Beauty Demands

With War Paint for Men opening a 'world-first' store selling make-up for men in London last month, we revisit this great post on make-up and masculinity from early 2019:  I’ve become more and more interested in the advertisements that appear on my Facebook feed and what this seems to indicate about who Facebook think I am, what my interests and aspirations are. This has shifted recently from amusement at the back shavers, ear-hair clippers and baldness cures that it might be imagined would appeal to a bald middle aged man to (as the ads have become more specialized and targeted) a more critical thinking about the gendered and sexualized subject that the ad algorithm constructs and presents back to me, anchored very much around ideas of male beauty. Photo by  Jaysen Scott  from  Pexels  (edited) I’m discussing this in this blog because my targeted ads are currently overwhelmingly about male grooming and beauty products. This includes a number o...

Putting on your face is something that very many of us do on a daily basis. On average, women will spend “ 29 minutes putting on make-up to achieve a 'natural look'”, and a third of us “ never go out without make-up ”. And, over a lifetime women on average spend 136 days (3276 hours) “getting ready for a night out”.   Once upon a time respectable women didn’t wear make-up. Only ‘painted ladies’, sex workers, wore make-up; made-up eyes, lips and cheeks were how they advertised their trade. Gradually make-up became OK, so much so that in the Second World War, lipstick was believed to be vital to morale - it was not rationed and was imported across blockades with other ‘necessary’ supplies (Dyhouse, 2011, p.82). Wearing make-up is now routine; required for work, special occasions, or to ‘face the day’. Make-up is such a part of who we are that we can raise money by not wearing it! The 2015 ‘bare faced’ selfie campaign raised £8,000,000 in six days for cancer research. The n...

In recent weeks, John Lewis and Mac Cosmetics were forced to cancel a “back to school” make up masterclass at a shopping centre in Kent. This came after parents and charities complained about the pressure placed on girls to break school rules. The incident opened up a debate about what age it becomes appropriate for girls to wear make up, as well as the impact that beauty practices have on young women. For instance, Bex Bailey, of the Young Women’s Trust stated: If we are ever going to achieve gender equality we have to focus on the talents and skills young women can contribute, not on a prescriptive beauty ideal Photo by  freestocks.org  on  Unsplash Of course, concerns about young women’s body image are valid. Historically, women have been pressurised to strive for unrealistic expectations of attractiveness. As feminists have long argued, in the West, this conception of beauty has been defined through Euro-centric ideals of whiteness and thinness. In part...

When I was about twelve years old, a schoolfriend said I had beautiful eyes. “You should outline them in black!” she said. Encouraged by the compliment, the next morning I attempted to follow her advice. I didn’t own any black eyeliner, so I tried to create the recommended effect by layering blue and brown eyeliner on top of each other. On the school bus, my friend smiled and gave me the thumbs up. I had succeeded! The pleasure was short-lived. Over the course of the day the liners separated and smudged, leaving me with multi-coloured panda eyes. A boy with whom I was usually friendly passed me a note on which he’d written a humorous poem mocking my makeup skills. I was not a figure of beauty. I was a figure of fun. Decades later, most days I still don’t wear makeup. Occasionally, though, I do apply it. Sometimes I regret it instantly: my skills aren’t necessarily up to the job, and I end up wiping it all off. Other times, knowing my limitations and working within them, I ach...

There is scholarly and popular debate over whether one can be simultaneously consider oneself a feminist and engage in commercial beautifying rituals such as wearing make-up, high heels, or be interested in fashion. Although we may technically be in an era of fourth-wave feminism, the dispute between ‘third-wave’ feminists and ‘second-wave’ feminists on female consumerism remains largely unresolved. Second-wave’ feminism is often characterised by the critique of the portrayal of women in the media and advertising thanks to the iconic work of leading feminists of the day to include Betty Friedan’s “The Feminist Mystic”, Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth”, and Jean Kilbourne’s film “Killing Us Softly”. Crudely, the zeitgeist among second wave feminists was that that beauty, fashion, media and advertising were oppressive to the advancement of women and thus should be boycotted, protested and campaigned against. In contrast, ‘third-wave’ or ‘post’ feminists view the pursuit of beau...