There are plenty of reasons not to wear makeup. It can cause bad reactions in your skin, it can be full of chemicals you really can’t pronounce, it’s time consuming, it’s hella expensive, you might be against the widespread animal testing, or you might not like makeup, and any and all of these reasons are totally cool. Maybe you believe that traditional gender roles push makeup onto women and girls and you don’t think it’s right. Maybe you think that wearing makeup hides who you really are. These are all personal reasons not to wear makeup, and that’s completely right of you. These are all completely legit criticisms of makeup, and I won’t deny them.
I’ll admit that I do have a cosmetics addiction. I could spend upwards of a thousand dollars a year on them and feel no guilt. Caking on makeup, or as my friend Ashlea would say, “putting face on my face,” can take from five to twenty minutes, and is a ritual I treat myself to at least once a day. I own over forty lip products, fifteen of them being red lipsticks that are barely different, and I wear them as often as I feel like it… Meaning every day. Even on sweatpants days.
There’s this ridiculous fallacy that women spend all their time thinking about how they can be aesthetically pleasant to look at for men’s consumption. I get that attitude a lot, and I get a lot of reactions to my ridiculous obsession with cosmetics that can pretty much be summed up by “But men don’t like that!” Time Magazine came out with an article today graciously letting us man-crazy women know that science has proven that men don’t like it when we wearing makeup. According to them, men preferred women at only 40% of their makeup routines, so lovingly telling us that we should “cool it with the eyeliner.”
Finally! The men have spoken! We can be free from our makeup routines now, am I right ladies?
Uh. Not quite.
Newsflash: THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN.
See, I don’t put this on for you, Time Magazine. I don’t spend hours every week perfecting eyeliner so sharp it could kill for you to pat me on the head and tell me I’m pretty. I don’t spend a ridiculous amount of money finding the perfect shade of red for my tan so that I can kiss it off later. I don’t care that you like your girls “natural;” subtle makeup, baby-shaved, not overly in your face. Not only is this disgustingly heteronormative and encouraging of the erasure of LGBT* people and people on all parts of the gender spectrum that wear makeup, it’s gross and it gives men control of us and our bodies.
Don’t tell me that you like your girls “natural.” I feel no need to hear your opinion on the shade of my lipstick, or the shape or intensity of my eyeliner. I don’t care about your aversion to bright colors painted on the canvas I have created on my face, or the too-long lashes I have stuck onto my eyes. I refuse to crave your gaze as you claim I do. I am not chasing your affection. I will wear my lipstick as war paint, and hold my femininity as a sword before me. There is nothing shameful about painting myself into a work of art.
Face it: women do not wear makeup for you.
Here’s Time’s article: http://time.com/79584/science-women-less-makeup/
a feminist rhymes-with-witch 