You’d be amazed at how completely that sentence throws some people. As if “loves eye shadow” and “is an enlightened, socially aware person” are two opposite ends of a wokeness spectrum.
Nowhere is this ~shock and confusion~ more dramatic than on social media. Whenever I have an opinion on Twitter, strange dudes slide into my mentions to A) tell me I’m wrong, and B) interrogate me about how, exactly, I reconcile feminism with being a beauty editor.
Because obviously, you can’t believe that women deserve equality and also love lipstick. That would be insane.
I don’t argue with every neckbeard who tries to step to me, but I do, obviously, observe the arguments they attempt to make. Here are the six reasons I’m told that I CANNOT POSSIBLY be a feminist and love makeup.
Anyway.
Beauty is only stupid if you live in Male Privilege Fantasy World. Makeup, and “being well-groomed” is widely considered an essential part of womanhood, affecting everything from how you’re perceived on dates to how competent you’re thought to be at work.
So the POINT of makeup, at the most basic level, is to survive in a world that still places a lot of value on the way women look. Additionally, have you ever applied red lipstick? That shit’s fun as hell.
It’s also worth noting that people only ever talk this way about things like fashion, makeup, and hairstyling — creative careers usually dominated by women. Nobody ever says that there’s no point to the NFL, or that getting plugs to fix your bald spot is vain.
It’s almost like traditionally feminine accomplishments are looked down on in our society or something! Crazy, right?
If we didn’t engage with everything that’s rooted in sexist bullshit, we legit would not be able to exist in this world. Like, could I even breathe? Sounds like the dude who discovered oxygen was kind of a dick!
Makeup’s history is heavily influenced by what pops cis-hetero dude boners. But that’s not how it is anymore. In The Year of Our Lord Beyonce 2018, we’ve reclaimed makeup and beauty for ourselves. We’ve taken the tools designed to make us fit in, and we use them to stand out. There’s nothing more feminist than insisting the world see us AS WE WANT TO BE SEEN — and that’s what makeup is.
I remember being a really sad teenager. I remember thinking that maybe if I could just be pretty, life would be better. I remember looking at magazines and feeling worse about myself. I lived through all of that, just like a lot of you did.
But you know what? It wasn’t makeup that did that to me.
Makeup doesn’t hurt young women. Society hurts young women. Makeup isn’t telling girls that they’re wrong the way they are — that’s advertising, Photoshop, the insane idealization of a single body type, institutional racism, the baked-in notion that women are only “good” if they’re attractive. SOCIETY — and yes, The Patriarchy — is doing that.
Beauty its a reflection of the world we live in, not the reason it is this way. Blaming makeup, and by extension blaming women, for those issues is a level of fucked up I couldn’t reach if I stood on a ladder.
Makeup is black lipstick and experimenting with your identity when you’re 13. And at 24. And 32.
Makeup is rainbow freckles and pointillist cat eyes. Makeup helped me find out who I was — and I am a queen. It gave me a voice and a creative outlet, and eventually it gave me a career as a beauty editor.
Makeup is the reason I have a cool, independent life helping other people feel fucking incredible about themselves. I am being the change I want to see in the beauty world, and if that’s anti-feminist, I’ll eat my hat.
Women are perfectly capable of demanding equal treatment while also wearing amazing lipstick. Just in case you didn’t notice.
Anyway. The question here is, if I lived in an alternate universe where wearing makeup were NOT an essential part of adult womanhood, would I still choose to wear it? I don’t know! Societal pressures have unconsciously affected the things we do and like, and teasing that apart is basically impossible!
Here is what I know, though:
I know that I am comfortable not wearing makeup to work, to parties, and in photos. I don’t know that I’d be comfortable going to a job interview without it.
I know that even on days when I don’t “have” to wear it — weekends, holidays, running errands — I often decide to. Sometimes I get really elaborate with it, because it’s only “wasting makeup” if you feel it’s wasted.
And I know that at some point, you like what you like. It’s good to examine those relationships sometimes, but don’t kill yourself over it — at the end of the day, this is the world we live in. All we can do is ask ourselves how we can make it better, not engage in weird thought experiments about alternate universes.
Although, let’s be real: if there WAS a feminist witch coven on the moon, I’d be there.
