A 12-year-old girl and her mother stand in the makeup aisle at a Walgreen's drug store comparing shades of lipstick and mascara. The girl's mother gives pointers on how to apply different products for different applications and different looks. She has no idea she is infecting our culture with a poison that we may never be able to leach out.
Why is it that women paint themselves up like clowns and geisha girls before they leave the house? Who was it that decided a woman's place is in such supplication to men that they must wear a mask to hide the true ugliness of their faces? I submit that the ploy to make makeup an inseparable part of the female experience in our culture was one engineered by selfish louts with no respect for women. Because I understand means that others probably understand too. It's evidenced by the women I know who don't wear makeup. They don't paint their faces to satisfy someone else's expectations and I've always admired that about them, however, that's not the norm.
For many years, women lived as second class citizens. They were long treated as seductive vessels of sin by the Catholic Church and all the way into the 1950s, things were completely out of hand. Housekeeping magazine published a guide to being a good wife in 1955 that had some immensely block-headed notions such as: have dinner ready every night, freshen your makeup and tie a bow in your hair so you won't look like hell, clear away the clutter, shut the children up, don't make noise with your vacuum and washing machine and listen to him because you couldn't possibly have anything important to say. This sounds crazy, but the best is saved for last.
"Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him," stated the Good Wife's Guide.
Who do you suppose wrote that? J. Edgar Hoover?
A lot has changed since 1955. Women have battled for equality with tenacity and have achieved a great deal. I've taken plenty of courses in sociology and the glass ceiling is always mentioned. The fact that women in the same positions as men earn less on the dollar is always mentioned. Makeup and its paralyzing grip on women is hardly ever mentioned. Women earning less and having less respect is just a symptom of the problem in our culture. It has several causes, but makeup is the obvious thing that can be changed immediately. If all women suddenly stopped wearing makeup, the level of respect they get from men would grow immeasurably.
That's the part of the issue in which women are culpable. How can they expect men to treat them as true equals when they won't leave the house without paint on their faces? How can they rise up and take what is theirs if they're afraid to be seen without frivolous decorations on their faces? Does it make them feel pretty just because it's pretty or does it make them feel pretty because culture has them fooled with ridiculous, unfair expectations?
It might be hard for some of you to stop living with makeup, but I hope you can do it, because makeup is just the tip of the iceberg. It's just an example. It's only one of many shallow traditions that exist in our culture. It's just one of the many things that infect logical thinking and progress. As people, we need to stop paying attention to anything that doesn't matter. The world is in such a shameful condition that we owe it to ourselves to do so. Think about who you are and what you're doing before you go on. It's about time for every single citizen to be critical of culture and weed out the junk that doesn't serve a purpose.
Write to John at jrfrees@bsu.edu
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