Yesterday was just like any Sunday; beginning with scrambled eggs and The Big Questions. What can I say, I’m a simple soul. However, like many Sundays in my life, it was also augmented in one other, God-sent way: no plans to leave the house = no reason to put on any make up.
My relationship with my make up is, like my complexion, deeply flawed and uneven. Whenever I express any views on sexual equality, the galling and incessant barrage of female images that place undue emphasis on physical appearance, or really any reference to the comodification of feminine sexuality, a niggling voice in my head immediately interjects – ‘so why do you always wear make up then?’ This is a tension I struggle with, as it undeniably makes me somewhat of a hypocrite. And, considering that I have been a devout vegetarian for five long years purely to avoid my own hypocrisy on the subject of the meat industry, I do find my reliance on make up and equal condemnation of female body ideals particularly difficult to reconcile.
After much self-indulgent mithering and delving into the uncomfortable annals of my childhood, I have pin-pointed the exact moment that I fell in love with make up. Like many formative moments of my youth, it occurred during a school exchange trip in France. (At this point it is apt to explain that I went to a language college and so was forced to take part in multiple exchange trips during my time there, not just one that was unnaturally replete with epiphanies and existential revelations). Anyway, this particular exchange trip took place in the year 2004, when I was 13, the air was clear and we all just about still trusted Tony Blair. After the usual endless days of being led blindly from activity to point of interest by my exchange’s family, through the familiar, befuddling fog of misunderstanding and translation, I had been allowed a day’s reprieve, staying at the exchange home of a classmate who had been placed just down the road.
In the absence of other options, or potentially because we had been forced to spend the entire afternoon attending a provincial still-life drawing class and felt we needed the evening to act like 13 year olds again, my friend and I decided to sit in front of a mirror and experiment with hairstyles. It was in the middle of a painful, but undeniably culturally appropriate french plait, that my friend uttered the words that would change my life forever – ‘have you ever tried wearing make up?’
Growing up, I suppose I had an unusually philosophical grasp on the fact that I wasn’t pretty. I had a long, thin face, dull brown eyes, frizzy hair that was incessantly raked into a ponytail, and a drastic overbite that was finally addressed at the age of 11 when, after making the one and only comment on my appearance that I had ever been happy to receive – ‘its a shame we have to apply the braces, because she really does have a beautiful profile’, my bombastic orthodontist proceeded to twist and clamp my mouth into metallic oblivion and send me on my way, dribbling slightly out of the left corner of my now quite hideous profile.
Upon being asked the question of whether or not I had tried make up before, it was primarily memories like these, and an underlying weariness born from constantly looking in the mirror, pulling, contorting and tweaking my face into looking slightly different, hoping that one day I would grow into my features, that urged me to say ‘no, but I want to’. Almost too quickly, as if she had been hoping for such an answer, my friend whipped out a kohl pencil and yanked my eyelids apart before I could say ‘maybe its Maybelline’. After a few seconds of her awkwardly prodding around my tear ducts, she released me, and I turned to look in the mirror. Obviously, this wasn’t one of those Hollywood moments whereby the dumpy heroine is transformed into Miss World with a lick of lipstick, but to me, it was an incredible revelation. My eyes finally looked in proportion, framed with perfect, feminine flicks. This balanced out my nose, and somehow made my face look shorter… why the hell had I been walking around like such an uggo when the solution was so blindingly simple??
Fast forward eleven years, and, I am ashamed to admit, I am the owner of three kohl pencils (including an emergency one I keep in my handbag) and four containers of liquid eyeliner. This is not to mention the gallons of foundation, concealer, mascara, highlighter and all manner of creams, lotions, powders and brushes that litter my life. I will say however, that on a day-to-day basis I wear fairly minimal make up, but owning it in such bulk acts as a bizarre kind of comfort to me. The times I have left the house without at least eyeliner in place can be counted on one hand.
I guess that first feeling of amazement and elation at how different a small amount of make up could make me look and feel has never left me. Its almost as though I am trying to recreate it every day. The problem is of course, that now I am so used to my made up face that instead of a feeling of elation on seeing my eyes augmented with kohl, I can only look forward to a feeling of revulsion as I wipe it away at the end of the day. So, my relationship with make up is easy to understand – a deep rooted feeling that I am a better, more attractive person, both physically and otherwise, with it. However… I can’t help but know deep down that there is something wrong with that. Its a fact I accept about myself, but very, very begrudgingly.
The question must be then, in a frustratingly chicken-and-egg manner, is there anything wrong with wanting to accentuate your existing features in order to appear more aesthetically attractive? After all, we do all judge according to appearance to some degree whether we deny it or not. Or, is that symptomatic of a larger problem with society, the kind that I know is present every time I am more flattered when called ‘beautiful’ and ‘pretty’ than ‘funny’ and ‘intelligent’ (none of which happen often enough for my liking by the way)? Am I contributing to this problem every time I dump armfuls of cosmetic products down on the counter in Boots, and pacify my inner groaning feminist by making sure I use my advantage card? Or am I a helpless victim of the overarching eyebrow of judgement on the face of society?
I guess the answer then, at least for me, is to try and lessen my vice-like, gripping reliance on make up. Although the thought of it makes me retch inside with fear, I owe it to myself, my inner self at least, to try and leave the house without make up at least once this month.
Already the voice inside my head is screaming ‘NOT EVEN EYELINER??’ Wish me luck.