My negative opinion on make-up and the cosmetics industry

I realize that possible no one wants to know what my opinion is on this topic, being a cis-male heterosexual middle-aged white dude. I still want to write it down. Those that do not want to know my opinion don’t have to read this post 😛

Let me start by saying that I have nothing against the use of make-up on stage, in movies, on TV, and the like. Also, anyone who likes to play with make-up because they think it is fun, it’s part of their look, etc., knock yourself out and have all the fun you can handle. The astute reader may sense a but coming on, and they would be right. I do have a major issue with make-up being sold as a beauty product. The idea that beauty can be bought is absolutely preposterous to me. The fact that stunningly beautiful women are the primary customer of these “beauty” products make this even more strange.

Not sure if we can put the whole blame on the cosmetics industry or if the patriarchy and society as a whole bear some of the blame; it is likely a mixture. It seems to be me like the cosmetics industry is built to undermine the confidence of women. Their message seems to be “you have to buy our snake oil in order for others to find you attractive.” The totally astounding thing is, smart, intelligent, and beautiful women fall for this in droves. Some statistics put the cosmetics industry in the US at close to 50 billion USD per year. People are spending 50 billion USD on entirely useless and pointless products, mostly because the salespeople trigger people’s insecurities and convince them that their product will restore the self-confidence they just stole from them. Totally mind-boggling to me; I honestly do not get it.

From my perspective, 99.999% of women are already stunningly beautiful, and make-up does nothing to improve on that perfection. Best case, they give the women a different look. Worst case, they make her look worse. For the small fraction of a percentage of women, I would be hard-pressed to call beautiful, either due to how they carry themselves, how they act, or due to some unfortunate disfigurement; make-up does nothing to change that.

I am so sad every time I hear women say something to the effect of how they can’t show their face in public without make-up. Worse yet, when they can’t even be around their significant other without make-up. How sad it is that society and product marketing have undermined their self-confidence to a point where they feel they look scary unless they are using all the right products, when in fact, they look absolutely stunningly beautiful without any products.

Is cosmetic surgery part of the cosmetic industry, or are they their own little evil empire? How ludicrous is it that women seek to have surgery so that they can be happy with their looks? Why mess with perfection like that?

This brings me to another gripe of mine. Why does society put such incredible pressure on women to be pretty? This I’m sure we can blame the patriarchy for 100%. I absolutely love watching beautiful women, so I get a lot of personal satisfaction out of it, but as I may have mentioned before in this article, I think they just are beautiful, so there is nothing they need to do. What value does society gain from this? I think it is merely a form of control and manipulation by the patriarchy.

Of course, everyone loves looking their best, that is not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about goes way above just looking their best. As is the case with so many things in today’s society, there is a huge double standard here. For a guy to look presentable, he just has to be clean, run a comb through his hair, and put on clean clothes that fit well and have no noticeable wear marks. For women, the standard is so much higher. The reason it takes women 3x longer to get ready is that the standard they have to live up to is 30x higher. Society puts 30x higher standards on women and then complains that it takes them a little longer to get ready. So totally insanely crazy.

No matter how hard they try to live up to the patriarchal standard, they always get complaints. Most guys would have stopped trying if they were treated that way.

In closing, I just want to say that I find the way society treats women totally disgusting, and I wish I could single-handedly dismantle the patriarchy.