We’ve bought into the notion that it’s not just desirable but mandatory to invest in the charade of what 'real women' look like.
For all the benefits secured by women who deftly wield a makeup brush or wig or shapewear, there’s a danger that comes with being too good at transforming one’s self into the ideal image of female beauty.
In January 2015, makeup artist Andreigha Wazny posted two photos of her friend Ashley VanPevenage, one showing VanPevenage without makeup, the next showing her with a fully made‑up, high-glamour face. The transformation is stark: VanPevenage’s skin goes from blemished to flawless, her nose appears to change shape, her eyebrows darken and fill out, and her eyes — now framed by dark, smoky eye shadow and lustrous black lashes — seem brighter and more radiant.
To anyone familiar with the transformative power of makeup, there was nothing particularly surprising about these before and after shots. But when they went viral, launching out of the orbit of makeup social media and into the mainstream internet, things took a dark turn.
A few weeks after Wazny posted the photos, a Twitter user reposted them with the caption “The reason why you gotta take a bitch swimming on the first date,” an outing that would presumably wash away a woman’s makeup and reveal her “true” face. (The phrase, it should be noted, did not originate with this user, but seemed to explode in popularity subsequent to this exchange.)
The implication of the phrase, which eventually turned into a meme itself, was clear: Women are trying to deceive men, using the various tricks of the beauty industry to lure unsuspecting paramours into relationships. A man who isn’t careful — who takes the object of his affection at face value, so to speak — can easily wind up saddled to a woman who’s merely faking the attractive exterior that drew him to her in the first place. Women, it’s implied, are inherently deceitful, and those who manage to secure through makeup what they were denied by nature deserve to be revealed.
For women, the world of beauty often presents a difficult, if not outright impossible, situation to navigate. Eschew cosmetics entirely, and you’ll likely be scorned for not caring enough about your appearance; put too much faith in the power of physical transformation, and suddenly you’re a grotesque caricature of vanity as well as a portrait of deceit.
There is, in theory, an optimal amount of effort that deftly balances looking attractive with not caring too much about your appearance, but where that perfect mix is can be pretty hard to pinpoint — and where, exactly, it lies depends a lot on what sort of looks you were born with.
Source: nbcnews.com
