This Post Could Use More Intellectual Organization

A friend on Facebook posted a link to this article which got me thinking: http://oshotimes.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/the-hypocrisy-of-make-up/

I come from a theatrical background--but my best friend and most of my family are hippies, so I've generally gotten both sides of this argument. Still, the article seems to set out the anti-makeup position pretty succinctly.

A couple of things to start, however:
- Women are still overly judged on their looks - makeup or no. In fact the current focus on minimal makeup, minimal garments, in my opinion has only contributed to increases in anorexia and self-abuse, as to receive respect women must no longer rely on externals (girdles, makeup) but must make harsh internal changes (diet that brings them to dangerously low levels of body fat, plastic surgery). Makeup can be liberation (see also punks and goths). I pity men that it is unacceptable for them to use. (Aside: for much of the 20th century, running a beauty parlor was one of the few self-sustaining jobs women could easily hold--and often the only creative one.) Makeup is a democratically-available form of artistic expression, available to women who are generally denied outlets for creative expression.

- I believe the poster confuses "beauty" with "prettyness." Beauty challenges. Beauty is mutable, changeable and challenges. Pretty does not challenge, pretty is small and attainable and non-threatening and plastic. There is a reason that the poem goes "Beauty is Truth; Truth, Beauty" and not "Pretty is truth." That statement feels ridiculous doesn't it? Although I appreciated the parallels with Vonnegut (if I remember correctly, in the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent pretty women needed to be handicapped by wearing bad makeup).

- The whole argument about shaving is self-justification about the author's preferences. Sorry, by rights of the rest of the arguments, shaving does not get a pass.

- To someone who knows makeup, the woman in the picture is obviously wearing it.

As well she should be! Transferring a 3d image (real life) into a 2D photograph changes what you look like. To really see how she appears in real life, she needs to wear makeup so the depths and shallows of shading appear in the photograph as they would in reality.

So:

I do not wear makeup to be pretty. I am pretty without makeup. I know this.

Makeup is my war paint, with which I mark the transition into the challenges of the day from my private time alone.

Makeup is my art, with which I demonstrate the truth of my internal state on my external being.

Makeup is clothing for my face, a mask that reveals like in Greek Theater. I did not mind wearing non-waterproof mascara to the funeral; the streaks only highlighted on my body the grief I felt.

The purpose of art is to reveal truth through falsehood. Makeup is a creative act. Just as a sand painting cannot match the painted desert, makeup often cannot match the beauty of what is--

--but if artifice cannot lead to truth and beauty, what is the purpose of art?

I wear makeup for the same reasons I sing, I write, I act: because there are some truths that cannot be revealed by what we see.

I Bring the Eyeliner

I never was, well, musical. Pretty voice but I never enjoyed singing.

My delivery was either cold or completely overemotional and lost. Singing was nerve-wracking. Choral stuff sometimes--I cried through most of the performance of Brahms’ Requiem.

Years of piano lessons, years of playing French Horn and I was just awful. I dated a bunch of musicians, but I always described myself as a “music appreciator.” Or a “really good audience.”

Microphones were worse. All of my years doing readings, I would push the mike out of the way and declaim in the same loud voice my much-quieter sister used to use to get me into trouble when we were kids, until my parents caught on.

So when my coworkers were having what more or less amounted to band night at a local bar, my first thought was that they wouldn’t get me near it.

I pretty much swore it, just until the moment Bob said to me, “Hey, you sing, right? Why don’t you sing with us? We’re just throwing a band together.”

And to my surprise, I heard myself saying “Yeah, sure, why not?”

Week before the show I was horribly flu-ly ill. Missed rehearsal--couldn’t have sung even if I had been able to get out of bed. I did an awful job of promoting it--was afraid to tell anyone until i knew if I’d be able to sing at all.

So: afraid of the mike, worried I won’t even make it through the song without coughing, hopped up on Advil Cold & Sinus. I played tambourine through most of the set--joking that i was only there cause being on stage gave me the best seat in the house. “Singing? I bring the eyeliner!”

Finally it was time for me to sing Coin-Operated Boy outside of my car. Without Amanda Palmer. In front of coworkers. Surprising numbers of them. With a BAND. A band I had never rehearsed with.

I have never had so much fun in my life. The feedback didn’t throw me--I just moved positions until it was fixed. The dropped bridge phrase? no problem. Hell, I even remembered all the words. In order!

What I miss most about not dating musicians is not having music in the house. Took me a long time to realize I could make my own.