part-meming

[freckles_and_doubt]

There's a meme going around called "Twenty Things You Might Not Know About Me", and great is the tagging in cyberspace. wytchfynder set me off, and I started thinking about twenty things you witterers out there might not know about me. This was hard - I appear to wear my heart on my sleeve, generally speaking - but actually what stymied me was the first thing I thought up. I got this far:

1. I don't wear make-up, and haven't for about three years. I tried making myself up the other day, and it looked truly weird and unnatural. (This is only partly because I'm no bloody good at it). The only make-up I still own is over ten years old, including some St. Michael's pencils my dad bought me in England when I was 17. I don't believe in make-up. Apart from the fact that I think that the cultural space occupied by cosmetics is profoundly sexist, it's silly.

Then I stopped and thought, why? and, even remembering all my actually quite good and sufficient reasons, is that true? and does this mean that I necessarily condemn all those women out there who do wear make-up? and if so, am I a ranting feminist bigot? and even if that's the case, should I be condemning them anyway? And the whole process wound down in the usual self-doubt and honed ability to explode my own mind by seeing all the sides of the argument at once. Damned academic training.

Then I found this rather nifty post that articulates a lot of the actually quite complex issues, which at least means I'm not the only person worrying.

Then my attention was madly redirected by suddenly stumbling across this article about proposed legislation in Indiana which is actually using the term "unauthorised reproduction", and I was so overwhelmed by the sudden sense that we're living in a Sheri S. Tepper dystopian future that I completely forgot about make-up. Because, see, while I actually agree, as a drooling Tepper fan-girl, that we urgently need serious brakes on our population, I definitely don't think it should be the Republicans controlling it.

Comments

Accessorize, accessorize, accessorize

[(Anonymous)]

Make up for me is something I enjoy doing for special occasions. I wear make-up far more often than I shave my legs (things you didn't know and probably didn't want to know about me #1 !!).

If I am going to something special, i.e. evening dress / formal or just really important, I wear make-up. I ALWAYS wear it for formal occasions, because for me, I'm not formally dressed without it.

So for me it's part of a dress-up thing. I've never really thought about it as a feminist issue - except to feel sorry for guys who don't get to have the fun of doing it while still being acceptable in a conventional way.

Then again, I have long suspected that I am, at heart, a picket fence girl :). If I could just figure out how to have 2.07 kids ... maybe I could time-share one of them.....

-stace

Re: Accessorize, accessorize, accessorize

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

See, now, here's the problem. All three of you (Dayle, scroob, stace) are tough-minded women of considerable force of character who enjoy wearing make-up and have re-defined it personally as an act of self-confidence, self-liking, glamour, whatever. All three of you define it more or less as "not a feminist thing." I respect you all, but I don't actually agree with you.

I can't help wondering if you're not thinking deeply enough about it, and if it ought to be "a feminist thing". How far is that self-definition of make-up a result of gods know how many centuries of basically male-dominated culture inculcating the notion of "femininity" as desirable? When you get down to it, the basic function of make-up is sexual display, i.e. to make you look more desirable, mostly to men. (I actually don't know how far lesbians wear make-up for each other, it would be an interesting sidelight on the issue). Attempting to reclaim that as making yourself feel more glamorous doesn't do anything except try to disguise the fact that it's a male-related issue. Why should women's attractiveness to men be dependent on artificial beauty enhancements when men's attractiveness to women is not?

Even wearing make-up in work environments becomes problematical when you think of it in terms of women being socialised into a view of their competence for a job which depends entirely on (a) their looks, and (b) their conformity to a notion of femininity which is, once again, masculine. I'll be happier about work-place make-up when the notion of a man's competence for a job is judged not only by his suit, but by how he paints his face. (And, yes, I do like Goth culture for the more or less equal use of make-up across the gender divide, but you could also argue quite convincingly for an idea of male Goth physicality as including flirtation with the feminine aspect of identity, which could be seen as an intrinsic part of not only its socially transgressive nature, but its play with passivity).

I mean, hell, I like men, and sexual display is not always a bad thing, but personally I'd rather it didn't reside in a notion of "beauty" based on artificially enhancing superficial physicalities. As far as I'm concerned, sexual display has always been linguistic :>. Which is far more egalitarian.