on expectation

So a friend linked this article on Facebook. When I first saw it, the headline (they’ve changed it now, interestingly) was “Women Wear Too Much Make-Up Because They Mistakenly Think Men Like It.” How does one quantify “too much make-up?” From what’s contained in the article, the only definition of “too much” that makes any sense is “more than men would ideally prefer”. I also really don’t think the study supports the conclusion.

In essence, the researchers told some women to put on make-up for a night out, then produced 21 progressively more made-up pictures and asked people to judge which picture was most attractive. What the women weren’t told, unless the article is leaving out something vitally important, is to apply make-up to achieve what they thought was maximum sexual attractiveness. To equate “night out” with “trying to be sexually appealing” is not a sound and reasonable leap of logic. The study assumes its own conclusion in its set-up, thereby defeating the entire point of conducting the study in the first place. That’s a BAD study. Stay behind after class and do it again properly.

(Also, they took the pictures of night make-up in daylight, and they still concluded that women look best in 60% of the full night make-up, not actually natural or any of that shit, and that article is written terribly. So there.)

I’ve worn make-up for a lot of different reasons. I’ve worn it because I wanted to be all grown up like my cousin. I’ve worn it because I was insecure about my dark circles. I’ve worn it because I was a GOTH and I needed EYELINER, DAMMIT. I’ve worn it because I thought I needed it to make myself acceptable to the world. I’ve worn it because it was part of a costume. I’ve worn it because I thought if I had lipstick on, nobody would realise it had taken me three days to persuade myself out of the house. I’ve worn it because I discovered I could draw flames on my eyelids with eyeshadow.

Now I wear it to practice skills I’ve learned, to get me into a certain frame of mind, as part of a look I’m going for, for the tranquillity of an established morning ritual, because I am having a day of awesome and can’t be brought down by anything, for the sheer joy of having orange lips sometimes, or because my teen Goth self still gets excited over the fact that I can actually apply eyeliner properly now. Sometimes I don’t wear it, because I don’t want to, or can’t be bothered. And through all of this, through Day of Awesome make-up to Please Ignore The Fact That I’m Falling Apart make-up, men have been saying to me “You don’t need to do that, you know. Men don’t really like it. I prefer you without it.”

Well, thank you, stranger dude/dude who is my friend/dude I’ve been going out with for three years. That’s nice of you. But it’s not for you, and it’s not about you. You may have opinions as to how you’d prefer me/women in general to look; that’s fine. But please don’t share them with me. It doesn’t help me.

My first boyfriend used to look at me and my shitty self-esteem and say mournfully that he wished I could base my opinions of myself on what he saw rather than what I saw. Every time he said this, I told him that basing my self-esteem on someone else’s opinions was exactly what gave me shitty self-esteem in the first place, and I was never going to be secure in myself if I was clinging on to someone else’s opinions the whole time. He would nod and say that he understood, but he never did. He thought good things about me, so I should too, and then everything would be better. And when his thoughts about me turned towards the less good, he wanted me to share in that journey too.

These days my self-esteem is my own. It’s been really fucking difficult, but now it’s mine. I’m not interested in what people think of my self-presentation, I’m not interested in “what men like” (as though that’s even a thing. Different men like different stuff, because that’s how humanity works), I’m not interested in being reassured that my grooming decisions are OK. I can appreciate that, from both the men who’ve expressed views on this and from this poorly-conceived piece of research, there is a positive intention to liberate women from an expectation they don’t have to conform to. But a) it’s patronising, and b) it doesn’t do that. It’s still saying, “You don’t have to do this thing because men don’t want it”. This is not empowering, it’s not helpful, and it really fucking bugs me.

As does badly-done research.

So there.