From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Lipstick
Date: 8 Sep 1992 15:27:19 GMT
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

I appreciated Lenore Levine's comments on lipstick, especially regarding
the supposed "necessity" for wearing it.  Way back when I was struggling
to make decisions about how far to compromise my own preferences in the
direction of society's notion of a more "professional" look, I was much
influenced by an essay titled "Painted Women," by Kennedy Fraser, the
fashion writer for _The_New_Yorker_.  This essay was originally
published in 1970, but I didn't read it until it was reprinted in
Fraser's 1981 collection, _The_Fashionable_Mind_.  Inspired by Naomi
Wolf's book, I recently re-read "Painted Women" to bring once again to
mind just what were the magic words that had emboldened me to give up
on makeup almost entirely.  It doesn't seem nearly so startling now, but
for what it's worth, this was the passage that liberated me in this
area.  (Kennedy Fraser is a woman, by the way.)

	That makeup be fashionable is probably the least of all the
	things we ask of it.  The illusion of perfectability is a
	commodity, and the cosmetics industry, in its own interest,
	asserts that fashions in makeup change just as frequently as
	those in clothes.  It is doubtful whether many women change
	their style of makeup as often as they buy new clothes.  Women
	buy clothes and makeup for quite different reasons.  Clothes
	are a social statement; makeup is closer to our secret hopes
	and fears.  Many women wear makeup to conceal flaws whose
	hideousness they alone could ever recognize.  They may consider
	their eyes small, their skin sallow, their lashes laughably
	thin. . . A woman's picture of her face is not invariably
	accurate, but she can be brutally rude about how it looks
	without makeup.  Yet makeup becomes so closely associated
	with the face it adorns that any observation about it is
	liable to give offense.  You may remove a smut from a woman's
	cheek, or a smear of lipstick from a man's, but it is perilous
	to tell a woman that her eyeliner is wobbly or that she has
	too much powder on her nose.  She is likely to take this to
	mean that her eyes are too small or her nose is too big.  The
	woman who replaces her lipstick at the end of a meal often
	does so with a desperation which suggests that her mouth itself
	has been obliterated by chewing and by conversation.

	Women wear makeup for their own benefit.  Unless something
	happens to it--an eyelash begins to peel, or the lipstick goes
	askew--or unless they see someone without it for the first time,
	women hardly give a thought to other women's makeup.  Men are
	blind to all but great changes and excesses.  Yet in some
	strange way makeup persuades us to feel better and more confi-
	dent.  Irrationality and insecurity are the very stuff of
	makeup.  We know that our makeup cannot look the same at the
	end of the day as it does in the morning, but we feel easier
	if we know that it was once there and once looked satisfactory.
	Women may feel naked without certain cosmetics--lipstick,
	something on the eyes--but this worry is far from constant.
	The absence of makeup might disturb us at a party but not at
	a picnic.  Since it muddles logic and touches so upon our sensi-
	bilities, we should at least make an effort to enjoy it.  It is
	possible to get the whole job done in seconds, but this seems
	a little sad; it is worth one's while to indulge in our lonely
	games with paints and brushes.  It we put on a face mechanically
	and do not dare experiment, we succumb entirely to ritual and
	folly.  Makeup has no purpose save that of adding drama to
        routine.

Lest you think too quickly that her "we should" and "we know" stuff is
annoying, remember: this is 1970, in the ultra-conservative
_New_Yorker_.

I was especially struck by the image of the woman who seems to feel her very
face is wiped out by eating a meal.  Arriving as they did in a decision-
making phase for me, Fraser's ideas that women wear makeup for themselves,
and that makeup has no purpose except for adding drama, permanently
changed this area of my self-image.  With what was then, for me, radical
temerity, I chose to start off my professional life with almost no makeup--
and more importantly, I *knew* when I applied that "touch of blush," I
was doing it for myself alone.  And--of course--no one ever said a thing
to me about it.

						--Fiona Webster


P.S.  I may not be wearing any makeup, but I do expect everyone in
soc.feminism to ooh and ahh over the lovely golden tan I just got in
Hawaii.  And I want to hear y'all say, "And your HAIR!  Can that
startling gold-white blonde really be *natural*?"

<sigh>


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