“I felt like a heroine,” senior Hannah Nichols said. “It feels like going against community at a large… like breaking free… at the same time it’s something taboo… it can feel debilitating.” Nichols and I were seated in a sunny spot in the Commons. She went on: “In elementary school… I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup. I would sneak it. I distinctly remember seeing this group of girls on the bus doing their makeup. I remember them putting it on me… makeup was a part of the check-list for growing up.”
Now, Nichols wears makeup on occasion to lengthen lashes or cover a spot, but for the most part she goes without. It’s empowering to her and many other women. But this non-action, the decision to forgo makeup as part of a morning routine, isn’t a simple or straightforward choice. It can leave a woman feeling exposed, “debilitated” even, as Nichols said. “Now [makeup is] just annoying,” she said wryly, and I know exactly what she means.
Some men who wear makeup experience it in a starkly different way. Seniors James Paetkau and Jared Bergman have, on occasion, dabbled in the art of makeup. “I felt pretty,” Bergman said, “Frankly…It made my eyes pop.” But while Nichols and other women say they wear makeup for others, Bergman and Paetkau were in agreement that they felt no differently about their bare faces after wearing makeup. They also agreed that it isn’t something they would like to do often, but for special occasions. “It’s just fun,” Paetkau said. “When you’re getting ready for an event and it’s just the same shirt, same pants, same tie… It’s an extra accessory.”
Makeup should be able to exist as an accessory and a form of expression. For many men, makeup truly is a form of empowerment: it is counterculture, a rejection of the idea that the feminine is bad and off limits to the masculine, whereas the masculine is good and accessible for all, i.e., a girl may wear a suit, but it is taboo for a boy to don a dress. If makeup-wearing men become more accepted by society, however, “I can totally see the makeup industry advertising ‘makeup for men,’” Paetkeau said, “Which wouldn’t be good either.”
For years, Nichols felt dependent on makeup to make her feel whole, and shedding that dependency is still a daily struggle. Though neither of us wear it on a daily basis, a swipe of mascara might make us confident enough to leave the house, but leave us feeling shallow and vain at having been so concerned with our faces to begin with. When Bergman and Paetkeau get gussied up with a smoky eye, they feel beautiful, but know their beauty is not dependent on the makeup they have chosen to wear.
With the acceptance of makeup on men comes the threat of the makeup industry further spreading their web of cultural dependence, commodifying this form of empowerment.
As men and women challenge socially accepted gender norms in these ways, we need to talk about that dependence impressed on women by a society that has made an unattainable standard of beauty the norm. As men begin wearing makeup as an accessory, for the sake of confidence and self-expression alone, allow women this same freedom.
