i used to wear makeup every day. primer on the eyelid, dab dab dab. gentle swish of a brush over the lid in a pale neutral. eyeliner, dark brown, never black, along the inside of the lid. and then, mascara, always black, never brown, and always, always waterproof. spritz of perfume.
my son was three when we went into our first lockdown. he doesn’t remember any of our routines - the mad rush out the door in the morning to beat traffic, the commute to the daycare, commute to downtown, commute from daycare. a lot of commuting. a lot of rushing.
i can imagine different times, different mornings, in which maybe he would have watched me put on my makeup, watching me blink and tear up when i accidentally dab the mascara wand in my eyeball, rather than along the lashes. that maybe i would have brushed my eyeshadow over my lids and then booped the end of his turned up nose with the soft bristles of the perfect brush for applying eyeshadow. that he would have giggled, his eyes crinkling with joy. he likely would have said, “again” or “more”! even more likely, he might have said, “Ollie do it”, reaching for the brush in my hand. he always talked about himself in the third person. he doesn’t anymore. another sacrifice to the altar of time.
i first started playing with makeup when i was in elementary school. i would sneak some of my mother’s lipstick into my bag and would apply it during class, using a small mirror held just inside my bag. the small mirror was compliments of a compact that i had so i could also powder the shine off my nose. i read so many teen magazines it’s amazing i didn’t have a face full of makeup and a bag of backup options. i loved everything about them : the lists of colours that were in this season, the must-have clothing, new shows, new movies, new hot teens to admire. i didn’t have the money for these things, but i did love buying the teen packs that came out every fall for back to school. even though they were full of every day items like deodorant and shaving cream, it was still exciting to get something that felt as though it was made for more mature youth.
realistically, as much as i loved it, i was always self-conscious of wearing it. would everyone stare if i wore lipstick? who was i to think i could wear lipstick or try to be noticeable anyways? is this eyeshadow making it look like i’m trying too hard? why did i care so much? i know. i know. but it’s so hard to know that none of that matters when you’re young. and you never realize that everyone is too busy in their own heads worrying that everyone is judging them to have time to be judging you.
that makeup was political was not something that i yet understood. how could something so insignificant be political?
interests in things of beauty, like makeup and nail polish have long been a way through which both men and women could criticize others for being vapid, shallow, ETC. it’s not true. it never was true. the misogyny just wants you to think it’s true. why shouldn’t you enjoy makeup or flowers while criticizing policies that reduce or eliminate women’s rights? beautiful shoes can keep you comfortable while you protest in defence of your personhood. ideas about vapidness and vanity are just more misogynist flimflam they hope we will use against each other. let’s not bother.
beverly skeggs (1997, 98) reminds us that “being, becoming, practicing and doing femininity” can all mean different things to different people. and when you add in the intersections of reality - race, class, cross-cultural conceptualizations of beauty, aesthetics, not to mention the marginalized women doing beauty work for other people, the narrative becomes increasingly complicated.
*also, aside, makeup is not just about one of the ways of doing femininity, as men have also been consistent users of cosmetics. the painted face has…many faces.
makeup is not and has never been ‘simple’, in the same way that norms of sex and gender have never really been binary for everyone. there is a lot of room for differing opinions, thoughts, application, etc. Queen Elizabeth I is rumoured to have loved lipstick, while Queen Victoria couldn’t stand it. there is room for everyone here (unless your words become hurtful to others, in which case, *lifeguard whistle*, get out of the pool).
in her book Face Paint, makeup artist Lisa Eldridge argues that “the freedom and rights accorded to women during a given period are very closely linked to the freedom with which they painted their faces” (2015:17). arguably, i would add, whether or not they can afford to paint their faces is another level of freedom and rights that should never be overlooked. wearing makeup is only afforded to those who can literally afford to.
makeup is also embroiled in gender norms - who can wear it, when, what colour - which change all the time and beauty norms. in Zahra Hankir’s new book, Eyeliner (2023), she describes the efforts that go into creating a fox-eye, a look that has eyeshadow and eyeliner extending the outside corners of the eyes towards the temples. it can be accomplished with face tape, sutures to ‘thread’ the skin, tight ponytails and buns. the look is that of an elongated almond eye shape.
in Teen Vogue, Sara Li writes, “It is not accidental that mainstream [US] beauty-standards would, yet again, steal select features from another culture, when that very same feature has been weaponized against its origin community in the past.” she reminds us that “slanted eyes” have historically been one of the most common insults used against Asian people. and this is obviously not the first or only time. additionally, how makeup is ‘read’ on white people vs people of colour is very different. a bold, powerful red lip on a white woman might be a bold, aggressive red lip on a Black woman. to pretend otherwise is to gloss over a system of racialization that we have to stop ignoring. it doesn’t take much for things to be considered transgressive or subversive on women of colour that would be celebrated on a white woman.
i remember when i read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie and in the first little bit of the book, the protagonist talks about how she has to go to another town in order to get her hair done, because there is no one where she lives that does Black hair. i think the protagonist was living in princeton, NJ and attending or teaching at Princeton. forgive me, it’s been a while since i read it, but i never forgot how that stopped me in my tracks. the idea that a person couldn’t get their hair done where they lived. that they had to go somewhere else. what a strong, singular way to make a person feel excluded and othered.
in a great article in the LA times, Hankir writes of her interpretation of women who embrace their use of makeup as saying, “I refuse to minimize myself. It’s an ethos I try to embody as an Arab Muslim woman in America, especially when the political climate works to dehumanize my people. When I line my eyes…I think of my sister, mother and grandmothers — and the women worldwide who carry forward the legacies of those who came before them.” in this way, makeup is linked to identity and is a way in which some people embrace their heritage. one of the women she interviewed told her, “When I wear my makeup, and I have eyeliner on, I feel powerful. I feel like it’s my armor…I think of my mother and aunties about how they used this tool to transform themselves into these beautiful brown women, and I feel like a beautiful brown woman myself.”
and in political climates as they currently are, we are seeing an increase in efforts to sideline women and women’s rights, and especially those of Black women, Brown women, Latina women, Arab women, Asian women, Indigenous women, Trans women, and poor women, among others. yes, this does include white women, but the fist of power comes down heaviest on those the system perpetually oppresses and we can’t gloss over that.
in her LA Times piece, Hankir writes, “I’ve come to view eyeliner as a cultural throughline that binds stories of rebellion and identity. Meeting Torres, Perez and others demonstrated there’s intersectionality to be found in this calligraphy around our eyes.”
and for me, that is what encapsulates the magic of makeup.
n xx
Eldridge, Lisa. 2015. Face Paint: The Story of Makeup. ISBN 1419717960
Hankir, Zahra. 2023. The Political Power of Eyeliner — It’s A Link to Our Ancestors and a Sign of Rebellion. The L.A. Times. Opinion. November 4, 2023. Accessed September 1, 2023 https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-11-04/eyeliner-beauty-makeup-ancient-egypt-mexican-american-chola-style-zoot-suit
Hankir, Zahra. 2023. Eyeliner, A Cultural History. ISBN 9780143137092
Li, Sarah 2020 The Fox Eye Trend Is Just Cultural Appropriation of Asian Features, Teen Vogue. Accessed September 4, 2024 https://www.teenvogue.com/story/fox-eye-trend-cultural-appropriation-asian-features
Skeggs, Beverly. 1997. Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable. London: Sage.