The Healing Power of Makeup, Makeup Therapy, or, Makeup Is A Matter of Life and Death

...If faces were different when lit from above or below - what was a face? What was anything?...

William Golding, Lord of the Flies

My title is only partly facetious. It is a take on the idea that makeup and concern with appearance is 'superficial'. Certainly there are evolutionary explanations or possibilities than include more than that modern advertisers exploit women with no powers of analysis to make purchases they don't really need?

If you discovered that applying makeup reduced your anxiety when in public situations, would you prefer to try to get a presciption for antianxiety medication that would cost more and probably negatively affect your sexual functioning? If anxiety is a significant issue in your life, your approach to it and the options you consider will have a lot to do with your genes, your experiences and upbringing, and the society in which you live.

When a person is depressed, does she always look lacklustre, do her eyes look less clear, does she seem really present? Is she as conscious of her surroundings and the people around her as others are?

My experimenting through the years could hardly be called scientific, but it is considerably more extensive than the experience of others who have never worn makeup, who always wear the same kind, who have never tried different hair colours, strange styles of dressing, or who have never shaved their heads.

Scarily enough, during a year in which I wore no makeup, pulled my hair off my face with an elastic (my only attempt at styling) and wore nothing but leggings and an oversize sweatshirt, my appearance might have negatively impacted my psychiatric diagnosis. I had decided at age 22 that I was too dependent on makeup, and I made a conscious decision to try to go without it. It was actually a conscious, 'mentally healthy' and even feminist choice, but I think in a psychiatric setting that this may have been misinterpreted as lack of concern with my appearance. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to talk to the doctor long enough to clear up my point of view, and when I tried, he ridiculed and dismissed me.

...She stood contemplating herself arrayed for no peaceful or trusting encounter with life...

Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love

When I started wearing makeup again, my father actually commented that my eyes looked clearer. I was not less depressed, I was just wearing mascara and eyeliner. I was actually more depressed, because after my scary hospitalization, I was now living on welfare. I was now obsessed with suicide, and every time I went to pick up my cheque, I dropped an extensive suicide note into the trash outside the social services building.

I admit that through the years I have very often relied on makeup, clothes and hairstyles to help relieve my anxiety when in public. Sometimes this has been accomplished by trying to pass for normal, and sometimes through self-expression, through trying to express on the outside that I am not normal. It is at times a protection, but I don't think of it as a disguise. I am trying with varying degrees of success to express something internal externally. That is not to say that I don't feel physically ugly or disgusting, but my focus is on trying to make the most of my good points, while trying to express what is different about me. When I try to pass for normal, I tend to feel that I am copping out.

...They understood only too well the liberation into savagery that the concealing paint brought...

William Golding, Lord of the Flies

Concealing or revealing? Everyday makeup partly represents the pressure of civilization. You conceal your savagery while exposing hints of it. What I call 'face dancing' (photos which represent it appear throughout my websites) is about imagination, fantasy and fun. I think it helps me to access the unconscious. I did not always see it that way, tending to feel somewhat embarrassed about it, as if it was a weird thing to do, or demonstrated excessive vanity. I think it's about expression. It's about tapping into hidden parts, (including the primitive past and current aggression) and trying to explain more of the story. It's also a compensatory behaviour - I think it is about a need for social interaction, and how I adapted to being alone. It's like carrying on conversations with imaginary friends - through facial expressions. But it is also about how the power of image affected me, and my own attempts to find or create my own image. What I have found is that I cannot honestly create a consistent image. No one image is the image that sums me up.

...Her first expression was one of tension, which was not beauty. Just as anxiety dispersed the strength of the body, it also gave to the face a wavering, tremulous vagueness, which was not beauty, like that of a drawing out of focus.

Slowly what she composed with the new day was her own focus, to bring together body and mind. This was made with an effort, as if all the dissolutions and dispersions of herself the night before were difficult to reassemble...

Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love

I tend to feel angry or irritated when people say that a depressed person seems to be 'not all there', or 'dull', especially if the people saying it have a tendency to reward or admire a kind of hyper-positiveness that reminds me of collective blindness/brainwashing and mutual ass-kissing rather than individual vitality and authenticity.

Many people adopt the fashions in clothing and makeup because they are just doing what they are programmed to do - take steps in the process of breeding. But if you do not want to get married or breed, you may still have a strong wish to have sex, and to have relationships in which you connect emotionally and get a chance to express various parts of your intelligence and creativity. Wearing certain things (and using makeup) may act as a signal that you are receptive to sexual advances, especially if you are not so naturally beautiful, attractive or vivacious in personality that it is easy to find partners.

In my preoccupations with clothing, I have never sought to be 'fashionable'. If anything, I wanted to outwardly look more unusual than someone who fits into regular society - as a way of 'advertising' accurately. It is interesting that sometimes when I have tried to warn people that I hate my clothes, it is because I know I will look too 'normal' and that this will influence their assessments of who I am as a person. When I pass for normal, I think it sometimes relieves anxiety, makes it easier to deal with the public, but I tend to think of this as a copout, and I would like for people to understand this about me.

People who 'don't care at all' or who don't make any effort at all with clothes, who just choose the first thing they see - I realize that consciously their self-concept revolves around not being affected by the superficial, or by appearances, but I think we all face the pressures of the superficial constantly, and those who cope well or who do not care, might have early on found some personal identity and position in life they liked, and so for them the process was not as conscious or difficult, but unconsciously, the adoption of their stance might have been far from simple - it may have been influenced by many things in their upbringing, background and personal genes.

...Besides the prime function of covering the body, it has two other offices - that it creates beauty for the eye, and that it attracts the admiration of your sex. Since marriage until the year 1919 - less than twenty years ago - was the only profession open to us, the enormous importance of dress to woman can hardly be exaggerated. It was to her what clients are to you - dress was her chief, perhaps her only, method of becoming Lord Chancellor. But your dress in its immense elaboration has obviously another function. It not only covers nakedness, gratifies vanity, and creates pleasure for the eye, but it serves to advertise the social, professional, or intellectual standing of the wearer...

Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas

"advertisement" function is key, when it comes to clothing.

Woolf explains how men have ribbons, medals, wigs, braids, buttons, with particular meanings that convey power, status and the like.

Woolf was suggesting that women refuse to participate in this kind of competitiveness and status-seeking.

I guess what we have now is a kind of makeup arms race: most women wear it, not just to be atttractive, but also in order to succeed in the workplace, and to fit into society, and now even average people are seeking out cosmetic procedures with increasing frequency, and so those who say enough of it, it is ridiculous, it creates too much mess and stress, let's focus on what's really important in life - not appearances - have to be very strong, not just radical, subversive, in order to handle all the pressure society inflicts on women with regards to their appearance.

But what if appearances are more important than people realize? Can all biological pressures and imperatives be overcome by consciously chosen morality? Is such morality really completely consciously chosen?

There are signs that men are facing increasing pressure regarding their appearance, but there is still nothing resembling equality between men's and women's situations when it comes to appearance and attracting mates.

Pandering to men's predisposition for visual stimuli does nothing to change the situation, but what is the alternative? Insisting that men become attracted to women's minds or 'souls'? How do we go about that? JUST STOP WEARING MAKEUP, for a start? The issue is difficult to resolve. If you think you have only one life to live, and if you are female you have only a limited amount of time in which you can be considered a sexual and desirable being, isn't it kind of understandable that you'd want to take advantage of that while you could? And that it would be a difficult thing to give up? You might be able to have an ongoing sex life as you age if you are not physically attractive but are intellectually attractive, but to me it seems that with the pressure of constant images on the internet and in other media, regular women cannot really be seen or desired in a similar way.

If you can realistically assess yourself as not having a lot of chances unless you make an effort to draw attention to your best features, is it rational not to make use of the tools available in your environment?

The point many feminists tried to make was that any change to try to make the raw material look more like the ideal is about being a slave to men's desires and ideas about sexuality, rather than trying to find and express your own sexuality. If you choose to use the available tools in your environment to express an alternative sexuality, that is not really about catering only to men. However, it can be difficult to figure out to what extent you are affected by cultural norms. Also, makeup, clothing and hair issues are not just dictated by the desires of men. In the workplace, showing a 'professional' image will give you a better chance than your skills alone, and gaining the approval of other women is also a signficant part of our social functioning. Life is highly competitive, and it may be difficult to avoid seeing that it is necessary to take advantage of whatever tools are available to increase one's chances - survival may depend on one's ability to do so.

In many personal ads, it appears that men are seeking women who are DTE and who have a GSOH. (Down to earth, good sense of humour). I think this translates as: no drama queens please! Many of these men list their interests as fishing and camping. Makeup really doesn't make sense in these settings. When I have participated in these activities in the past, what I have found is that there is actually social/peer pressure to not wear makeup. If you do, you are exhibiting unappealing character traits. It doesn't matter if (some of) the other women there are going without makeup in order to please men, or to be seen as DTE, GSOH - although most of them won't realize this consciously - in fact, most women do not at all understand the extent to which their entire personalities have been based upon being appealing to men, whatever it takes (including that they are seamlessly adaptable to the circumstances, never as irritating or high maintenance as other women). My thinking is that on my part it is better not to give the impression that I am DTE, GSOH - in the ways most people are looking for - because that would be false advertising.

Some women do not wear makeup for moral, philosophical, political, environmental or feminist reasons. It takes courage to go against the norm. I respect those who take a stand against wearing makeup for their own convictions, but don't like the self-righteousness with which they sometimes dismiss others who do not hold the same convictions. However, in some cases, part of their (unconscious) motivation may be fear related to competition. They may fear that this is an area in which they will not excel, so they avoid it. It is not easy to choose from all the tools available, and to have the skill and creativity to know which will work best with the raw material. And in some cases, if no advantage can be gained by using makeup, it doesn't really make sense to use it. Part of being 'superficial' would be in not examining the possible evolutionary and unconscious reasons makeup makes sense, and is a proactive solution, at least for some people.

Finally, I would ask the men and women who find makeup gross because it is 'messy' how they cope with the smells and excretions that occur during sex? I guess it could be argued that the latter are 'natural' and designed by nature to attract us, whereas makeup is 'unnatural', and designed to manipulate us into thinking our natural state is repulsive and that we need to buy products to correct this. In that case, I see the point, but...

To me, pretty much everything is 'natural'. When people speak of nature, it is very often as if they are focusing only on the 'beauty' of the surface of nature, or only on parts of the world in which no humans live. Every day in 'nature' there is a brutal struggle for existence. Competition is about each creature trying to take advantage of whatever they can in the struggle for existence. When it comes to human beings, this competition has resulted in the complexity of modern societies. The tools, products, services available to human beings represent the fierce nature of competition - everyone tries to provide something that others can't, or to provide a better version. If you don't make an effort to sell yourself, you may not be chosen. You may not survive. It's one thing if due to your own principles you refuse to 'sell yourself', but it doesn't necessarily mean that anyone will recognize your integrity - if you don't find some way of drawing attention to it. Life can be very lonely, especially if the genetic lottery hasn't resulted in a combination of looks and personality/personal gifts that easily attracts others. When that is the case, it makes sense to explore your options.

I don't really want to give up makeup. Maybe it's the ritual of putting it on more than anything else, but I think that even if I am not physically attractive to others, makeup is an important part of accessing imagination and fantasy, and might help to make me more sexually responsive.

[Added 21/07/11, a few more thoughts:]

1. I think that when people believe the 'truth' of who a person is relates to how they look without makeup, it signifies a perhaps unconscious belief that genes are destiny. Using makeup is not necessarily about denying the reality of the effects of genes - it can be about intent to use available tools and resources to enhance or make the most of the raw material, in a way that expresses one's own personality and creativity (attempting to express more of the internal personality externally.)

2. If a person has been abused by someone with similar features and has negative associations with those features, one possible positive step to take is to use the tools available to alter those features, or take a stand in this way for the sake of psychological health.

3. Men have as much a right to wear makeup, whether 'natural', dramatic, or whatever, as women. I like it when men wear makeup.