Last week I received this email:
Title: I had a girlfriend who penciled in her eyebrows
Body: and you would both look a million times better if you didn’t. But then, I’m from a small town and hate the way makeup looks. Au natural!
It’s no great surprise that I’d never heard from this person before, but what on earth made them feel comfortable sending me an email like that remains a mystery. I suppose the anonymity of the internet gives everyone great big balls of judgment! In my day-to-day life, I’ve actually heard much worse. Some folks have very complex, ambivalent relationships with make-up. They’re attracted to us in our peacock mode, but if they get to know is, or even just get past a few dates they suddenly feel comfortable telling us it’s too much, or it looks cheap, or it’s unnatural, or, or, or.
I remember an old boyfriend smudging a painted eyebrow of mine with his finger while we were out, then laughing, amused with himself and with how mortified I was. It’s a multi-layered offense, really. First, it shows disregard for my comfort zone, second, disregard for my opinion of how I wanted my face to look that day, third, disregard for the time I put into it. Overall, it shows an astounding lack of respect and consideration. Just that single action. And this example is just the tip of an iceberg. I can’t even recall all the ways in which I’ve been belittled and infuriated by people throughout my life for the ways in which I choose to make up my face. At the end of the day, I know it’s no one’s business and haters gon’ hate, but I’ve often wondered why. WHYEEEEE!!!
Why is make-up so repellent to some people? My current guess is that as with most things, it has to do with individual association. Because of prior experience, do some peeps automatically think that those who wear make-up must be insecure victims of the cosmetics industry? Is it possible that anyone could still respond to make-up by recalling the loose woman stereotype? What’s the obsession with make-up looking “unnatural”? There’s the old argument that wearing shoes, riding bicycles and eating ice cream is unnatural too, if you go back far enough. I guess it’s different for everyone.
David Bowie poses with Twiggy in Paris for the cover of his ‘Pin Ups’ album. (Getty/Justin de Villeneuve)
So if you have time and aren’t yet sick of typing about make-up, if you have been antagonized over make-up, or if you have love/hate, or hate/hate feelings toward make-up, I would love it if you could talk about it in the comments. No Make-up Week so far has been an illuminating experience, and I wan to keep the ball rolling. There’s still more to explore.
Read more No Make-up Week articles at the home base, here.
As if women only perceive things in terms of how attractive it will make them to the opposite sex. I use to shave my eyebrows off and NOT draw them on because I wanted to look sick. That was how I expressed something. A sentiment I’m not sure I could have shared otherwise. It was a big “fuck you” to people who thought “oh but yr a pretty girl, why are you doing that to yourself.”
I don’t necessarily think the blurb of the email that was sent to you was “judgmental” – just the dude sharing his opinion in your direction (doesn’t think happen IRL also?)
This no-makeup week is awesome btw.
Ah, natural beauty. I read a fairly interesting book on human physical adornment recently and it made the (often observed) point that as far back as human history goes, we’ve been using makeup and it’s only since the 1960s or so that there’s been a turn towards “natural” beauty. Personally, I believe the natural beauty thing is a farce and just as objectifying if not MORE so, because now a person has to look good without any aid at all, ie. you’re either genetically beautiful, or you’re doomed to be ugly forever. I think the idea that makeup is ‘hiding who you are’ and that ‘girls look better without it’ is born partially from a misreading of all that self-esteem boosting backlash stuff (remember, Dove might be making ads that promote women’s self esteem, but at the end of the day they’re still trying to sell their own soap) and partially from the old stereotype of women being finnicky, uptight and obsessive over their appearance.
“Natural” beauty also falls into the same uncomfortable category as “naturally thin” and “naturally intelligent”. It is a dangerous, slippery ideal.
Furthermore, a lot of women you see on the street who look stunning in that “natural” way are perhaps just very good at getting their makeup to *look* natural, and a lot of guys cannot tell the difference.
Great Big Balls O’ Judgement! I love you.
I wouldn’t touch makeup for years. Was vehemently against it. The main reason was, when I was twelve, my mom took me to a therapist because I didn’t have many friends, and this woman gave me a list of things I couldn’t do. Like wear black AT ALL, listen to angry or sad music, read depressing books, watch “bad movies”, all this crap. And then she gave me another list of things I should do, including wear makeup. Now, my twelve-year-old self thought I was too young and I wasn’t ready and I just didn’t want to. My mom took me to the store to get some and I was trying to hard to explain why I didn’t want to wear makeup that I ended up crying because she wasn’t listening, but she finally got the picture.
Five years later, I decided to dye my hair black and cut it myself, and buy some makeup. I got mascara, a couple of nude lip glosses, and three glittery eyeliner pencils in red (my favorite), green, and turquoise. And so an obsession began. I never did it for the attention, I just wanted to find myself.
Nowadays, makeup has become a huge part of my identity. Like my hair color. To insult those two things will hurt me just as much as calling me stupid or telling me I look like a man (another reason I don’t leave the house without it!) and I don’t understand why people react so negatively to something that really is a part of who I am.
It’s about self-expression and if you feel like blonde highlights and an Orange Julius tan are an expression of who you are, great, but don’t denegrate me because I’m something different.
“Is it possible that anyone could still respond to make-up by recalling the loose woman stereotype?”
This reminded me of a weird story of basically the exact opposite. My mother does not wear makeup, I can’t recall that she ever did. She doesn’t shave under her arms either. She’s sort of a hippie-weirdo, and also has mentioned that both things bother her skin so she just doesn’t like either. About 20 years ago when I was 11 or so we moved to a bigger house. Someone came to see our old place and my mom went upstairs with him to show him around. This man looks at her, underarm hair and no makeup, and asks if she’ll sleep with him. I believe she said his exact words were ‘You look like you’ll try anything, wanna try me?’ Out of nowhere. Needless to say she was utterly creeped out and asked him to leave.
‘a lot of women you see on the street who look stunning in that “natural” way are perhaps just very good at getting their makeup to *look* natural, and a lot of guys cannot tell the difference.’
I wanted to second this. I’ve heard a lot of guys make comments about girls makeup that have made it really clear to me that a lot of them have no idea what a LOT of make up really looks like. I also have friends who do a more ‘natural’ look, and they usually have a lot more stuff on their face than I do, but even I wouldn’t know if they didn’t tell me.
When I was very, very young, early grade school age, I loved playing with my mother’s makeup. I liked making my face look scary, or trying to emulate makeup I saw in movies, or having my sister do my makeup. I grew up being rather mentally androgynous – I loved video games and dirt and being with the boys, but I also loved imagining cool outfits and playing with makeup.
As I got older, the tomboy part of me took over, and I stopped playing with makeup simply because I didn’t care. But this didn’t sit well with my sisters. I heard a lot of “If you didn’t dress like a boy you’d be prettier,” or “If you wore makeup the way I showed you boys would actually like you.” I began to abhor what makeup represented, because all it meant to me was a way to hide who I was and make myself look pretty to other people. My sisters would wear makeup every day and I’d see girls who couldn’t stand to leave the house without makeup. In middle and high school, I saw girls who would try to hide their flaws so much that they just had powder caked onto their faces. It looked bad.
Anyway, I grew to hate makeup (although I did experiment on occasion to try and feel pretty) because I associated it with girls who weren’t comfortable enough with themselves to not wear it. It was something incredibly shallow and superficial to me.
BUT, what I did like playing with, was stage makeup. I got into playing with SFX makeup in middle school, and would by and make prosthetics, learned to use liquid latex, and would make accident wounds, zombie makeup, anything grueling. This eventually lead to an appreciation of high fashion and creative makeup, especially when I realized that my blending sucked ass.
In any case, I came to learn that makeup for women can be fun, creative, empowering… I learned that one can use it to celebrate the features you love most about yourself, or to make a look for certain moods. I came to appreciate what makeup meant for lots of people, and that my previous judgements about how shallow wearing makeup was, while true to some degree for certain individuals, wasn’t the case for everyone, and that makeup can actually be a good thing.
These days, I still go bare faced 90% of the time, but that’s mostly because I still need practice for anything that isn’t gorey SFX, I’m tight on money and I tend to funnel it elsewhere, and because I still need to get comfortable with it and not worry every second I have it on whether I smudged something or if my eyeshadow has already creased (boooo oily eyelids!).
I used to hate makeup, and now I love it. It is a tool for creativity and beauty that I can appreciate.
There are so many sides to this particular situation; so many backgrounds, geographical locations, religious beliefs, etc. etc. I guess all we have are our personal perceptions of the matter.
My own story with make-up, aside from what I shared in an earlier post about starting out with more and then being comfortable with less, is that growing up in Houston, TX, make-up was a right of passage and not necessarily a choice for most women. I grew up knowing ridicule if you did not wear make-up, and remember comments like “are you sick?” and “what’s wrong with you?” if you left the house sans warpaint.
I could say that I am bitter about this, but in a way I’m not. I moved to the Northwest 7 years ago, and it was stunning to be around so many girls in their twenties who had just never worn the stuff. Then when they tried to experiment, it looked like scary clown face because they hadn’t had the years of experience and foibles like I had to get a nice, appealing face in under 20 minutes!
So my experience may differ from some, and you can say I’m a product of the shallowness and focus on the external morale of the south, but it taught me to be presentable in almost any situation without looking like a child past my time. So there you have it; my two cents!
I’m terribly late with this as i was away from the internet all week, but i am certainly taking part nonetheless.
I’m still experimenting with make-up a lot, i don’t have a single ‘look’ for default make-upness and most of the time i usually have a little bit of eyeliner pencil on and that’s all.
i started using make-up quite late for the opposite reason a lot of insecure girls do. i was actually convinced that i was so hideous that wearing make-up might actually make me look a bit better and then if people got used to that, AND THEN saw me without it they would have terrible trauma. So i figured it was better everyone was just used to my disgustingly disfigured self.
My colossal issues with myself and self hatred diminished slowly over time and with effort and i found the more i accepted myself the more i felt i could play with the way i looked.
i enjoy it now but neither do i feel any pressure to wear it
I was always afraid to wear makeup when I was a teen. I even had a mary kay lady teach me how to put too much of it on. I was made fun of for looking at cosmetic magazines like seventeen because I never used products like liner or mascara.
I would walk through drugstores in awe of the walls of pretty powders and vile after vile of products the promised me sexy attractiveness.
Eventually I got up the guts to purchase some eyeliner, it was blue. I played around with it, made a mess and tried with no avail to get the cheap waxy color off my eyes.
I went to school the next day and actually got complemented about the blue smudges across my eyelids. From there my relationship with color was born. From there I tried mascara, glitter, powder and even *gasp* red lipstick.
I go through periods of not wearing anything on my face except for some moisturizer and lip balm.
I also go through periods of loving the most loud obnoxious colors ever made safe to apply to my skin.
I have a mother that will never leave the house with out her lip stick on and a father look at me and wonder why I leave my face so pale and colorless at times. (it is because I save all the color for my purple hair)
I have quite a healthy relationship with make up. I went from being terrified of making myself a fool to enjoying as much color as possible. Cosmetics never cause me anxiety. My self image is more tangled in my hair than anything else.
I either get two responses to my makeup.
“You got a lot of shit on your face.” Or “I love your makeup.”
To the negative comments I try to explain to these people, depending on the person, that it’s not that I wear alot, but darker colors just stand out more. To others, I may just ask if they have a girlfriend and when they say no, I ask if they wonder why. lol.
When I don’t wear makeup people usually say that I just look so different. Or that I look pretty without it. And it’s not that I don’t think that. But I enjoy wearing my makeup however I do. I think it’s another art form and I enjoying being a walk of art. For me isn’t just another talent that I enjoy doing.
I think that in this day and age people should just stop judging and let people be who they are. If they don’t like something, then don’t do it. But let people be.
I mean, I love tattoos too, but I don’t look down on people for not having them. I may ask why they don’t. But that’s more so to get to know them more than anything else.
Also: I think you look good with or without makeup. You are just a pretty girl! And I think it’s about your attitude that makes you beautiful, not what you put on your face. :)
My Personal philosophy about make-up, hair color, piercings, tattoos, fashion etc. is based upon the phrase “Your body is a temple”.
I was sitting at a crowded bus stop with a few friends after school one Friday; on our way to the movies. I revealed to them that I had recently discovered that you could get a piercing put in right above your top lip, like where a beauty mark should go. And I expressed to them how excited I was because my big cousin was gonna take me to go get it done.
Out of no where this little old lady started lecturing me about the immorality running rampant “these days” and how me getting a piercing would surely send me on a downward spiral ending with me burning in hell.
My friends had tears in there eyes they were laughing so hard and I was more then a little annoyed by the time she concluded her speech with “You know your body is a temple, little girl?”. I immediately responded with “Listen ma’am MY body is MY temple and i’ll decorate it anyway I damn well please.”
That stuck with me because I don’t have quick or witty comebacks often. But that was not only clever but a true expression regarding how I feel about my appearance… I don’t cover flaws or accentuate assets I decorate myself… but when I take down all of the ornamentation what I’m left with is still a temple…
As a fellow eyebrowless 90’s goth, the most ironic thing I’ve discovered about this whole situation is: some absurdly large percentage of the men who want to push you around about makeup have *no ability* to accurately identify which other women in the room are wearing makeup, or how much. They honest-to-god think that 99% of the other girls are walking around with freshly scrubbed faces. They think you’re the first girl they’ve seen wearing makeup all week, when actually you’re just the only one wearing a color bright enough to make them notice. It just makes the whole thing even more absurd… especially if you’re like me, wearing unusual makeup yes, but incidentally not a *lot* of makeup, and Becky-Sue over there goes right under his radar even though she possibly removes her cream foundation at night with a potato peeler…
I know you’ve much better things to occupy your brainzzes these days than what your boyfriend did to your eyebrow some odd years ago, but I would like to just say eeeeaaaccckkk!
okay now that’s outta the way. I just wanna say that you have if anything been a positive influence when it comes to my relationship with makeup. whether this is true or not, what i have gotten outta your take on makeup is that it does not define you, but is another way of being creative just like music or painting or whatever. This is made apparent by the fact that you do allow pictures of yourself w/o your eyebrows penciled in to surface on your website, and do not make a big deal with OH LOOK AT ME WITHOUT makeup captions somewhere close to the photos borders. No! it is simply another look and that is very healthy! the problem people have with makeup is that it becomes what they want to look like and not an expression of something they can do, which is i think present in the much more “natural” looking starlets one sees constantly all over movies, billboards and television. so ya kudos!
I seconds Mers’ comment about how a lot of males just have no idea that some women are wearing make up unless they’re wearing very obvious colours or style it very obviously. I have a friend who is ‘normal’ and consistently wears a metric tonne of bad mascara plastered all over her lashes because she’s been doing it that way since she was ten. Her boyfriend has no idea that’s not what her lashes actually look like, and I’m not kidding, he really doesn’t know – just can’t see that it looks incredibly unnatural because it’s not obvious enough. A lot of my male friends can’t tell if women around us are wearing make up even when it’s obvious as hell, but if you tell them to look closer or point out soecifics, they cotton on. It’s just so weird that a girl can be wearing totally ‘wrong’ looking makeup, badly applied and smeared and spackled on, or whatever, but as long as it’s neutral enough colours and not too obvious, a lot of men can’t see it.
I wear what feels right to me, some days it’s not a lot, some days it’s nothing, some days it is a whole lot, but it’s about what makes me feel good. I once went to work at my old job and got harassed by someone from customer services who told me to ‘go put some colour on your face, you look sick, people aren’t going to like that’, and I looked a lot healthier than she did, I was just paler and make up-less.
If anyone comments on the way I do my face, then let them. I do it my way. I had a guy I knew in the seventh grade when all the other girls were spackling on cheap makeup and I hadn’t started getting into it yet because it didn’t seem all that interesting and hell, the other girls looked really bad, tell me that I should put some more black around my eyes, that it would make me prettier. I couldn’t help laughing because to me, he was basing how I should look off how everyone else looked, and it seemed so stupid. Once I got into make up and discovered that I could do great things with the stuff to express myself, I met him again, a few years later. I was wearing a simple cat-eye and he looked at me and called me an ugly bitch. You can NOT please everyone, and really? Why the hell should you? I put that black around my eyes because I wanted to and I liked it. I still do cat eyes today. Don’t ever let anyone else’s hang ups affect the way you see yourself, chances are your dark.tinted glasses capture your essence way better than they can from beneath their hipster douchebag hats and bad hoodies.
Hmm, I’m one of those people who have a tendency to dislike penciled eyebrows that are too in-your-face; mostly because I often feel it takes attention away from the rest of someone’s face. But if they’re comfortable with it, then who am I to judge, right? =)
I think the e-mail is rather rude, but that obviously came from someone who don’t know the difference between constructive criticism and insult. Or someone who don’t know that forcing your opinion on others does not equal doing them a favor.
On another note, I stumbled upon your blog today and loving it so far. Have a good week! ^^