CONTENTS
A definition of Make-Up
The what, where and how of make-up?
What does make-up do to the visage?
What can we learn from make-up
Men's lack of make-up
Makeing-up is hard to do!
Despite frequent calls for equality between men and women, there remain many cultural differences between the sexes. These differences are not necessarily related to traditional ideas about inequality and oppression. Yet these differences do relate to sexual power.
One significant area of difference is make-up. Women wear make-up and men do not. Why is it so and what does make-up reveal about the differences between men and women?
Analysing the use of make-up by women and its non-use by men gives insights into sexual identity and sexual powers. A more objective understanding of make-up may also help both men and women change their attitude and strategic response to the opposite sex.
Before analysing make-up in its various forms, lets look at a definition. I suggest that a primary definition has to look at the obvious characteristics of make-up: changing a person's bodily or facial appearance using paints, powders, unguents, emulsions and enamels applied to the skin.
Make-up can also be identified as a "tertiary sexual characteristic". This is the term that sexologists have applied to characteristics of sex that are related to our sexual behaviour, rather than of the body. Our genitalia defines us as men and women (primary sexual characteristic). But in addition, men and women have different bodily shapes, areas of hair and so forth that he described as secondary sexual characteristics. Cultural behaviour is the third area of differentiation. Make-up malingers somewhere between a tertiary sexual cultural habit and a quasi secondary characteristic, because it is designed to alter how people look sexually.
The what, where and how of make-up?
There are a variety of types of make-up, depending on the particular area that it is applied. These types of make-up include foundation, eyeliner, lipstick, eye shadow and perhaps we can include hair dye. Most of these types of make-up are self-explanatory in terms of where they are applied. Some, such as foundation, may seem a little mysterious to the novice.
Make-up can be applied anywhere on the body but generally it is applied to the face. It is designed to make the face look different from what it is, unnaturally enough. Make-up may also be applied to other parts of the body. Typically, this might be a fake tanning agent.
What does make-up do to the visage?
We expect that make-up is designed to make someone better looking? Most of the time this is true, but not in all cases. Clowns wear make-up too, and it is designed to make them look ridiculous, with exaggerated emotions, but this is the exception. We are interested here in make-up as it relates to sexual characteristics and in that instance it is always supposed to improve appearance. I suggest that there are the following broad categories that make-up falls into: youngerising, quasi-genetic alteration, class-altering, racial changing (optimum race mimicry), focusing, and colourising (natural or unnatural).
Youngerising: Make-up is often applied in order to make women look younger. This is done by using make-up that makes skin look smoother in appearance. By implication, and quite obviously, as people age their skin tends to become noticeably less smooth, more porous. Other types of make-up can also assist women to look younger. This may include eye lashes being made to look longer, more full, eye sockets looking deeper, using eye shadow. Make-up can give the face tone, because as people get older, their face tends to sag, from overeating and natural decay. Young women's skin is more likely to be taut around the bone structure.
There is also a category of make-up application that I call quasi-genetic alteration. This involves applying make-up in order to represent the face or body as being of a different structure altogether. In some cases, the illusion of structural change actually mimics a contemporary genetic ideal. Lipstick is the most obvious example. Lipstick can be applied to the face to give the appearance of healthiness, youth and lusciousness, implying sexual availability. In addition, lipstick can be extended beyond the actual lip surface to make lips look larger than they are: a different genetic structure.
Some women have large lips and some do not. Large lips look attractive, because of the various associations we have with them. Health, abundance, sexual energy and ripeness. Thin lips look less attractive. Sometimes they are unattractive, because they may signify tight-lippedness, Puritanism, inhibition. Essentially though, we are born with a certain specific set of lips and these are genetically inherited, with features derived from both our parents and also from our racial background. Make-up allows women to create the illusion of a different genetic face structure.
Make-up also contains an implicit class-altering potential and lifestyle symbolisation. For example, women in particular are very conscious of their skin tone and they make efforts to alter their skin tone both naturally and unnaturally, including with the use of make-up.
In some Asian cultures women avoid going into the sun and fanatically avoid their face being exposed to the sun. The sunlight browns their skin and this is associated with being a peasant who works in the field. Beauty is measured by the paleness of skin, being normally indoors and therefore more affluent, genteel. In contrast, western women generally try to obtain brown skin. White skin looks pasty, unhealthy. But more than that, brown skin signifies the ability to sunbake and this in turn implies plenty of leisure time. Access to leisure time implies wealth and a superior status. In a country like Australia or the US this is less significant than in colder countries with little sunshine.
Women often go to solariums to get their tan, but they also apply creams that make their skin look browner. It's a form of make-up that creates an illusion of a different social status. It suggests that these women are implicitly of a different class.
Racial factors also play a role in make-up application and the altering of appearances. This is particularly significant for women living in cultures that have lower status. Black women in the US for example straighten their hair, in order to look less Negroid. The most obvious example of racial-changing make-up usage is however obviously Michael Jackson. He appears to have used a bleaching agent to make his skin appear paler, or more Caucasian. This has been done in combination with a variety of other types of make-up (and surgery). This behaviour normally reveals a typical female sexual agenda. It is this behaviour by Jackson that undoubtedly contributes to a popular perception of his weirdness, because men aren't "supposed" to use make-up.
Jacko's use of make-up actually highlights another category of make-up purpose: focusing. Jacko's use of eyeliner is clearly designed to focus attention on the area of the eyes. Generally however this is a woman's art. Women use eye liner and eye shadow to draw attention to the eye area. Interestingly, this encourages people (significantly men) to look for a more extended period at a woman. Encouraging men to look longer actually represents a form of seduction, but interestingly, it gives the appearance of the man being the active agent.
Focusing also applies to the use of lipstick. Women use lipstick to make the mouth look far more obvious than it normally is. Women use specifically very bright and outrageous colours of make-up to draw (men's) attention to their mouth. Once again, the implicit purpose is to subliminally demonstrate (to men) the sexual desirability and availability of the woman.
A final category of make-up I term colourising. This involves simply adding a variety of natural or unnatural colours, mainly just to the face. Colourising usually and most obviously occurs in the eyeshadow area. Women use colours such as green or blue around the eyes. These unnatural tones are designed to increase the attention women hope to gain. Hair is also frequently treated in this way. Colours are typically bright red or sometimes unusual shades such as pink, blue or purple.
Carolyn Palliardi, Sunday Telegraph Magazine, February 14, 2004
What can we learn from make-up
Well, so far some of the mystique of make-up may have been lifted. A more important issue is, what may be learned strategically from the use of make-up.
In the first instance it is important to reiterate that make-up is used to create an aura. It could be viewed as generally a false aura, an illusion. Women use the illusions made available by using make-up to create a positive impression, generally with men. This impression is generally implicitly about the power of attraction. Make-up draws attention and attraction to a woman. Seeking attraction is not simply directly for the purpose of sexual contact. There is generally a derivative purpose. In other words, women also want attention and attraction for purposes other than sexual encounters. This can include a variety of purposes and situations. No wonder then that women often wear make-up in all kinds of places, including the workplace or while shopping. Is it any wonder that some women refuse to leave the house without "putting on their face."
The hopefully favourable view men gain by seeing a woman with make-up on is that he thinks she is attractive. In turn, his mild arousal or positive feelings may make him more helpful toward her...or more compliant.
It is important to recognize this hidden function of make-up and take appropriate action or inaction. Men must recognise the effect that make-up is meant to have and not be blind to its presence or influence...especially when it is subliminal. The response may not necessarily be one of resistance, but can also involve giving in to the effect the woman is trying to induce.
Men's lack of make-up as social signifier
Men's apparent indifference to using make-up or their avoidance of using it are not simply due to a straightforward lack of interest. It is in some ways a deliberate avoidance. Make-up is firstly women's territory. Every man knows that putting make-up on is therefore effeminate. It may label him homosexual. However there are other reasons for men not using make-up that are far more central.
Men don't "need" to wear make-up as women do. Men's sexual status and attractiveness are far more tied up with their working functionality, their earning capacity, rather than breeding capacity. Ruggedness is in many ways a virtue in men and its symbolisation in facial crags and stubble is sometimes seen as attractive. That is not to say that personal grooming is out of bounds for men, but it is restricted. Men do wear cologne and shave, but that's about as far as it goes.
What is significant is that men are also the active sex in general, in regard to seduction. Men look and women are looked at. Men act and women are acted on. Men make passes and women do the vetoing. It is a system that nobody necessarily designed, but women are certainly active agents in keeping the system like that. Women make themselves attractive, including the use of make-up, so that they can maintain the passive role. It would be valuable for women to reconsider this dynamic. Avoiding the use of make-up may go hand in hand with a more assertive attitude to sexual role playing.
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