The Face They Expect

While rushing to get to an online date a year or so ago, I mentioned the need to get my makeup on. “You mean, he hasn’t seen you without makeup yet?” my daughter gasped. 

Um . . . no. No, he hasn’t. 

And you can just wipe that look of astonishment off your smooth, lovely, twenty-something-year-old face, my dear. Let’s talk about this again when you’re in your fifties.

I don’t wear as much makeup as many women do. I used to wear more – blush, eye shadow, mascara. But what I wear now is pretty minimal and pretty natural-looking. Some foundation and a bit of cover-up for the blotches and under-eye circles that never completely go away. Powder to smooth it all out. And a bit of eye liner, just to make my eyes look a little brighter.

But I rarely go in public without. I mean, I’ll run an errand or two au naturel if I’m going to a place where I don’t care what anyone thinks of me. And of course, I don’t wear makeup to Zumba where I’m going to sweat it all off anyway. But to school? To church? On a date with someone who I really want to enjoy how I look?

Not a chance. I absolutely cover up.

The place where I get my hair done hired a new guy who works the front desk. He seems like a nice enough guy, but he wears a lot of makeup. And it’s not the fact that he’s a guy in makeup that bothers me the most – it’s the excessiveness of the makeup. Even if he were a woman, I’d be thinking, “Sweetie . . . oh . . . that’s a bit much.”

Because why do we need all that makeup, ladies? Really – why? Cosmetics has become an art form for many of us. We use it to create a face that is truly not our own. Different eyes. Different lips. Different contours and shapes altogether. And I’m not even getting into all the procedures available to us now where you can actually physically alter the contours and shapes of your face. Plastic surgery . . . lip jobs . . . botox . . .

Why do we think we need to do this to ourselves? Why can’t we just look like what we look like?

Yes, I know – there is an industry out there which survives on our dissatisfaction with our looks. And it has successfully done a real number on our self-images. The me I see in the mirror in the morning is not okay. She must be altered -- or masked, at the very least.

I had a friend in junior high who was attending a church that taught that women shouldn’t wear makeup at all – and backed that up with scripture. I asked my mother about that once. She said that in Paul’s time, the only women who wore makeup were the prostitutes and such who were trying to call inappropriate attention to themselves. These days, she said, you call more attention to yourself by not wearing makeup. Hmm . . .

Perhaps there’s something to that. A bit of foundation is okay if it keeps people from being distracted by the blotches – because unfortunately, we often are. Rightly or wrongly, we’ve been conditioned now to expect a certain look on a woman’s face. And if someone looks “wrong”, we notice . . . and probably make judgments accordingly.

At least, we women think that’s what people do. Are we incorrect? I hope so. But sadly, I suspect not.

The other day, when I was just working at home alone (which I’m doing a lot this summer), I happened to glance in the mirror by my front door. That’s not my usual place to view myself; the lighting was different there, and it seemed to accentuate my flaws. The uneven skin tones . . . the wrinkles in my forehead and around my mouth . . . the age spots beside my eyes . . . sigh.

Whatever. That’s me, and I'm okay with that. I’ll put on the makeup when I go to school so hopefully my kids will pay attention to the love in my eyes and not the blemishes on my skin. But it’s still a shame that it has to be that way.