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.
Thing of Things 
Note that as practiced by certain professionals (I’m thinking film and television) makeup regains high status and the ability to be practiced on men.
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Visible makeup, though?
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Most of this argument can be made about men wearing a suit and tie as well.
For that matter, most of it can apply to any way in which how you dress or act affects your social standing, and that applies to everyone. Looking too scruffy can affect your ability to get a job, success at romance, etc. no matter what sex you are.
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Just to be clear because I liked this comment, my conclusion to this is not “and therefor expectations of makeup are OK” but the opposite.- societal dress codes (I’m using “dress” very broadly here) in general suck.
(Not that men necessarily have it as bad as women in this regard- I honestly don’t know, nor does it particularly matter to me who has it worse)
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This is my opinion also. Especially the “it does not particularly matter who has it worse” part.
Super like! ❤
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+1
I’m not sure if we need literally zero dress standards. I mean, I suppose *something* is reasonable. But more open is better than less open.
The problem is, a lot of this stuff is pre-rational. Which is to say, even if I *believe* it is okay to dress however you want, the man in the well cut suit still is the man in the well cut suit. He shines.
Beauty matters.
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I wish it were more acceptable for men to wear make-up in professional settings. I generally do wear nail art to work, but I’m a freelancer in a sector where eccentricity isn’t really frowned upon, and even then, every time I change contracts I give it a week or two so they can be sufficiently impressed my my competency before I risk it.
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Truth. You guys miss out here.
Like, after I transitioned and began using makeup, all a sudden everyone thinks I am ten years younger than I am. It’s really nice.
A good foundation over a good luminescent primer, OMG! It’s heaven.
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Heh, people tend to take 5-10 years off my actual age even without make-up, so I’m quite glad that adding it doesn’t compound that effect for me, otherwise it might start to get creepy. Being mistaken for mid-late 20s is okay, being thought a teenager would be kind of uncomfortable.
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“A final note: if makeup is so damn empowering men should have a chance to put it on too.”
My grandson (2 1/2) got into his mom’s waterproof mascara and he knew enough to get quite a bit of it around his eyes. Does that count?
“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. ”
Quoted for truth. Dressing is an art. Dolling up a car is an art. Making perfect sushi is an art. People could stand to back off and stop trying to be the moral arbiters for everyone.
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I’ll be a bit contrarian and disagree with Ozy and the other posters: men should absolutely not wear makeup. In fact, men should apply social pressure to any man who breaks rank on this to get them to stop.
It’s basically a huge prisoner’s dilemma-type scenario. If some men start wearing makeup, they can gain an attractiveness advantage over other men. This creates pressure on more men to follow, and once you reach a critical mass of makeup-wearing men it becomes a social expectation like it has become for women.
Putting on makeup sounds like a pain in the ass. Therefore I think men should cooperate in dissuading other men from wearing makeup, and we can all save some time and trouble.
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Yes. When a woman wears makeup, she’s defecting by increasing the pressure for other women to do the same. I can’t really expect her to cooperate, and maybe the benefits she gets are so huge that they totally outweigh the small harm, but the harm is still there.
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Interestingly, I recently talked with my sister about how certain kinds of homophobia function as enforcement mechanisms for exactly this sort of non-competition agreement between men, because it rules out certain kinds of makeup, dress, and performance-of-sexuality.
I think that we should reject this implicit agreement for two reasons, though.
1: Homophobia has lots of really sharp negative consequences for lots of people, so dismantling it (which would remove the implicit agreement’s enforcement mechanism) is more valuable than preserving non-competition, and
2: The non-competition agreement gives huge advantages to guys who have mesomorphic physiques and to guys who have a lot of money (and thus can afford to buy nice suits, one of the few acceptable ostentatious, attractive “manly” clothing options). If you’re a guy who’s smart and creative but not rich or athletic, it’s very much in your interest to defect from the agreement. It’s also probably in society’s interest too– letting people with lots of muscles and money monopolize male erotic capital empowers bro-douche types and incentivizes joining their thedes and behaving like them, which is… not good.
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I agree, but wish to make a few points in regard to (2).
A) Anecdotally, women vary more in what they consider attractive than men do. Allowing guys to capitalize on these differences will decrease competition and create more “winners.” Men who wear makeup and workout bros are relatively nonoverlapping demographics, and will likely appeal to different groups of women.
B) Wearing makeup and opening up new fashion choices costs more money, not less. See: money spent on beauty by men vs. women.
C) Framing this in terms of homophobia weakens the argument that this is a method to reduce competition. Acceptance of homosexuality is universally beneficial for men. Gay/bi/pan dudes get to pair up with each other, and the marginal bi/pan guys who end up doing so will reduce the amount of competition for women.
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Yeah, I’ve had that thought before too. Homophobia is awful, and I’m glad it’s on the decline. But I’m not making the generic argument against all of those things; just makeup.
1) I’m not saying we should enforce the no-makeup rule with homophobia. I think we should all be conscious of the bargain we have made, and enforce it by saying “That’s not cool” or “That looks silly”-type social influence. Not homophobia or bullying.
2) If you think suits are expensive, just wait until you have to spend money on makeup, hair products, and fashion that goes out of style as quickly as women’s fashion does. So I reject that part of the argument. I also reject your idea that muscles are the sole domain of bro-douche types. I think the fact that many people have that association is hugely beneficial to keeping bro-douches in power. In my experience, the mental health benefits and mental sharpness I get from working out to hugely outweigh the aesthetic benefits. And it doesn’t have (that) much to do with genetics either. Anyone with the right knowledge and the dedication to consistently spend about 3 hours a week on it can have those benefits.
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@wireheadwannabe:
[quote]Men who wear makeup and workout bros are relatively nonoverlapping demographics[/quote]
Maybe where you live. My gym has a couple of gay(/bi?) men who see no disconnect between makeup and a toned, muscular body. There’s even someone who shows up in a sportsbra-tank top thing and cycle shorts along with makeup, though I’m not sure if they’re preop trans or just like presenting femme, and it seems rude to ask. Which is a tangent, back to the point.
These folks are not at the gym to pose or mince around with dumbbells; they’re squatting 2pl8 and benching over body weight, and damn proud of it. So yeah, I’d say they still qualify as gym bros.
Note: not in the US, probable culture differences at play.
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” certain kinds of homophobia function as enforcement mechanisms for exactly this sort of non-competition agreement between men, ”
That’s probably true of some kinds of homophobia. What I as a gay man have seen of homophobia, quite often from women, is that most often it operates as a way of closing off the main alternative to sex with women and centering women as the source of emotional contact and solace. In other words, it’s a monopoly protection mechanism.
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But Ginkgo, if homophobia was an enforcement mechanism, wouldn’t men be more homophobic towards lesbians than gay men?
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wireheadwannabe,
I’m not talking about straight men’s anti-male homophobia, but straight women’s. Straight women are the ones who get a lock on men’s sexual access if societal homophobia is strong enough to block their access to other men. Anti-male homophobia doesn’t affect ant sexual monopoly straight men might have, and in fact it serves their purposes only as one more axis of inter-male competition. (And indeed we see “getting laid” as a significant marker of male competition.)
But it hardly affects their sexual access to women – if anything it closets gay men and forces us to compete against straight men just for appearance’s sake! And remember, on the romance end of this, gay men seem to have an advantage over our straight brothers when it comes to straight women. So again, this serves straight men’s interest not very well at all.
Then there is anti-female homophobia. I am sure straight men harbor a lot of that, but I have never in my life once heard it manifested with the same visceral venom that they aim at gay men.
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Ha! I actually described your model exactly (makeup as prisoner’s dilemma) to my girlfriend a few weeks ago, while encouraging her not to wear makeup, and to learn to feel pretty also without it, because she is.
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I’m definitely on the side of the “cool men” that David Mitchell complains about.
TBH I’m not much in favour of reducing social pressure on women to dress well; instead, I’d like to see a matching degree of pressure on men to dress well.
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As an aside, Lee’s post is a pretty great example of how masculinity is constructed and policed. Consider: in his post he presents a model of male beauty that is entirely based on inter-male competition, which he calls an “attractiveness advantage.” However, it excludes entirely the idea that male beauty culture can have its own value in terms of self expression and delight. Such things are, evidently, denied to men. In his view, the only value a man might find in his beauty is to outcompete other men.
But more! What should men do about this, in Lee’s view? Well of course, they should police other men. They should “cooperate in dissuading,” but what does it look like when men cooperate to dissuade? How many of you have experienced organized groups of men trying to control your behavior, particularly gender-non-conforming behavior?
Trust me, back away from this shit. Wear makeup if you wanna.
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I think you’re reading more into Lee’s comment than was actually there. They don’t mention whether these things are exclusively male, and in fact several commenters seem to have inferred they meant for similar logic to be applied to women.
Certainly, I found this framing of the argument (makeup-as-prisoners’-dilemma) a persuasive counterargument to Ozy’s post.
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Go read Lee’s comment again. It is hard to miss that he was talking about men.
And the game theoretic approach has all the attraction of any half-paragraph map trying to describe a thousand-mile-wide human territory. What it demonstrate is the profound human confidence in bad abstractions.
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How does this have seven upvotes on Ozy’s blog. This post is explicitly encouraging bullying people for failing to conform to gender roles.
This is some Jim Doland shit.
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I definitely agree that make up shouldn’t be enforced but I’m not convinced of different standards for men and women being the patriarchy. I think part of different standards is just the nature of gender in action. People like differentiating themselves and marking themselves as a gender. I think radical feminism has fallen totally flat on changing people’s attitudes towards make up because the message hasn’t been “your make-up or lack thereof shouldn’t effect your livelihood, rights etc” it’s “make-up culture for women exists solely because the patriarchy controlled you into liking it”. I know that’s a total turn off for me.
I think perhaps if we identified people’s desire to differentiate and to show gender, we could then control it, because people wouldn’t feel so threatened that their ability to show gender will be taken away.
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>A final note: if makeup is so damn empowering men should have a chance to put it on too.
That’s what it means to suit up. Putting your best face on has the added layer of complexity in that you have to, above all else, appear effortless. Maybe it’s because trying to please others is seen as submissive and therefore weak and undesirable in men, maybe it’s just a specific association with makeup and femininity.
That said, cosmetics/skin care companies have managed to normalise male use of facial scrubs and moisturisers, so maybe they’ll have more success bullying men into dolling up in the future.
>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
If nothing else makeup at work shows that you have your shit together for the simple reason that it takes time. I’ve known employers who look for well ironed clothing for the same reason – it shows you are willing to put more time into your job and have the capacity to plan ahead. This might well be part of the reason why militaries are so strict and particular about uniform: it is an exercise in discipline.
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Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are at least two types of men who regularly wear makeup. Members of the Goth subculture and the advocates of certain genres of Metal will happily wear makeup, and if Juggalos count, there’s those too.
The second type is… PUAs. Particularly the breed that goes in for “peacocking”.
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I hadn’t thought about Juggalos – presumably, they’re signalling group membership to each other, and reinforcing their self-image as members of the group?
Does make-up have signaling value among women, and if so, what do people think the signal is?
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Can’t speak for Juggalos, but as a former goth,wearing the makeup was sort of a countersignalling thing. “I reject the values of those outside of this subculture” combined with “I embrace this subculture”.
Well, that and it’s just plain sexy to othergoths, and even some who don’t identify in the culture. It might narrow your potential pool, but it intensifies your value for the potentials remaining.
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Three: LARPers, me included, and other actors. I love the look of bold monster makeup in the evening. (And if I’m being honest it’s a status thing, too. LARPers judge each other on costuming all the time, not matter the gender.)
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Even if you don’t want the makeup, do not reject moisturizers and other skin care. Sure, some women might like the rugged look, but nice skin is nice skin.
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My general policy about these things: recognize coercion for what it is, but don’t assume anyone who engages in Coerced Thing is necessarily being coerced. I care more about respecting people’s agency than about making an ideological point. I think we’re more or less in agreement on this.
On that note, though, I get so damn sick of the idea that the public is entitled to weigh in on what a woman should or should not do. Not that I’m blaming that on you – it’s just very pervasive, and it tires me. “Is X Good for Women or Bad for Women? Pundits weigh in!” It’s terribly infantilizing, not to mention that women aren’t a goddamn monolith.
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My other thought on this: I’m suspicious of the disproportionate focus on women’s choices (especially those re: traditional femininity) as being potentially coerced. No decision is made in a vacuum, yet to hear a lot of feminist media spin it, you’d think every choice except for icky feminine ones was totally independent. We’re all subject to societal influence no matter what we choose. Pinning the brunt of this on traditionally feminine women (as though no woman would ever truly *want* these things) is, as you said, pretty damn misogynist and femmephobic.
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I don’t like the equation of social pressure and coercion, either. That blurs a very important line — there’s a huge difference between “you may restrict your dating pool or have trouble getting an office job if you dress like this” and “someone is literally forcing you to dress like this”. There are plenty of ostentatious nonconformists in this world!
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Men’s clothes are not the male equivalent of makeup. Men’s clothes are the male equivalent of women’s clothes.
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Your comparison is not fair either. The range of clothes acceptable in a formal/professional setting is much more restricted for men than for women (although less restrictive on mobility/hindering for men overall, YMMV with era and social status).
Facial hair grooming, while not equivalent, is much more relevant to Ozy’s point. With interesting changes in fashion too, and consequences in the workplace for choosing to sport a beard (which are not maintenance-free either).
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They’re all part of self presentation. Facial hair is an element of presentation that is pretty explicitly policed (neckbeards are comfy) in a lot of work places, but treating makeup, hair, clothes and other elements of grooming as separate issues rather than as a whole misses the point that it is not that any of these things are illegitimate, but rather that we care about them too much in contexts where they shouldn’t matter.
Makeup isn’t the issue, and saying that it is brings out all sorts of classist/sexist value (nobody objects to what is considered to be “tasteful”, everybody raises an eyebrow at whatever is in fashion with the poor etc.), being judgemental of personal decisions that have nothing to do with you is the problem.
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(neckbeards are comfy)
Whaaaa?
I have a beard, but I’ve never allowed it to grow on my neck. This not because I’m worried about appearances. It’s because having hair on my neck is incredibly uncomfortable.
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@Matthew: A neckbeard this is still growing in (or has recently been trimmed short) tends to be uncomfortable, but a long, established neckbeard is nice.
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“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.”
See, also: Quilting.
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Eh, although you see a bunch of men knitting now, that didn’t used to be the case, but I don’t think knitting had the same connotations as quilting even when it was only women doing it.
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What’s wrong with making a good quilt? I thought knitting and quilting were seen as decent practical things done by women of older generations who hadn’t yet caught on to how disposable fabrics are these days. It’s more like DIY. Distinctly feminine and domestic, but not in the least bit frivolous.
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> 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.
Assuming “attractive” means good-looking, surely that effect is the whole point of makeup?
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Ozzy meet John Green! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijG6Tc431hQ
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If Ozy hasn’t heard of John Green I’ll eat both of my shoes and maybe my hat.
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“Don’t you know a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn’t marry a girl just for being pretty, but my goodness, doesn’t it help?” — Lorelei Lee, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
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I’m all over the map on this one.
On the one hand, I agree that there’s a prisoner’s dilemma aspect where once people start competing in a decorative area, you end up wasting a lot of effort. [If someone could insert something clever here about peacocks, possibly involving some wordplay, I’d appreciate it.]
On the other hand, given human nature, I suspect if you ended the cosmetics arms race, you would just end up entrenching people who had natural genetic advantages, or maybe shifting the competition somewhere else. (But back on that first hand, maybe the competition would shift somewhere more productive, like fitness or ability to play the harpsichord or something).
On the gripping hand, I put make up in the same category with lingerie, as “stuff I don’t care about even one bit, but if my partner feels better about herself when using it, I’m fine with it.” I suspect a lot people are in that camp – if makeup signals sexual interest, it’s hot, but not any hotter than expressing sexual interest by flirting, and it doesn’t have much if any attraction value apart from the signaling effect.
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It seems really weird to define sexual competition as “wasted effort”. Most people would not agree that effort expended to attract high-quality sex partners or long-term mates is wasted — at least, most people outside the geek subculture.
I completely agree with your second point that enforcing a no-makeup agreement would only move the battle lines somewhere else. Sexual selection is so fundamental to our psychology that a world without it is almost unimaginable (and probably horrifying); I think even geeks recognize this, although many of us are in denial about it.
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There’s a phrase for it, but I can’t remember.
I’m talking about competition for competition’s sake (which peacock has the prettier tail) rather than with a side benefit (which mate has genes more likely to help the offspring survive external threats).
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It’s not wasted at an individual level, but is wasted at a collective level. It’s Moloch in action.
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I thought Moloch referred to negative-sum competition, not competition in general. Sexual competition doesn’t leave everyone worse off, only the losers. I suppose taking part in the competition at all could be considered a “loss”, but by that logic, a chess tournament is also Moloch in action.
We have to be incredibly careful when we’re talking about terminal values. Maybe the human race would be better off without sexual competition, but maybe we’d be a lot worse off. Like I said, it’s probably impossible to accurately imagine such a world.
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Sexual competition differs from chess in that, by and large, people don’t enjoy competing sexually, but do it anyway because they enjoy the fruits of success. In contrast, people who don’t enjoy competing at chess generally don’t.
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That gets to the geek-centric Typical Mind Fallacy I was alluding to. I think most people do enjoy competing sexually! Geeks, by and large, regard it as an irritating imposition, and are likely to opt out of it or treat it like “work”. But listen to the chatter at a department-store cosmetics counter sometime. Most people think beauty is fun.
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I’ve been trying to make this point in various ways for some time. Dressing up is fun. Going out is fun. The dudes on the subway platform who compliment me (nicely) are fun. The people at the club are fun. They are gorgeous and wonderful. The bartenders are hot and have the biggest smiles. The lights are amazing. The music overcomes me. The dancing is great. The flirting is amazing. Some person smiles at me, faces me full on — we dance. They dance well. It’s super. Then we get closer, dance touching. That’s really neat. I think maybe *this person*. They are pretty enough.
But then they spin away into the crowd, dance with someone else. That’s fine. More fish.
Later I sit in a quiet part of the club and chat with another girl, SOMEONE I NOTICED AND OMG! I tell her things I picked up about her, just watching her and her friends, the ways she is different from her sister. Her sister is sunlight, I tell her; she is the moon. She says I’m the first person who has ever “really seen her”, whatever that means. It’s all maybe kinda bullshit, but so what. She wants my number, but no. She’s gorgeous, but too much for me to handle. I smile, give her a hug, and then drift away.
This night I go home alone, but that’s okay. I touched, both body and mind. There will be another night.
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Do people enjoy competing sexually, or do they enjoy some of the activities that can also serve a competitive function?
This may seem like splitting hairs, but I don’t think it is. This is not quite the same thing as makeup, but I like dressing sharp*, including dressing sharp to go out on a date. But I hate trying to figure out what clothes to wear on a date to make a sufficiently good impression to achieve romantic success. I would imagine that a lot of people who like wearing makeup (and doing it well) similarly dislike trying to make sure their makeup is good enough.
Maybe not, though. I don’t know.
*Well, by my standards. Which is to say, not so sharp by a lot of people’s standards. But that’s beside the point.
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@osberend — Hint: calling this “competition” is the map not the territory. *Some* people see this as competitive to *some* degree, but that degree varies. Furthermore, the way people engage with status play can be quite varied. Some people take their status very *seriously* — and this is irrespective of their status level. On the other hand, some people chose to engage with status playfully, and kinda just laugh along with it all.
Choosing to view this as competition and only competition all the way down is an unhealthy attitude. It perhaps makes things harder.
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There is a class or caste aspect to this too. Do you remember the opening scene of Dangerous Liaisons, where Glenn Close and John Malkovich are dressing for the day, each in their own chambers? Flamboyant dress for men was a class marker and it was pretty much non-optional. This survives in the flamboyance of military officers’ dress uniforms – the close identification of military command and the nobility is the connection here.
It’s not face makeup, but fire engine red stripes down the sides of the pants (Marines), gold braid everywhere it can be tacked on (Army officers) and of chest full of decorations that rival costume jewelry is pretty damned flamboyant for men’s dress in this society. And then there’s Naval officers, prancing around in blinding white uniforms. And that’s just the Americans.
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Just an aside to the men here, and perhaps some of the women. Depending on your life experience, there is a good chance you do not notice much of the makeup that women wear. You certainly notice some. For example, last night I went to a fetish party and put on stunning green eyeshadow and deep pink lipstick. I also waaaay overdid my blush. It was a fetish party. I wanted to stand out.
But I have a friend who likes to waaaay understate her makeup, like all the time. Light pinks for lips, subtle hues for eyeshadow, good foundation and a touch of blush. If you saw her, you might notice the mascara. You might not.
The makeup makes a huge difference in how she looks, but it is not *theatrical*.
When men say “women look pretty without makeup”, often what they are perceiving is they prefer women in *subtle* makeup. Good subtle makeup is no cheaper than good theatrical makeup. Applying it can be just as hard.
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It seems like there ought to be a test somewhere with a large number of pairs of images of women, with one member of each pair being randomly assigned to a subtle-makeup state and the other to a no-makeup state, that would allow the test-taker to pick the more attractive member of each pair.
Also, speaking from my own experience, “women look pretty without makeup” means “I’ve seen the same women with and without (well-done, subtle) makeup, and the very modest aesthetic improvement is not (to me) worth the time it takes her to achieve it.”
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To add to the anecdata, my first thought on the subject of women looking pretty without makeup is an ex-girlfriend. I lived with her for 10 years, so I know she didn’t own makeup. Still looked very good to me.
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I can argue “women shouldn’t wear makeup.”
As stated, women who wear makeup trade money (I’m unsure how much) for being percieved as more likeable, competent, and attractive. As should be obvious to anyone who’s read Meditations on Moloch, this is a coordination problem: wearing makeup is a costly activity that puts women who wear it ahead of women who don’t. At Nash equilibrium, all women wear makeup. But if we ban wearing makeup, every woman is made better off by however much money they spend on wearing makeup and however much time wearing makeup requires.
(This took about 10 seconds to think up. This argument isn’t without fault, but it’s also not without merit and I have a lot of trouble believing the NY Times couldn’t find anyone to make an argument with at least equal merit.)
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Also: I’m a man and wear makeup when my metal band plays. It’s pretty awesome (maybe even empowering). At least until the gig’s over and I realize I have no clue how to take it off.
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This is a legit issue! Do you know what Milia are? Because guys who don’t know how to get rid of makeup do.
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Technically, every woman whose skill at applying makeup is not disproportionately large compared to the attractiveness of her natural features is made better off by that amount (or more); women who combine natural unattractiveness with unusual skill at makeup use, however, suffer a loss.
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That technicality is actually kind of important. Beauty confers social status. If beauty is something you either have or you don’t, it’s an absolutely useless signal. If, however, people who develop skills through practice and who work hard to be beautiful are more beautiful than people who don’t, then beauty becomes at least partially a function of propensity to work hard, and therefore becomes a better-than-useless signal. It would, of course, be better to stop judging people based on their appearance, but we seem hard-wired not to be able to do that.
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I have a deep and instinctive loathing of the broad class of useless-activities-that-signal-that-I-can-do-them. I think I can make some pretty good arguments for why they more or less universally make society worse than it would otherwise be, but I don’t think I’m in the right mood at the moment.
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