The New York Times asked a bunch of people to comment on whether makeup empowers women or hurts their self-esteem. Unaccountably, they didn’t ask me for my opinion, but I shall give it to them anyway.
Some might find this odd from a makeup-hating hairy-legged radical feminist, but the pro side is not wrong. Some women get a self-esteem boost from feeling like they’re presenting their best selves to the world. Some women think of makeup as armor they put on before battle. Some women consider makeup to be three minutes of self-care, time they take for themselves. The key word there, however, is some women.
I don’t understand why so many people have trouble with the idea that different people can have different opinions about things. “BDSM makes some people happy” and “BDSM makes some people feel violated” are not contradictory statements. Neither are “sex work makes some people feel raped,” “sex work is a job some people love and would rather work than anything else in the world,” and “sex work is another mildly unpleasant thing some people do to put food on the table.” And neither are “makeup makes some people feel empowered” and “makeup hurts some people’s self-esteem.” In a perfect world, people could be left to wear or not wear makeup, have or not have kinky sex, do or not do sex work, as pleases them.
As the anti side points out, however, we don’t live in that world.
Job discrimination against women who refuse to wear makeup is real, as are romantic partners who feel entitled to a partner who always wears makeup. Women who wear makeup tend to be considered more likeable, competent, and attractive, which is rather unfair, given that the application of crushed rocks to the face has exactly zero effects on any of those things. Not wearing makeup can, in some circles, make people wonder what’s wrong or worry that you’re not taking care of yourself. All of that adds up to a lot of fucking coercion.
For that matter, look at the way this debate was framed! The discussion was between “women must wear makeup” and “women should be free to wear makeup or not wear makeup.” Apparently “women should not wear makeup” is entirely unthinkable, since the New York Times could not find even one person to argue it. I’m not saying that women shouldn’t wear makeup (of course not), just pointing out that the asymmetry is telling.
Partially, of course, the pressure for women to wear makeup is a side effect of makeup companies trying to keep their business. The set of people who believe makeup is fun is much smaller than the set of people who can be convinced that if they don’t wear makeup they are ugly and horrible and a failure as a woman. But makeup companies’ best interest is also to convince men that they’re ugly and horrible and failures as men if they don’t wear makeup, and they have so far failed to do so. What gives?
It’s fucking patriarchy again. Women are supposed to be Beautiful because they must be Pleasing to Men, and specifically Pleasing to Men’s Boners, because if you aren’t Pleasing to Men’s Boners then you will never get to marry Mr. Bingley. On the other hand, men do not have to be Pleasing to Women’s Boners, that’s what money is for.
On the other hand, a lot of anti-makeup sentiment– particularly anything that starts talking about how “frivolous” and “shallow” makeup is– is also misogynistic and femmephobic. Makeup is a form of visual art. If making your face beautiful is shallow, so is making a canvas beautiful or a block of marble or a hunk of plastic. If you understand why someone would feel satisfied and happy when they make a gorgeous print, you understand why someone would feel satisfied and happy when their makeup looks perfect. I do not think it is accidental that the form of visual art almost entirely practiced by women is the one that gets accused of frivolity and where the talent exhibited by many of the artists is ignored or denigrated.
A final note: if makeup is so damn empowering men should have a chance to put it on too.
I read a really interesting article about the expanding market in makeup for men in South Korea. Apparently it’s becoming ever more popular there.
The only way in which I think makeup can differ from an art form is the pressure to wear it to cover ‘flaws’, which I think is far more about ‘spots are ugly, people must look perfect’ than ‘this looks interesting and cool’.
“if makeup is so damn empowering men should have a chance to put it on too.”
Oh, ugh. I have enough trouble with my facial hair to want to do this often.
“On the other hand, men do not have to be Pleasing to Women’s Boners, that’s what money is for.”
It gets even better than that in Patriarchy. According to the Patriarchy’s bogus Two Rules of Desire, men damn well better not be Pleasing to Women’s Boners unless it’s for their money!
See David Bowie (who turned 66 yesterday.) Back in the 1970s he wore makeup, and clothes that looked like lingerie. Most of the straight young men in my circle of friends (including me) hated his guts. Not least because we couldn’t understand why most of the straight young women were pretty unambiguous about wanting to jump his bones, unmanly pants and all.
We couldn’t claim it was his money that made them feel this way either because they were also often pretty unambiguous about jumping the bones of other, highly not-wealthy but highly femmy “glam rock” young men outside our circle of friends.
He didn’t give us boners so we couldn’t understand why women would find him attractive.
Which was even more hilarious in retrospect since, as hippie-era young men with long hair and embroidered clothes we were ourselves so “femmy” by the rest of society’s standards that we had to actively avoid getting beaten up by rednecks.
We didn’t recognize that either.
We weren’t stupid. We were just up to our hairlilnes with gender.
Good post, Oz.
figleaf
Autostraddle did a lovely post about this a few days ago. I recommend it.
Prisoners’ dilemma.
Okay, so I should probably write more than two words here. For those of you who are unfamiliar the basic prisoners’ dilemma can be phrased as follows.
The cops bring you and someone else into interrogation and accuse you of committing a particular crime (whether or not you actually committed the crime is irrelevant here). They then offer you and the other person the opportunity to rat each other out for leniency in sentencing, since they don’t have enough evidence to convict anybody otherwise. If neither of you rats, you’ll both get convicted of a lesser crime instead, say getting 1 year each in prison. If one of you rats and the other stays silent, the rat gets no prison time and the other person gets 10 years. If both of you rat, then you each get 5 years. Here’s the dilemma: obviously the best choice overall is for nobody to speak up (total 2 person-years prison time), but the best choice for you alone is to rat out the other person (0 or 5 years if you rat, 1 or 10 if you don’t). It’s the archetypal instance of rational self-interest being counter-productive to the group well-being (at least when the rational self-interest is short-term).
How does this relate to ozy’s post?
Well clearly, women who wear makeup do better than women who don’t (imo they shouldn’t, but they do anyway) for various reasons, some of which ozy goes into, but my point is simply about the effects. Most women know that if almost all women refused to wear makeup, then they would all basically be in the same relative positions as they are when they almost all do wear makeup. Since makeup costs money and takes time and effort, this means that everybody knows that everybody would be better off if makeup was an occasional or rare thing. Unfortunately for everyone, those few who choose to go the other way are personally rewarded (by being judged more likeable, competent, attractive, etc as ozy said), and so almost everyone spends the extra time, money and effort to look “better”, and everyone winds up in the same relative position. (Obviously there are individual exceptions, I’m talking statistically here.)
Unfortunately the only solution I know of to the prisoners’ dilemma is to add in the element of long-term reputation, in other words to add in social rewards and punishments (it needs both in order to work) for those who choose themselves over the group. This solution cannot work unless a lot of people are willing to go along with it, and that doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon.
So the final message here, is that whatever the reasons, whatever the large-scale consequences, like it or not, we’re stuck with makeup for as long as most people think it makes someone look better.
Ditto all this for hair regrowth/retention products for men and plastic surgery for everybody.
@Ozy:
I agree with every word.
I, personally never saw the point of makeup: if I’m gonna see you with nothing on, what does it matter to me what you look like with something on?
That said, I have also always understood that different things have different levels of significance to different people, and that if someone needs to armor up a certain way (be it makeup or rocket underpants), or needs to give themselves TLC in a certain way, then that’s not only perfectly acceptable (unless doing so hurts someone else), it’s none of my damn business.
I object, however, to society telling us to live a certain way for arbitrary reasons. To that end, I will tell someone who insists that makeup is the path to femininity to take a long walk off a short pier.
Great article! It, and in particular the last point you made the misogyny of the most female art form being considered vapid and shallow, goes really well with an article Greta Christina wrote late last year – Fashion is a Feminist Issue. Well, she’s on your blogroll so I assume you read it, but for anyone else in the comments section definitely check it out!
As for myself? I’ve never been a huge fan of make-up, and I still hardly ever wear it today except to work (where I just consider it part of my uniform), but I do really like clothes, for some reason. Dressing up a certain way is a great way to a) express myself, b) celebrate how awesome certain styles are, c) as you said, make something beautiful! And for me, make-up is usually about completing the style. Whether it’s something colourful like fairy-kei, something sleek and sophisticated like turtlenecks and coats, or something dark and elegant, the right make-up makes the outfit complete.
And wow yeah, it never fails to bewilder me how stubbornly people can adamantly refuse to even consider that…you know…other people might be different to them. Just because most women happily wear make-up doesn’t mean that anyone who doesn’t want to is terrible or doing it wrong, and just because the patriarchy has convinced some women that they have to wear make-up even if they want to doesn’t mean that no woman ever could want to. Award for understanding that sometimes different people need or want different things: not granted.
Yiab: Actually that’s basically some radical feminist arguments about makeup in a nutshell.
If everyone doesn’t wear makeup, then no one has to wear makeup. I feel uncomfortable with this, but I have a hard time finding a hole in their argument. 
(Other than, of course, “it’s my body and I shall do as I like.”)
I’d say that the hole is 1. getting everybody to stop using makeup is not neccessary 2. If people would turn down the halo-effecting of women’s appearance things would be better all around and the same result would be achieved 3. Social pressure toward wearing makeup isn’t that terrible? (Unsure of this, do not have lived experience, how much people care about stuff varies. ) 4. THings could be totally different in a lot of ways. (for example a few decades ago wearing makeup was a strong signal that was only used by people who wanted to send that signal.)
Have some anecdata!
I was visiting my mother once after Faire (the first time in over a decade that I’d spent large amounts of time outdoors), and she said to me, “Oh, I like your makeup!” I was wearing ChapStick; there was literally no beauty product of any kind on my face.
ozy: I know it’s a feminist argument (I didn’t associate it with the radical variety though), and it seems to be correct. The only problem is that there’s no way I can see to stop everyone wearing makeup while maintaining their freedom of choice in the matter, as you’ve said.
Gosh, I was so bothered by those articles, especially the one that as like “wearing makeup shows you love yourself.” So…not wearing it shows we DON’T love ourselves? What if I feel like wearing it one day but not the next? (Which is exactly what happens.)
ozy: The hole in that argument is that its just replacing one set of unfair social norms with another set of unfair social norms. In order to make every woman not wear make-up you would have to reward women who don’t wear make-up and punish women who do. Which would be just be a reversal of the current situation. Not an actual change or improvement.
emolga: Actually if you can only choose between those states the no-makeup one is an improvement, because then people do not have to spend money and time on makeup. Assuming that certain social rewards for wearing makeup is just *going to happen*, because of the well-documented human preference for those we find attractive, counterbalancing it with some anti-makeup sentiment makes sense.
I do think that there are *probably* methods (like Krause talks about) of reducing the social rewards of wearing makeup without pressuring people into not wearing makeup. But the argument nonetheless makes sense.
L: Makes sense, since “natural” makeup is supposed to imitate a healthy sun-kissed sort of look.
Yiab: that’s a pretty solid application of game theory there, nice job. I have a minor disagreement though:
“women who wear makeup do better than women who don’t”
Well, no,, there are still slight benefits to not wearing makeup. At least they get to have their sanity, cultivate better self-esteem and form relationships with (objectively superior!) people who don’t give a fuck if they wear makeup or not (people like us!). There’s probably others. And these things not only have personal value, they also have economic value. Makeup takes time and money, better self-esteem and relationships tend to make people more motivated etc. It doesn’t even it out, but it should lessen the risk of going the no-makeup route slightly.
ozy: I have to disagree. That scenario assumes that the cost and inconvenience of wearing make-up applies equally to everyone. To someone who doesn’t like wearing make-up then spending time and money on it would be a waste of time and money, but to some one who’s does enjoy wearing make-up it would worth it.
Lets substitute make-up for another expensive time wasting activity. For example, I play video games which is both a time consuming and expensive hobby, but for me its worth it because I enjoy video games. If we lived in a world were everyone had to play video games, because those who do get socially rewarded for it. Playing video games certainly would feel like a waste of time and money for those who don’t like video games, but have to play them any way because of the social rewards. That doesn’t mean though that playing video games is inherently a waist of time and money, nor that a world without video games is automatically better than one with video games. It just means that a society that coerces people into doing things they don’t like inevitably oppresses someone.
Your statement about attractiveness is also flawed. Not every person is equally attractive to everyone with or without make-up. I haven’t worn make-up more than two times in my entire life. Yet I regularly get comments on how beautifully I am and men tell me things like “your truly beautiful because you look good without make-up”. Although make-up is marketed on the premise that it improves appearance, that doesn’t change the fact that some people look attractive regardless of make-up. A world without make-up would just mean that people who are “naturally beautifully” would have even more of an advantage over people who aren’t “naturally beautifully”.
Finally, I would like to say that your statement about the belief that make-up is frivolous, being femmophobic is spot on. Make-up wearing being a woman-only practice is a fairly modern trend. In many cultures and time periods make-up was a uni-sex practice and there are still cultures were men wear make-up. In many of the societies were men wore make-up, it was marketed to men as a “strategic choice”. The association between make-up and frivolity only came about after make-up became a woman only practice.
Volte: Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that there were no benefits to not wearing makeup, and I haven’t researched statistics about this subject or done a hypothetical cost-benefit analysis, I was just jumping off of ozy’s statement in the article about women who wear makeup doing better in certain specific ways. To use my earlier argument in an inverted form though, the fact that so many women do wear makeup does suggest that the cost-benefit analysis typically comes out on the side of makeup.
One question, it’s a real question, honestly it is. These two thoughts seem kind of contradictory to me:
“Women who wear makeup tend to be considered more likeable, competent, and attractive, which is rather unfair, given that the application of crushed rocks to the face has exactly zero effects on any of those things.”
and
“Makeup is a form of visual art. If making your face beautiful is shallow….”
Mostly because the situation where I imagine these considerations going on is something like a white room with pictures of women in makeup and not-makeup. Like, “For each picture, please rate the attractiveness of the subject on a scale of one to ten. You will be given ten seconds to evaluate each picture.” Ok, I’ve never done a social science experiment so my scientist voice is getting mixed up with my standardized test proctor voice, but do you get what I mean? A lot of judgement of attractiveness is based on visual appeal, so if makeup enhances that then it does make sense that wearing it would increase someone’s attractiveness, doesn’t it?
“On the other hand, a lot of anti-makeup sentiment– particularly anything that starts talking about…” | Knitting and Sljivovica
I’m the proud owner of a penis, and I like removing my body hair and wearing makeup, for aesthetical reasons. Some people may think I don’t count, because I’m a goth and not exactly interested in what mainstream society thinks about me, but I think that more men should wear makeup. Also, I don’t like body hair on anybody, regardless of gender, but unless you want to have sex with me, I don’t care if you’re hairy as a yeti.
I think this is a great post overall, and I agree with what you’re saying, but as someone mentioned above, there is a disconnect between the statement that “Women who wear makeup tend to be considered more likeable, competent, and attractive, which is rather unfair, given that the application of crushed rocks to the face has exactly zero effects on any of those things,” and “If making your face beautiful is shallow, so is making a canvas beautiful or a block of marble or a hunk of plastic.”
While I totally agree that it is wrong to demean women for wearing or not wearing makeup, it makes me uncomfortable to see language describing makeup as “making your face beautiful,” and comparing a non-made-up face to a block of marble or hunk of plastic. It’s problematic that people view makeup as something that makes you better, prettier, an attitude that this post does well overall at criticizing, so my guess is that you weren’t trying to enforce this ideal at all, but the language comes across as falling into the dominant paradigm that makeup makes you beautiful. I agree that makeup can be very beautiful, but it’s important to differentiate between that and the notion that it makes people beautiful.
emolga: that criticism doesn’t totally work, because whether or not you like makeup, the cost part does apply to everyone; the cost being worth it doesn’t make the cost disappear. The inconvenience is more debatable, since although everyone still spends time on makeup application, if people enjoy the process of applying it, it isn’t wasted time. (I wonder how many people who like makeup enjoy the process and how many simply enjoy the result and view the time cost of the process as a minor inconvenience.)
In order for your criticism to work, you have to value the positive experience of the people who do like putting on makeup more than the negative experience of the people who dislike makeup. More, not equally, because there’s also the fact that everyone is spending money (and time, for those who don’t enjoy the process of applying makeup, whether or not they like makeup overall) in universal-makeup-world.
Crushed Rocks? I Wish: A Response Essay on Makeup in Our Soceity | Ms. Brigitte's Mild Ride
I love this entry absolutely. BUT.
I happen to be a radical feminist who doesn’t shave her legs.
But I’m also a make-up artist.
Watch your pejorative statements.
friday likes | littleredsbiglife
“if makeup is so damn empowering men should have a chance to put it on too.”
They did. And the world got Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. Ick.
But seriously – great post (coming from one of those flip-floppy types who wears a bit of makeup about once every 3 months, as warpaint or because she’s bored. According to the makeup industry, this puts me in all sorts of hideous danger because I don’t replace my cosmetics every 3 months – more like every 10 years).
Of the other benefits that non-makeup-wearers get in everyday life there are, of course, the freedom to spend an extra half an hour in bed in the morning instead of assembling one’s face, and the freedom to spend spare pennies on chocolate instead of potions tested on bunnies.
Really great article, the paragraph at the end is especially accurate, I think, despite those of you arguing that there’s too much disconnect between it and previous statements. It may seem strange to say make-up users reap benefits while being seen as shallow, but for most, it’s true, isn’t it? There is a fine line that women who use make-up are expected to walk – too little and it looks like not enough effort was made, too much and they look ‘ridiculous’, ‘unclassy’, like they’re ‘trying too hard’. I can’t remember the link for the life of me but I read an article once citing the effects of make-up during professional interviews and whether they wore it or not, or wore too much or too little, it essentially boiled down to a lose/lose situation. Women who didn’t wear it were not professional enough, but women who wore it were seen as shallower and less trustworthy despite being ‘proper’ in appearance. Make-up looks more ‘professional’ and ‘proper’, but it also apparently says that the women wearing it is in some way vain, intellectually inferior or apparently even immoral in some cases, in spite of the benefits it also gives her. I don’t really put it that far past the patriarchy to manufacture something that we are expected to do in order to fit in, but if we do it we’re also shallow. The same can be applied to fashion, since women with poor fashion sense are often subject to ridicule, but women who follow the trends to the t are assumed to put far too much time into their outfits and not have a style of their own. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
As for the radical feminist argument that no one should wear make-up in order to free everyone, well, the flaw in that has already been mentioned – taking away choice. Stripping away one option might benefit one group, but it disadvantages those of us who actually enjoy wearing make-up and forces us to do the opposite. That isn’t good feminism, that’s just punishing a different group of women for their personal preferences (and seems a little femmephobic in itself, as in the needs and desires of women who don’t wear make-up are more important and more valid than those who like to). I enjoy wearing make-up (while still being aware of the influence that the patriarchy has on it and my appearance-related choices), and would not be happy in the slightest if someone suddenly told me I couldn’t wear it. There are plenty of days when I don’t wear it at all, but when I do, I do so because I want to. I like experimenting with it, I like using my face as a canvas. Telling me that I can’t do that anymore isn’t going to ‘liberate’ me, it’s taking away some of my autonomy to do something that I enjoy.
Regardless of that, it just isn’t realistic. Telling every woman to stop wearing make-up in a world where we’re taught that we NEED to and it actually happening is improbable at best and ignores societal ramifications of not wearing it i.e. it sometimes being necessary for work. Even if every woman quit wearing it one day, it would still take time for the ‘necessity’ of make-up to subside, it wouldn’t happen overnight.
Personally, the only realistic option is continuing down the path of simply making people aware of the fact that make-up is not a necessity but a choice, that your flaws do not need hiding and that beauty is not ‘owed’ or a sign of a better or more deserving person (and to teach some men that they are not entitled to women looking a certain way, and that women do not all look like celebrities, nor do they have to). But, as with any activism aiming to change the very basis of society, that takes a lot of time! I think the body positive movement is gaining a lot of ground lately, and I think body acceptance and acceptance of your natural state allows women more agency to choose for themselves what they really want. Someone who has realised that it’s okay to look how they do and accepts themselves is far less likely to be influenced by manipulative make-up companies than someone who still heavily internalises the idea that their appearance is a mess in need of fixing and that as a woman they should always be striving to look ‘better’.
See, Kee’s comment is another example of how easily we fall into these narratives about what’s beautiful and what’s not–even if we don’t consciously agree with them. It’s no more true to say that makeup makes people beautiful than to say that makeup makes people ugly.
Like Ozy’s “If making your face beautiful is shallow”, Kee’s “your flaws do not need hiding and that beauty is not ‘owed’”, while true as far as it goes, contains the assumption that of course women are more beautiful when they wear makeup and of course women have “flaws” which will be hidden by makeup. (Even “flaws” that seem to be regarded as flaws in most/all human cultures (acne) vary in how important the flaw is considered to be, and many of the “flaws” that makeup “corrects”–pale eyelashes, pale lips, not-reddened cheeks, lack of purple shading above one’s eyes, lack of little black lines above and below one’s eyes–are not the sorts of things that I would call “flaws” at all.) Again, this may not even be what Ozy or Kee consciously believe, but we keep slipping into these narratives, and then reinforcing them.
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Other People’s Makeup Use: None Of Your Business | theindependenttraveller
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