Hot girl. Bad feminist?

By: Jane Tabet-Kirkpatrick

The author showcasing her 4,000 hours of practice.

Am I a bad feminist? I think to myself as I apply bright baby doll pink blush to my cheeks, chin, forehead, and nose. This is not the first time I’ve had this thought. I think about it almost every day when I sit down for an hour in the morning to perform my sacred beauty routine. I press glitter on my eyelids, draw on faux freckles, and chisel out my cheekbones with bronzer. At this point in my life, doing my makeup is second nature—I’ve been doing it consistently for twelve years. If you hold constant the hour-a-day variable, that means I have spent approximately 4,000 hours of my young life committed to looking pretty. That doesn’t even begin to include the amount of time that I spent watching makeup tutorials, perusing through Sephora aisles, and stalking celebrity makeup artists online. This accumulation of hours makes me wonder about what else I could have accomplished with that time. Even more, I worry about those hours turning into a lifetime spent dedicated to being aesthetically pleasurable for others. I can feel time passing as I pounce my damp beauty sponge across my face in an almost aggressive fashion. I’ve been thinking about the physical and emotional energy expended on this chosen (or possibly imposed) hobby of mine—and thus, I find myself emotionally where I have physically found myself so many times before, looking in a mirror completely at a crossroads with the reflection. 

“I don’t wear makeup for others, I wear it for myself.” This sentiment has relentlessly orbited the beauty universe attempting to eclipse reality. I’ve heard various iterations, but the comment always confused me, why do you wear it for yourself? That answer always seemed obvious to me, because you want other people to think you look good. Of course this can be for yourself but the action is necessarily constructed by a broader social order that has both condemned and profited off of women’s looks. That's why as a fellow makeup girly and so-called “freethinker”, I’m calling (partial) bullshit. 

When I first started wearing makeup in 6th grade, it was because I wanted to be attractive. More specifically, I wanted boys to find me attractive. Twelve feels so young, and it admittedly makes me a little queasy to think about how much time and effort my younger self put into curating an image towards boyish desires. But I did and I’m not the only one. I tried to replicate the Dallas Cowboy cheerleader types my crushes seemed to ogle at. There were characteristics of them that I could never hope to emulate. I was never going to be 24 or 5’10 or have boobs, but I could sport the same smokey eye and nude lip combo and pray that it would be good enough. I woke up every morning at 6:00 A.M to apply full coverage foundation, 16 coats of mascara, and layers of badly blended concealer. All of this for a crush who still was probably not wearing deodorant. 

I’m not even sure if my attempts had an effect. When I wore mascara for the first time to school, I remember feeling a shift. At the time I didn’t know to call it “confidence” as the feeling is so foreign to a 12 year old girl it only comes across in vocabulary lessons. I felt like everyone noticed me, looked at me, and was more curious about me. At recess I even got a coveted sweaty side hug from the love of my life. Who knows if this was actually the result of a couple coats of mascara but to 6th grade me, the correlation was unequivocal. 

My younger desire to be attractive has not (unfortunately) in any way subsided as I’ve grown into young adulthood. If anything, in high school and in early college it grew with a ferocious veracity. I strove to achieve every beauty standard I could with makeup, I contoured my nose and forehead to look smaller, overdrew my lipliner, and applied white eyeliner to my waterline for a more “doe eyed” effect. And, I’m not trying to be an egomaniac here, I achieve these standards, in fact, I absolutely crush them. 

But of course, as I have painfully learned in my life, nothing is simply beautiful. As a proud feminist (borderline misandrist), I’ve taken a serious issue with my love for makeup and beauty. I think about the harm that I may unintentionally perpetuate to younger girls. How can I say that I am a feminist and yet continue to contort myself to a standard that limits not only me but all women? How can I be free from the male gaze and constantly beg for its attention? 

Makeup is a fact of history. It has been dated back to the egyptians and has undergone a series of culturally related ups and downs. It has been used by all genders and then only a select few, and then by all again. In its penultimate fashion it has predominantly been used as a marketing scam to make women feel insecure and then manufacture a product that will solve that insecurity. A classic tactic, create a problem and sell the solution. If that wasn’t enough women who often do wear makeup are then chastised: “I like a more natural girl,” “why do you wear so much makeup?” “cake face.” To live with an oppressor is to live with whiplash, what they tell me is pretty today will be undesirable by tomorrow. Classic. When makeup touched the capitalist market its flames were accelerated by the rigid patriarchal beauty standards that formed women's insecurities. I would dare to say that since the revolution of Hollywood’s telecasting of ideal beauty standards (curated by white male directors), a majority of women have been using makeup to chase some unobtainable standard of a “feminine ideal”: slim, youthful, pure, and symmetrical. All of these are points that I concede. 

But then another thought overcomes me, makeup in its most recent fashion has seemingly divested from its origin. Makeup would not be the first oppressive imposition that has been reclaimed as a form of empowerment. This is most obvious by the feminist reclaiming the word “bitch.” The origin of the word (which I am sure the reader does not need a refresher on) was used to characterize a female dog, but has been historically used as a derogatory term for women. It really picked up in use in the United States between the 1915s and 30s, and there is circulating speculation that this rise coincided with the female suffragist movement. And yet, no matter the genealogy of the term, its DNA has been manipulated—or rather, reformed—by the group it was once used to admonish. A similar analysis can be applied to makeup. 

I purpose that makeup for the better part of the last ten years has taken a look in the mirror and has shifted direction away from the promotion of insecurities and rather created unique spaces for many individuals to feel safe, scene, connected, loved, and artistic. I have been thinking more positively about the recent manifestations in the makeup world and how wonderfully diverse that community has become. It has seemingly transcended its nasty origin to become utilized and celebrated as a liberating tool of self expression. Branching out of my cynical viewpoints,  I think about makeup and beauty as a community. The artform breaks free from its parent.  

Every girl will tell you that the best part of going out with your friends is getting ready beforehand. I have been honored to partake in hundreds of “Get Ready With Mes.” I’ve sat on every floor type you can imagine with a glass of wine getting ready with the girls. This is where we gather; it is our space. We sit and gab about every topic imaginable: iconic moments from Sex and the City, the batshit rap beef between Megan the Stallion and Nikki Minaj, what the hell is going on with the nursing home we call a government, and why the fuck no one has been talking about the crock pot a revolutionary invention that rocked the work culture and culinary worlds by allowing women to simultaneously have a job and a homecooked meal by the time she got home. These conversations, no matter how important, are routinely interrupted by the occasional, “oh my god, girl, have I told you how much I love the new (insert whichever trending makeup product of the day)” 

This is womanhood. 

This communal aspect was perhaps no more elevated than in my recent trip to the hair salon. I have been going to the same hairdresser for my entire life. Joylene, just gets my hair. And by my hair, I mean me. Joylene has seen me at varying intervals throughout my life. No doubt I have hit her up when experiencing a breakup to drastically change my hair, or when I get a new job and need a more professional cut, or when I am going on vacation and want to try something fun and sexy. She has seen and heard it all. During my appointments that last anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours, we talk. We laugh in the beauty salon and share little tidbits about our lives. We offer each other advice while she tells me to uncross my legs so that my hair cut won't be uneven. She is honest with me when she thinks something won't be good for me, whether it’s red copper highlights or meeting up for a Tinder date. I love our ritual, I love our time, I love our space, and I don’t care if it’s the unending pressure to fit societal beauty standards that brings us together. 

This space is a representation of something more to me in the beauty community. To me it’s like saying “okay fine, if we’re going to be forced to participate in this charade then we can at least make it our own.” Makeup and other beauty maintenance is a fact of life, and it's an exhausting exercise to constantly be monitoring my choices through attempts to be a “good feminist.” In fact, these spaces have created more opportunities to connect with other women, and talk about the things that matter to us. It’s actually wonderful to think that what comes out of this tool that was intended to harm and divide us has only brought us closer together. 

I want to retract what I previously said about my earliest memories of makeup being at age twelve and wanting to be attractive to boys. When I close my eyes and think of the word “makeup”, one singular video plays on a loop. Sometimes it’s different in situation or lighting, or perhaps my viewpoint of it varies, but it is thematically always the same. It’s my mother, stopped at a red light (or maybe at a soccer game, or was it at a restaurant?) applying her lip liner without a mirror in 15 seconds flat. For the laywomen reading this at home, that’s real fucking talent in this industry. When I was a child I watched my mother apply her makeup like it was an Olympic event. She repeated her miracle ritual a million times in front of me, and while the brands of lip liner changed, the ritual stayed the same. 

I think of the other women in my life more deeply now as my makeup genesis, as a way for my female lineage to pass something on to me. I see it now even with my grandmothers. Grandma Eloisa would let me put on lipstick for church so that I could match with her. Grandma Carolyn bought me the “Bobby Brown Makeup Manual” for Christmas, and even though I was embarrassed when she told everyone at the dinner table that it would “help me through puberty”, I am now grateful for her imparting crucial knowledge. 

My hourly morning routine is the most time that I spend with myself. It’s where I get to be with my thoughts while also doing something that I am really good at. Even more, I enjoy it. I love it. I wake up earlier than I “have to” in the morning just to do it. Looking even further back, I remember being a little girl playing dress up with friends, mixing together Avon and Mary Kay potions, digging into red lipsticks, and smearing blue eyeshadow on with little precision. We performed “fashion shows” for our parents. Adorning the most intense and crazed pieces just to garner a laugh from our mothers—just to share in their hobbies and absurdities, to partake in their beauty. I feel connected to that little girl when I sit in front of the mirror, and I would never characterize her a bad feminist.