The Real Me is Over Here
I don't often wear makeup anymore. It's not because I'm making some statement against it or anything. Basically, I'm exhausted all the time, and I just barely get myself out of bed in time to make it to work with wet hair and major baggage under the eyes. It's hell trying to balance a full load of graduate work, a full time job, and the unescapable attraction of learning some new creative outlet.
Even so, I can't seem to escape the concerned inquiries to my well-being or the looks of condemnation from dolled up women. I do realize that we're conditioned to viewing women in this society as nose-powdering, mirror-validated robots, but come on. At least consider the possibility that time's march across my face just might be the result of long hours of hard work.
I might convince myself that I'm foregoing the ritual of painting on society's ideals, but I still fall victim to the thought that I look unpresentable. Once again, I find myself in a tug-of-war. Which one is the real me?
Labels: art, beauty rituals
posted by Christi Nielsen at 8:27 PM
16 Comments:
Wow. All I can say is that I'm in the same boat as you are. I only wear makeup when it seems absolutely necessary. When I don't I get the same judgmental looks. When I do, I get comments like, "Oh, you should look like that all the time! It's much more becoming! You look so much younger!" Never mind the fact that I tend to have a bad reaction to any kind of makeup...but many think it's better if I suffer than if I bare my naked face to the public.
With this photo, I found myself looking at how different your expression appears when contrasting the sides. One seems like there is a deeper sadness, while another seems to exhibit an exhaustion. Both of those emotions, to me, however, seem purposely distant. And this is quite a contrast to your "fired up" photo that seems to energetic, so raw, and so forward.
Sorry for rambling. Just wanted to comment how thought provoking your blog is for me. Good luck with school, work, life, etc.
First of all, my God, you are BEAUTIFUL! I gave up make up years ago. I might put it on if I am going 'out on the town' and then only if I feel like it. No one comments any more. They are used to me without it. Mostly I get compliments on my almost all grey hair (I'm 41)once I refused to continue dying it.
Make-up is thought provoking. I live in a part of town that is less beauty focused than, say, the Gold Coast section of Chicago. Yet, when I return to town from the farm, I find myself oddly self-conscious as I brush spiders out of my hair, shake sand out of my shoes and try to smooth exceedingly wrinkled, worn linen trousers.
It's like a Mormon folk tale I grew up with. When the people on the "other" side of the river saw that they were being watched by beautiful people wearing beautiful clothing, they became ashamed of their appearance. Some hid while others threw themselves into the river and drowned while trying to get to the other side to become one of them.
Even more curious, if I know my husband will be home when I arrive in the city, I perform the whole beauty ritual before leaving the farm, complete with uncomfortable shoes. Farm neighbors have commented that I look unrecognizeable.
Reminds me of the first few months in the life of my new-born eldest. I was exhausted!
My Health Visitor (community nurse who specialises in children under two yrs old) would visit at least once a week and always made comments like "You look dreadful, are you well?" etc. I got so pissed off with her attitude - I was expected to look fab having just given birth, getting very little sleep, living with the anxiety of being responsible for the life of a tiny new person?
When I knew she was coming one day, I put some make-up on. Her reaction? "Oh, you look so much better! You must be feeling fine now."
But I felt exactly the same.
You skilfully use colour and light. I could put that make-up on and look horrible.
Which one is the real Christi? Whichever one you need. I don't do anything but wash and comb my hair, apply body lotion and lip gloss. But sometimes I do that when I know I'm not going out at all. Not even to the laundry room down the hall. I need it.
I'm much older than all of you. I only began doing this recently, about a year ago. I did not look like me. I felt I was losing me. I looked sad, ill, unkempt, like I didn't care about me, and no-one else did either. You must be careful not to do this when you are older. You must go with an open, welcoming (if not smiling) face or you will be dismissed even more, and this is something different than patriarchy that I am talking about. So I don't know how far I would go, but if I were to do what you've done, I would not feel the woman on your right is the real me. The response would have been different when I was your age. I did nothing artificial. I'm blessed with great skin and great hair. No wrinkles whatsoever. I look 20 years younger with no effort. But if I did not? I am not kidding myself. I want to look in the mirror and think, yes, that's me. Perhaps, this happens at each stage of life. Maybe, in a couple years, I will become comfortable with her, and know she is me. Now, as I enter the last stage of my life, I don't want to lose her before I have to.
I don't know if I have been clear, or made you understand. I can't explain better.
I don't think all older women will be like me. But some I'm sure, maybe, you.
I wanted to correct something I said; it IS about the patriarchy of course. For you and for all of us, no matter what our age or stage in life no matter how tired or worn with worry, or burfened, we must be cute. An extension of it is how breast cancer patients are encouraged to be cheerful and pretty and pink. Dying but smiling and feminine with the aid of cosmetics companies donations, right in the cancer centres, whose products no small irony have carcinogens in them, help to keep them sexboty until they drop. No such crap exists with prostate cancer, for example.
i think you are pretty with or without make up. You've got real beauty. :)
Christi,
You are so pretty. With make-up, you just look even more beautiful.
I find as I'm getting older, the more makeup I use the worse I look.
I remember a friend mocking me for thinking I was a "natural" beauty -- she said, "Nobody looks good NATURAL." I used to line all around my eyes and use at least three shades of eye shadow (lid, contour, highlight! - Thanks, Flame Glo cosmetics for teaching me the fully made up eye in the 80's.)
Now I think when I wear that much I look hard. I look like a drag queen at BEST and at worst a washed up barfly who doesn't know her best days are over.
These days, I wear makeup to work and I use concealer to cover my blemishes and mascara to make my blonde eyelashes appear and if I'm feeling sassy I throw on red lipstick or else I just use a balm.
I have a HUGE tackle box of makeup under my bathroom sink that I don't use but can't bear to throw away in case SOMEDAY I might want to use glittery purple eyeliner. Maybe.
I hate bitches who look at those of us who don't fluff out our peacock feathers every second of every waking moment as somehow not keeping up our part of the female burden. Maybe it disturbs them that perhaps THEY TOO might be able to leave the house with no makeup on and feel good about themselves. Change is hard.
At first, looking at the picture I wasn't sure which side was "improved". The eyeliner was the giveaway.
The exaggerated dependence on makeup, this I think is not from "patriarchy" but rather more of a "female thing". Maybe it has to do mass of articles and advertising girls are exposed to early on. Maybe it comes in part from (female) peer pressure. I would guess the overwhelming majority of the comments reported above came from other females.
"You know how you get a man excited? You show up, we're men, we're easy." - Harrison Ford (from "Six Days, Seven Nights")
hmmm - I just reread my post to double check, and I was right. I never asked how to excite a man.
"Maybe it has to do mass of articles and advertising girls are exposed to early on."
And those articles are in magazines sponsored by....? Advertisers! And those adverts are from corporations owned by...? Men!
Who makes the money? Who pays the price?
Should I charge for feminism 101 lessons, d'you think ;)
And, no Christie, you didn't ask that. Someone's privilege is showing, methinks.
This may totally make me sound stupid, but I watch Survivor. Every season I am amazed how much worse the people look to me, after I've watched them the whole season with no makeup on, when they step onto the final stage in total makeup and bangs to heaven. I think they look so much better during the non-makeup stages of the show.
That being said, I also have to admit that I look sickly when I don't wear makeup. I have clear eyelashes, so without mascara they look nonexistent, and I look funny, like the person who loses all their hair with chemo. My eyebrows are the same...they are blonde but appear as if they stop at the top point. That means if I don't draw in the rest, I appear mad with two slashes of brow angling downward toward my nose. I am also someone who doesn't tan well, and I have oily pores the size of Mount St. Helens. So....I wear makeup, because I am someone who really really does look a lot less scary with it on. I wear it in moderation, or I should say, I try to put it on to look like I'm not actually wearing any. Does that make sense?
Yeah, I'm still lost as to who the real me is. I'm thinkin' it's the one who wears very little makeup, as that's when I feel my best. Cheers to you Christi!
Ha - I checked. My privilege is definitely not showing!
(... not sure how I got here ...)
I'd have bought the "feminism 101" line - as at least possible - before the rise of common use of the Internet, and unmediated individual expression. You can argue for conditioned responses only so long, at some point nature has to enter the equation. Nature does program females differently from males.
Heh - with teenage sons and a pre-teen daughter - I do have an interest in this question. :)
i don't regularly wear makeup because i do hijab, but
when i want to, i go for it.
i hate those snobby superficial females who judge based on appearance--has that girl made an effort? has she plucked her brows? omg she's letting her wrinkles show! etc. etc.
and somehow, i think makeup is there as a means of approval, fitting in. just the culture of fakeness emphasized, you know?
like with anything else, it's just a matter of balance. go for it if you want, but don't let makeup be one of the primary means of judging someone's character or something.
all i know is: makeup doesn't matter. whether you use it or not.
p.s. by anyone's standards, u don't even need makeup! :)
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