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.