Monday, February 23, 1998
Makeup, style should express individuals, not social taboos
COLUMN Aucoin uses ‘Making Faces’ to show that originality is
key
Soon you will be studying my mug shot very closely. You will
think, "Did it work?" "Can I trust her advice?" "What color
lipstick is she wearing?" (darn black and white newspaper).
Because I’m about to do something that would horrify every
little riot grrl faction in my being. I’m going to write about
makeup.
And my inner riot grrl will just have to deal with it because
I’m about to make the case that she’s not necessarily in conflict
with my inner cheerleader, my inner artist and my very outward
English major.
The catalyst for all this is Kevyn Aucoin’s "Making Faces." If
you’re even slightly more up on the world of fashion than I am
(which means you’ve changed your hairstyle since the eighth grade),
then you know he’s that guy who was on "House of Style" a bunch of
times and is famous for making celebrities look like other
celebrities.
But I only heard of him as of last week, when my grandma
presented a copy of the book to my sister, my mom and me. "So this
is female bonding?" I thought when she initially gushed about
Aucoin’s skills with a mascara wand. "How disturbing."
I should have trusted her though. This is the same woman who
traveled out of state to trick-or-treat (she chose trick) at her
ex-husband’s house and can make cream cheese into 15 different
dips. The book is cool. Kevyn Aucoin is endearingly, glamorously
cool. And makeup might not be the social parasite I once thought it
was.
Conventional wisdom – which for me is a rather unconventional
series of deconstructionist, upper-division English classes – says
that if I want to open my own doors and drive a stick shift and be
taken seriously, I have to think of makeup as a fascist tool of
oppression. I’m not completely convinced that it’s not. Our culture
basically says, "Nice face. Now cover it up." This attitude points
to dishonesty about the self, "lookism" and a tendency to
exoticize. These are all words bandied about passionately among my
revolutionary classmates.
Last quarter I took an honors collegium class called
"Masculinity, Patriarchy and Sexuality" with the very eloquent,
very nurturing Professor Dee Bridgewater. We talked about all those
nifty buzz words, and when the topic of fashion came up, I dredged
up some History 1C info and pointed out that before the
Enlightenment, both men and women dressed extravagantly (think
Robert Downey Jr. in "Restoration"). But the age of reason ushered
in fashions based on, you guessed it, reason. Suddenly ruffled
collars just didn’t make sense for forward-thinking individuals
(read: men).
Women squeezed themselves into corsets and ruffles until the
’20s. Why do you think that Lucy in "A Tale of Two Cities" (hands
down one of the most annoying characters in all of literature)
fainted on every other page? Fashion echoes socio-economic status,
and it’s hard to run for Congress when you’re gasping for
breath.
But modernism means no frills, function dictates form and, you’d
think, the end of makeup. But before Estee Lauder can go completely
broke, in steps post-modernism. You know, postmodernism. That all
encompassing, multi-cultural, progressive, Bohemian, 25-cent
word.
To me, it means that men are going to start wearing makeup.
There. If it happens, I called it. Dennis Rodman, who sported
(no pun intended) some very flashy blue eyeshadow at last year’s
Academy Awards may still be something of an anomaly, but the fact
that he’s a popular member of a true manly man’s profession says
something big.
This and Aucoin’s book are something of a go-ahead for me, a
girl who would be happy to buy a new lipstick every week, even if
it meant going without, say, groceries. I opened the book expecting
to find a dull, rigid series of guidelines about how to blend
foundation and a small European country’s worth of skinny white
models with a paragraph about how "ethnic is in" next to a picture
of a heavily-powdered woman who was maybe one-fourth black.
But Aucoin’s first sentence promises, "First of all, let me say
that I believe there are no rules." And he follows through. He
rambles hilariously about his early experiences with makeup (eating
his mother’s lipstick), and many of the models he uses are not
models at all. They are young, old, fat, thin, black, white, Asian,
Indian, Latino, his sisters, his mom, his friends, women and, yes,
men.
All this intrigued me. As a person who’s contemplated using lip
gloss on her eyelids and has used eyeliner on her lips, I find
rules rather condescending in general. Plus my nose is more Barbra
Streisand than Kate Moss, and I think it’s cool when guys wear nail
polish (but keep the nails short boys, long is just creepy).
And maybe the fact that Aucoin announced his homosexuality on
page one somehow made me question his motives less. I’m not sure if
that makes sense, but if he were a heterosexual man, a little part
of me would think, "He’s just trying to get women to conform to his
own personal fantasies." And if he were a woman, while I’d be
slightly less suspicious, I’d be tempted to think, "Internalized
oppression alert!"
But Aucoin had no personal stake, just the pure art of it. (This
is very Kantian, take my word for it. Or take English 140A).
Makeup, according to Aucoin, the ’90s and yours truly, isn’t
erasing who you are or even enhancing in the traditional sense.
It’s having fun with your face in a way that requires much less
commitment than piercing or tattooing.
This is not a smart-women-can-be-feminine-too argument, though I
don’t deny that. Fashion as a mode of personal expression has been
a human phenomenon ever since Org, or Orga the Cro-Magnon person,
decided it was getting a little too chilly to run around the cave
naked.
So of all the "Jenny Jones" episodes I’ve watched (remember my
first column of the quarter? No? I’ll fill you in by saying that,
in addition to being fashion-backward, I watch a lot of stupid TV)
the ones that bug me most are the makeover episodes.
Jenny, I know you’re trying to help, but you are The Man in
talk-show-host’s clothing. On "You Wear Too Much Makeup" or
whatever they called it, the guests boasted everything from
triple-decker pink, purple and green eyeshadow, to ’80s-chic
magenta lipstick, to various Goth symbols stenciled on their cheeks
with black eyeliner.
So Team Jenny took the guests backstage, broke for a commercial,
and sent them back out in floral print dresses, Courtney Cox
haircuts and brown eyeshadow and soft rose lipstick. They looked
… nice, I guess.
I watched the show knowing that my lipstick is really too dark,
and if I weren’t so lazy, I’d tweeze my eyebrows. (You’re looking
at my mug again. Hah! That was taken in the summer, nearly two
lipsticks ago. It’s only my hair that hasn’t changed since junior
high).
But I didn’t care then and, thank you, Kevyn Aucoin, I care even
less now. Because creativity is a much greater asset in the long
run than conformity, however "pretty." And if you mix Garden
Botanika’s Pecan lipstick with a $1, brown eyeliner from some
random beauty supply store in Westwood, you get a very creative
shade.
Klein is a third-year American literature and culture student.
She is happy because she recently found out that while Mac lipstick
is outrageously expensive, they don’t test on animals. It’s all
about rationalizing.