What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

coldheaux:

la-negra-barbuda:

periegesisvoid:

socialnetworkhell:

buzzfeed:

Here Are Some People Who Are Very Confused About What “No Makeup” Looks Like

Woman: wearing foundation, powder, blush, bronzer, highlight, false lashes, mascara, nude lipstick, brow powder eyeshadow

Man: she doesn’t have red lipstick on so that means no makeup

like 3 of them are wearing very visible winged eyeliner i’m screaming

^^^exactly

boys are so dumb

OK look, you know what? The fact that I was raised female doesn’t give me magical fucking insight into how makeup works. I don’t wear makeup, I’ve never learned how to apply it, I know jack shit about various brands and textures, and that doesn’t make me stupid; it makes me a person who, for perfectly valid reasons, has no interest in makeup. I can tell when someone’s wearing “obvious” makeup - winged eyeliner, bright colours, that sort of thing - but literally the entire fucking point of “natural” or minimal makeup is to convincingly downplay the fact that makeup is being worn at all. And if someone wears makeup of either sort every day - if I pretty much never see them without it - and then they’re suddenly barefaced, then yeah, there’s a good chance I’m going to wonder if they’re okay, because I literally don’t know what they look like otherwise, and people’s complexions do change when they’re sick! 

Like. The entire cultural thing where women are pressured to wear makeup in the workplace and where men in particular feel entitled to pass random judgement on their appearance is fucked-up and sexist as hell, as is the idea that women who wear makeup are somehow “deceitful” for concealing their real appearance: that’s not in dispute. But understanding how makeup works to contour and change the face, knowing what to look for to see how detailed someone’s application is and what types of products they might be using? That is a skill, or at the very least not a thing that anyone, regardless of gender, is born knowing, and I’m sick of seeing “doesn’t understand makeup” used as a synonym for “stupid”.

You know why makeup seems like impenetrable witchcraft to so many guys? Because nobody has ever fucking showed them how it works - again, Because Sexism! Their interest in this shit is actively penalised, particularly as teenagers! - and they literally do not know how to tell what’s been done if it isn’t blindingly obvious, and sometimes even then, because if most or all of the women they see day to day are always wearing makeup, then where the fuck are they getting their baseline for what women look like without it? Spoiler alert: they’re not, and that doesn’t make them hurr durr dumb guys; it means the same culture that demands women wear makeup in front of men, but which viciously polices male interest in makeup, has - surprise, surprise! - created a situation wherein men frequently can’t tell when women are using cosmetics, because they aren’t meant to notice.

And using celebrities as examples is just absurd. 99% of celebrity photos feature women in obvious makeup plus a high degree of photoshopping, and given that we only see such ladies on screen when they’re also wearing makeup, why the fuck is it so implausible to think that someone could confuse a rare image featuring minimal makeup with one using no makeup at all? At least with people we see regularly IRL, there’s a chance to understand how their look changes, to see them enough times on makeupless days that we learn to recognise the difference. But celebrities, who we only know through images? Different story entirely.

tl;dr: I am really super sick of “men are idiots who don’t understand makeup” being touted as a feminist argument, when the literal reason they don’t understand IS SEXISM. Like, yeah, if some asshole starts weighing in with how “girls look slutty in eyeshadow” or “makeup is TREACHERY AND LIES”, then drag them like a trawler in the Mariana Trench, but if all they’re doing is exhibiting basic confusion about a thing they were never taught, then maybe don’t be a goddamn douche about it.

(Source: bzfd.it, via eveanyn)

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