On Make-Up, “Superficiality,” and Evil

The first time I ever wore make-up that wasn’t for a theatrical show, I was twenty.

Theatre still had plenty to do with it. You see, I was taking the Drama department tech class. Among the many subjects the course covered — lighting theory and practice, how to use a sewing machine, making set designs in AutoCAD — was make-up.

This terrified me. The women of the department vastly outnumbered the men, and the population of that class was no exception. Most of my fellow students were obviously experienced users of make-up. Not only did some wear it day-to-day, but backstage in shows, casts and crews seemed to expect women and more experienced men to do their own make-up.

“The thing is to emphasize the lips and eyes,” I’d hear, “but, like, more than you would to actually go out or anything.”

I didn’t know how to emphasize my lips or eyes. I especially didn’t understand the fine line between stage make-up and going-out make-up.

But I was sure that all the other women did. Make-up, along with the other mysteries of feminine grooming such as eyebrow shaping, waxing unwanted facial hair, and selecting appropriate shoes, had blossomed in my peer group during high school, as simultaneously esoteric and ubiquitous as puberty.

Somewhere, somehow, all my female friends were learning the cosmetic secrets of womanhood. Had my invitation to the secret meeting been lost in the mail?

Of course, now I realize that my own lack of interest in make-up (and my mother’s lack of interest, for that matter) was the key to my ignorance. I never read the right magazines or looked up how-to articles on the Internet, or, you know, cared enough to ask the various friends and relatives who did wear make-up to show me how.

(Not that I could ask peers my own age — what if they learned that I was a FREAK who didn’t know what was clearly the only correct way to be adult and feminine???)

But like Hermione Granger, my chief weakness was my fear of embarrassing myself through my performance at school. I didn’t want to be the only student who had to ask what to do with mascara. I didn’t want to cringe as the professor (I imagined) laughingly told the female students that we already knew the basics. I didn’t want to have to raise my hand and asked to learn the fundamentals with the men, just another way I wasn’t being female “right.”

So during the holiday break, I asked my mother if we could go to the pharmacy and get some basic make-up.

Mom had no idea what I was looking for (neither did I); she assumed that perhaps I wanted to wear light make-up to job interviews or other professional events. Either way, she reacted with a shrug and the same “whatever you like” support she gave to my clothing and haircut choices. At the make-up counter, the specialist directed us to a few subtle items and colours.

These items pretty much stayed unused, in my cosmetic roll (re-purposed pencil case my cousin Jeff made decades ago — still solid, Jeff!), until they were caked and dry to the realm of no-longer-usable.

I tried them once or twice, but I hated the experience: drawing on my face, lips dried out to the point of flaking within minutes, and, worst, no discernible difference in my appearance. It turned out that (gasp) people who liked the way I looked when I wasn’t wearing make-up didn’t really give a crap if I was wearing eyeliner or not. (Oh, and the dreaded make-up class never actually materialized.)

Years later, with the help of some friends who enjoy make-up and its myriad uses, I learned a bit more about it. Whether for theatre or regular life, I trust other people with my make-up: either to do it for me (“Look up. Now look down. Tilt your head.”) or to give me constructive criticism when I try (“That tone is more popular with older women. Try this colour on your hand. Does that look like what you want?”)

For many people, make-up is emblematic of a particular kind of femininity; the kind that likes dresses and hairdos and shoes. The kind that, because of liking those things, couldn’t possibly also be intelligent or strong or wise.

But for me, make-up is just something that doesn’t resonate with who I am. And when I see other people of all genders who love cosmetics, who can achieve impressive effects on the human body or gain joy and pride by fixing their contouring just so or finding the right shade of sparkly pink, I feel the same way I feel about people who are into music or sculpture. I’m not excited by visual art or deep tracks — it’s just not in my character. But I know that people who are have developed a taste (and/or skill) far beyond my abilities.

For that reason, although I’m naturally sympathetic to characters who don’t feel at home with make-up, I also don’t like the trope where make-up is shorthand for superficiality or artificiality (and hence, evil).

Even though make-up changes a person’s appearance, that doesn’t mean it’s skin-deep; on the contrary, wearing make-up can have deep personal meaning, whether an individual wears it for herself or for others. There are as many superficial reasons not to wear blush as there are to wear it.

Because of my personal feelings toward make-up — the way it stands for part of my own struggle with gender conventions — it can be difficult for me to separate the legitimacy of my feelings (it’s OK to be a woman who doesn’t like make-up) from the unfair use of make-up as a Sign of Evil/ Shallowness/Both.

I try to remember that I can have the first without the second. I can enjoy empathizing with Katniss Everdeen’s ignorance of body-hair shaving and eyeshadow colours without agreeing that trying to make oneself look a way that expresses the way one wants to be telltale sign of dissolution. I can feel for the teenaged protagonist of a YA who doesn’t know the right way to dress for prom without liking the way that the girls who do are invariably evil.

One of my favourite YA novels that tackles teenage femininity, Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens (Scholastic Press, 2011), subverts the trope linking cosmetics with shallowness by using a cast of young women with several different preferences. Though many seem ditzy or weak at the start of the story, each shows unique, feminine strength in her own way by the end.

I love that in Beauty Queens, we see that superficiality has nothing to do with interests or self-presentation. It has to do with the way we treat others and what we prioritize in our lives.

As a girl, I wanted to see more representatives of girls like myself in the books I read — girls with short hair, who didn’t care about make-up, who weren’t tomboys aspiring to be “as good as” their male counterparts but young women who wanted to be themselves. Sometimes, that makes me inclined to fall for the opposite problem.

Which just means I’ll have to try harder not to. I’ve made my peace with make-up, and so can my characters. Art of any sort — whether the medium is the English language or eyeshadow — is only as superficial as the artist permits it to be.