you to reflect, as she does making up. Why is she fixing her face? Is it right that she feels that she has to do this? These sort of questions.

It is a disturbing image because of the placement and angles of the picture, the colour saturation and the expression on the woman's face viewed in the mirror, it's not a meaningless image. In fact the mouth is almost a sneer. Just like how be analyze more traditional art, why can't we analyze this book cover beyond the simple colours and make up? I can't help but think that sexism is evident not in the choice for the cover image, but in the public refusal to believe cosmetics and fashion are worthy subjects of a literary novel.

 In the 50s and early 60s women's behaviour was governed by certain social rules and they were valued mainly with regard to looks rather than intellect  The photograph on the cover captures this too. Nowhere do we see perhaps a pen or a notebook, the really important things in the protagonists life, instead we see the things that society viewed as important. The woman featured is firmly underneath the patriarchal thumb, toeing the line and looking just the way society says she should. Perhaps the cover can be interpreted deeper than simply cosmetics and a pout.

Regards,

Dorothy.