The “No makeup” Makeup Routine and the High Standards that it Exposes

In Sandra Lee Bartkey’s article Focult, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power, she describes in detail the ways in which women are expected to outwardly perform their gender. Amidst her analysis of the absurdity of the rigid and rigorous beauty routine that women go through, she highlights that “The crown and pinnacle of good haircare and skincare is, of course, the arrangement of the hair and the application of cosmetics…Furthermore, since a properly made-up face is…at least a badge of acceptability in most social and professional contexts, the woman who chooses not to wear cosmetics at all faces sanctions” (85).

            However, in a strange foil to these “sanctions,” Bartkey mentions several magazine covers, YouTube makeup tutorials, and online fashion blogs have recently been purporting the “no makeup” makeup routine. This WikiHow article, “How to Apply Makeup for a Natural Look,” claims that “a fresh face is always in style…of course, the natural look takes a little bit of time and practice.”  What follows is a 13-step, three-part foray into moisturizing, concealing, powdering, bronzing, blushing, lining, and shimmering. The article calls for the use of around ten to fifteen products to achieve the appearance of the absence of makeup, a routine that could easily be avoided if one simply opted to not wear makeup instead. What is the purpose of purchasing cosmetics and spending a large amount of time applying them only to achieve the same “dewy, fresh, radiant look” that the naked human face already possesses?

            A surface reading of Bartkey’s claim that wearing makeup daily is “at least a badge of acceptability” suggests that the “no makeup” routine could be a woman’s way of presenting the closest thing to her un-makeuped face to the public as possible while still satisfying social convention. However, later in the piece Bartkey claims that the high demands place on women to perfect their appearance “suggests…that their bodies are deficient.” (85). When Bartkey previously suggested “a properly made-up face,” she was alluding to a face that follows the doctrine of a perfected woman. “A properly made-up face” is one that is virtually impossible to achieve with an unpainted face. So a makeup routine that creates the allusion of a lack of makeup, even if it achieves a glowing, unblemished face, still fails to meet the standards for “a properly made up face.” The “natural” makeup look, even though it does still satisfy the demands placed on women to wear makeup, still fails to meet the societal expectations for what type of appearance that makeup should achieve.

            For example, when Taylor Swift appeared on the November 2014 cover of the music and fashion magazine Wonderland, she was without a doubt fully made up. However, because she had traded her typical public performance—red lipstick, black eyeliner, neatly placed and straightened hair—for a plainer palette of brown contouring lines and shadows, a strangely bewildered reaction ensued. Billboard magazine called her “nearly unrecognizable (but still gorgeous!),” implying that while Swift did not fit the public persona that they were used to, her appearance was still, at least acceptable. MTV news was more in depth in their shocked reaction to the Wonderland cover, making such elegant observations as “If the name Taylor Swift wasn’t in the headline of this post, would you even recognize her?? Like, would you be able to pick this tanned and bold-browed woman out of a crowd and appropriately squeal, “OMG Taylor Swift, I love your work!!”? I don’t think so.” This statement becomes problematic in many ways—firstly, it states that Taylor Swift’s entire identity is based o her appearance, that without her usual cosmetics she ceases to become a recognizable name and just a nameless “tanned and bold-browed woman.” Secondly, the use of the voice of an imagined fan, ecstatic of Swift’s music yet unable to identify the artist because of her appearance, implies that not only is Swift’s normal makeup routine essential to her physical identity, but to her professional and artistic identities as well.

            Would the response to the Wonderland cover be one of less shock and awe is Swift had appeared in more the more overdone makeup look that is more typical of magazine covers? If she had appeared on the cover with heavier makeup than usual, would pop culture outlets still be calling her “unrecognizable?” Or would she be be lauded with approval, the “but” removed from “but still gorgeous?”

            Swift’s appearance on the Wonderland cover is still a heavily made up one, but it the application of the makeup falls in line with the previously mentioned natural makeup tutorial—bronzers, blush, nude lip gloss, eye shadow only slightly darker than Swift’s skin tone.  So, while Swift is still fulfilling the expectation to improve her face, she is still showing too much of natural self—she, and the concept of the natural makeup routine, have not earned the “badge of acceptability.” 

Intersex and Image

With the article Impossible Hermaphrodites: Intersex in America 1620-1960, Elizabeth Ries outlines the historical treatment of intersex births and aims to call into question why these births are so, in her words, “perplexing.” Accompanying her essay are pictures from historical archives that portray intersex bodies, and their usage creates a dilemma for the reader: does the use of these images, with their depersonalized depiction of genitalia, further medicalize intersex bodies and undermine Reis’ goals in writing this piece? Or do they call out a larger problem with the way that sexuality is discussed as a whole—that the physical body is perceived as the absolute answer to the question?

What makes the images of Reis’ article particularly problematic is the removal of personhood from them. None of the depictions of human bodies have a head or face—the part of the body associated with the brain and thus with knowledge and sentience, or, what makes humans human. Without the visual marker of sentience, these bodies can be depersonalized and examined in the ways they have historically. This is emphasized by the “medical” literature that Reis pairs with the images. The descriptions of these bodes are grossly exaggerated, small deviances from the norm turned into monstrosities. For example, in the description of the body of James Casey, dating back to 1839, the artist James Akin describes Casey’s genitalia as “his strange malconformation…exhibiting features of a grotesque melancholy aspect…not unlike the lesser Ouran Outang” (424-425). Akin genders Casey (although according to the account Casey lived his life as a man) with the use of the pronoun “his,” and pushes his perception of Casey as sad and subhuman. The language of Akin’s report indicates a desire to distance Casey from the perception of human sexuality that he is accustomed to.

            The descriptions that accompany these images grasp for way to classify these bodies as male or female in a strained effort to assure the comfort of those that fall into the gender binary. On the need for this classification, Ries writes “On the one hand, doctors' avowals of a two-sex model may have gendered their patients, rendering them more human in the eyes of medicine and the law, and thus less monstrous. On the other hand, doctors' insistence on a bipolar system, sometimes surgically supplied, also made them far less likely to recognize the potential complexities of genital and sex presentation.” (440). The need to sort bodies that fall outside of binary expectation back where the “two-sex model” would like them is what ultimately justifies the exploitation on display to the people that commit it. Classifying these bodies as monstrous implies that they are an error that requires fixing, regardless of the identity of the examined individual.

            An individual’s identity is not visible, but their external body is. As a result of the strongly held male/female dichotomy, a person’s sexual identity, which may fall outside of the dichotomy, rest somewhere in the middle, or outright deny it, takes a backseat to what is more easy to digest—visual representation. Because of this mode of thinking, the use of the images in Reis’ piece becomes essential—if sexuality is perceived foremost as a physical trait, then illustration of bodies that are not strictly male or female is important to the process of learning about sexuality as a spectrum. However, if physical sexual characteristics were considered to be part of a system—that gender, sexuality, and physical sex were all considered to be a part of a person’s makeup, instead of the visible dominating the temporal—the need for classification along a binary would no longer be necessary. Without this binary, the images in Reis’ article could possibly be no longer necessary.

          However, the classification of the body remains entrenched in the physical. The attention paid to intersex bodies, in the past and present, causes a host of physical and emotional trauma. Reis writes that although b the 1950s medical knowledge did not support binary classification, physicians “elevated external genital morphology as the single most important criterion in deciding how to treat hermaphrodites, firmly believing that, in spite of confounding indicators, social gender could be created to match genital morphology.” (440). Beyond the genital mutilation of gender assignment surgery, intersex individuals that are assigned at birth are denied the right to discover their own identity and sexuality. By continuing to conform to the gender binary, today’s physicians continue the trend of medicalizing individuals that do not fit their comfortable definition of “human.” Movement away from the traditional idea of the body is to allow for a less exploitive discussion of human sexuality.