For as long as i can remember, i've been a more ardent feminist than most women. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the topic of makeup. I am so averse to it that it's rare for me to be attracted, sexually or platonically, to a woman who wears it. This streak is mined from the same vein that makes it unlikely for me to be attracted to a black woman who straightens her hair (if you don't get that, please read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"). Some people are perplexed by my aversion. When asked to explain, i often don't know where to start, because my aversion exists on so many levels, and i'm so passionate about it that i sometimes can't even remember all the reasons.
1) THE PORCELAIN DOLL
Reach back into history, to discover why makeup came to exist in the first place. During their millenia of subjugation, women have had one purpose - sex. A woman's worth was in her attractiveness. Undesirable women were kept around for their domestic contributions (although if you think women have never been killed simply because they were old or unattractive, you're not paying attention...in China today, women are killed for much less). What do you do with a porcelain doll? You paint it. This makes it prettier. The origins of makeup exist in that simple analogy. Painting a woman emphasized her only quality. It also made it easier to forget that she might feel hope or pain or anger...it made it easier to forget that she was breathing and alive at all. A woman wearing makeup today is like an african-american wearing a big chain around their neck. And yes, i suddenly realize that mr. t may soon be giving me a stomping.
2) YUCK!
Having been an actor, i have a inside perspective on makeup. It keeps skin from breathing. Do male performers keep their makeup on at the end of a show? No, no matter how great the show, taking off the makeup is generally the first thing we do. Makeup is patently unappealing to the touch or taste. Well of course, it's paint! Men kinda screwed this act of oppression up, they succeeded in dehumanizing women, but they inadvertently lessened the quality of woman's essential function. Makeup tastes terrible, and it smears whatever it touches. Apply makeup to a blank piece of paper, and ask for volunteers to lick or kiss that paper. You won't get any (except maybe ol' freaky jill, who once humped a swimming pool). Sex is rubbing and licking and fluids...randomly toss paint onto any couple who are proving their passion, be they people or pandas or porpoises, and annoyance will be the only result.
3) PSYCHOLOGICALLY
I like being naked, literally and metaphorically. I like real emotions and total truth. I like for nothing human to be hidden. The psychological walls that exist between us all are many and varied...because of fear or shame or desire or anger or a million other factors, we all wall ourselves off from the world, and once we're old enough to realize this (and to the extent which we do realize it), we then spend the rest of our lives trying to escape these walls. I hate makeup just as i would hate it if everyone wore a casper the ghost mask all their lives. Don't tell me it's not the same - it's just a matter of degree. If you think that putting a physical covering onto your face, no matter how thin, doesn't psychologically distance you from the rest of humanity, then you don't grasp basic psychology.
4) PLUNGE!
I'm a physical plunger. Show me a waterfall and i'll be wet, show me leaves and i'll tumble, show me a pillow and somebody's getting thumped. Makeup is antithetical to the spirit of plunging. If you're concerned about how dirt or sand or tears or sweat or swimming will affect your makeup, you're not really all the way alive.
I've been to the future. They don't have casper the ghost, and they don't have makeup.
Strangely however, they do have mr. t.
1 comment:
Well, then... ok, firstly, my makeup doesn't define my feminism. There are plenty of women who don't wear makeup who also don't define themselves as feminist - the lack of makeup doesn't plant a woman square in the feminist camp.
ALL makeup does not mean painting your skin so that you cannot breathe. Some women (including me) wear fairly minimal makeup (i.e., no concealer, foundation, face powder), and our reasons for doing so have nothing to do with feminism, and nothing to do with men, in fact! For example, I wear eyeliner & mascara, not for you, not for an ideal of feminine beauty that someone else has defined for me, but because my eyes live behind glasses and all but disappear there... I happen to like my eyes, and this way, I can see 'em. :) Basically, it makes me happy.
Makeup rubs off, you observe, when we're busy exchanging touch and bodily fluids. Indeed, it can. However, if my lipstick (which I wear regularly) rubs off on anything, it's only rarely gonna be my partner's body, because I generally am not touching his skin with my mouth unless we're at home -where I don't apply the stuff!
One final response... it's a little difficult for a feminist woman to read your assertion that you are 'more feminist than most women...' It kind of rankles, and while I would like to believe that you don't intend it to sound smug, that is how it strikes me, no matter how many times I read it, no matter what I remind myself I know about you. Yes, there are loads of women who do not define themselves as feminist (even though they are); there are loads of women who are NOT feminist (to my surprise & chagrin). As attractive as a feminist man is to the average feminist woman, when you define yourself as 'more than...,' you set yourself apart in a way that is uncomfortably close to 'better than.'
I appreciate your views, though it seems that here, you and I may differ... this is a thought worth regular re-examination, I think..
Post a Comment