From: pw@panix.com (Paul Wallich)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Lipstick
Date: 14 Sep 1992 04:54:06 GMT
Organization: Trivializers R Us
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

In article <190a5mINNs2n@agate.berkeley.edu> gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>While there is a certain amount of social pressure towards
>makeup for women, especially during reactionary periods such
>as the one we passed through in the '80s, the pressure for
>males to _not_ wear overt makeup is severe.  (Males can wear
>makeup that, for instance, confers the appearance of a tan,
>but it must appear natural, or at least appear to be trying
>to appear natural.)  The severity approaches, even reaches,
>violence, in many situations, especially if we consider
>arbitrary loss of livelihood a form of violence.
>
>The reason I think this is a feminist issue is that I see in
>feminism not only an effort to "expand the field of choices
>for women" but an effort to recover the possibility of the
>feminine in both sexes.  Where males are so stringently 
>required to avoid a practice which has been assigned to the
>feminine, something is going on which I think is not
>favorable to either of the feminist enterprises.  But I'm
>not sure what it is.  Why shouldn't men wear makeup if they
>feel like it?  What does the severity of force used to
>suppress such a practice say about our culture and 
>especially about our politics?

I think it says a lot, especially considering the articles
that have come out from time to time about how men's makeup
was going to be the next big thing for the cosmetics industry,
especially since use among women was declining. 

Surface analysis: it's a power thing of various kinds. There's
not much of a way to sell makeup to men because a) men aren't
entirely supposed to have bodies, and so worrying about one's
face would be seen as trying to enhance one's success (which,
after all, is all men are there for) by deceptive means, and
this could be viewed as a sign of weakness and lack of self-confidence;
b) insofar as makeup wards off the effects of aging, putting it
on would be a sign of going over the hill, much as it is sometimes
seen in women (but of course women are supposed to be powerless,
so it is easy to analyse them in this way...)

In short: "Men aren't supposed to have/need beautiful faces."
and "What do you mean, my face isn't beautiful as it stands?"

More analysis: Some of the above has to be baloney because
there's no outcry against people who wear snappy suits and
power ties, although you could make the argument that these
things aren't as closely related to the appearance of physical
features as makeup is, i.e. if makeup for men ignored the planes
of the face and consisted only of, say, camouflage stripes or
perhaps those black eyes that football players wear (hmm, and
manly men, aren't they), then it would be all right. It may be
that insofar as makeup is (seen as) used by women who go along
with the mainstream antifeminist culture, it becomes a mark
of disenfranchisement, and so any man wearing it is automatically
a traitor to his gender. Or it could be enforcement of the
Woman = Body/Nature, Man = Mind/Science/Power dichotomy that is
so engrained it has become essentially invisible.

I look forward to hearing what everybody else has to say.

paul





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