Home » Dorms » Women's Hall

The Makeup Mask

Million-Dollar Makeover

Once upon a time, at the urging and through the generosity of my mother, I had a makeover. I sat at one of those makeup counters in the center of a large department store. My mother was, as ever, after me to "maximize my beauty potential" (her phrase). And so we trundled up to the makeup counter, where I spent more than two hours being powdered, doused, waxed, painted, curled, pressed, brushed, misted and lacquered.

I looked (if I do say so myself) like a million bucks at the end — which was a good thing, because the price tag was nearly that much. Oh, the makeover was free; the makeup that made me so beautiful, however, was not: I paid through the nose for foundation, eye shadow, lip liner, eyeliner, the works.

Much of it, five years later, is still sitting in my bathroom cabinet. I think I've worn the eye shadow half a dozen times. Most days, if I wear any makeup at all, it's just a little dab of lipstick. I like the look of mascara but have this phobia of poking my eye out with the wand.

I've never been much into makeup, principally because I'm lazy. I can't imagine spending 20 minutes in front of the mirror every morning; I'd rather get 20 extra minutes of sleep. Also, I've never gotten very good at the art of applying makeup — on the rare occasions that I try eyeliner, I come out looking like a raccoon.

But an avoidance of makeup that was born out of laziness and incompetence has evolved into a principled stand, or at least a set of questions and concerns about makeup. Obviously, there is nothing in the Bible about eye shadow, and one can clearly wear makeup 24-7 and have a great relationship with God. (Esther, after all, spent a year primping before she finally went to meet King Ahasuerus.)

But we now live in a cosmetic culture, a culture that posits unattainable standards of beauty and tells women they will be judged by their ability to keep up. And I think that, as Christians, we can rightly worry about the stories that makeup tells us about ourselves. What kind of women does the cosmetic industry invite us to be?

Mascara and Mortality

For starters, when we slather on the makeup every morning, we are enshrining a notion of beauty that privileges youth. If you're in college, of course, this is not really a concern. Nor is it a great worry for me, in my 20s. But I well remember something a close friend in her 50s once said to me: Women reach an age at which we become invisible. After all those years of attracting attention and deference because of our youthful beauty, after all those years during which men held doors for us and waiters smiled and flirted with us, suddenly the hair turns gray, the skin (and the breasts) sag a bit, and we become invisible.

Makeup's ultimate goal is to keep the march of time at bay. Every year, companies market new "age defying" creams that promise to erase the stretches, wrinkles and lines from women's faces. The problem is not only that 40-year-old women are told to try to look like they're 25 — the problem is that makeup tries to deny mortality.

American culture is very good at this. We mask mortality every chance we get. But when we deny mortality, we are denying one of the basic pieces of the Christian story: sin. Middle-aged women rush to cover up signs of age with makeup because they know, on some deep level, that death is not right, that death is not the way things are supposed to be. But all the makeup in the world can't forestall death — it can only cover it up. As Christians we have a better story: We, too, hate death, but we can name death as the fruit of sin, and we can proclaim that it is Jesus, not Clinique, that will ultimately save us from death's clutches.

The cosmetic industry even uses religious language to tap into people's deepest desires. Consider this ad for Collagen Extract Skin Nourishment: When explaining how to apply the lotions and creams, the white-clad skin guru urges her audience to "Concentrate. Really feel it. Follow the steps religiously." Women who embraced the products testify: "I wasn't a believer at first … but look at me now." Another woman says that the skin nourishment regime has "changed my life."¹

If I hadn't told you these ladies were talking about moisturizer, it wouldn't be far-fetched to believe that the life-changing, transforming power to which they had been converted was the Gospel.

Changing Standards

Wanting to look beautiful is not bad, of course. God's creation is beautiful, and appreciating beauty is a very Christian thing to do. In fact, I believe the Church does not appreciate beauty enough.

But how do we define beauty? How do we decide that one person is beautiful and another person is not?

Ideas about women's beauty have changed over time. Take ideas about women's weight, for instance. Look at a few paintings produced during the Renaissance, and you will quickly realize that 16^th-century Europeans thought that voluptuous, round, curvy, fleshy women were beautiful — women who, by today's Western standards, would be fat. Flipping through American magazines over the course of the twentieth century will make the same point: In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe was the icon of beauty, but 15 years later, she was replaced by Twiggy — a thinner, more petite model. According to today's standards, Marilyn would be considered "plus-size."

Furthermore, when we enshrine certain cosmetic practices, we create new, hard-to-attain standards of beauty. In her book Sexuality and Holy Longing, Christian sociologist Lisa Graham McMinn writes about the recent trend of teeth whitening. McMinn notes that this expensive practice is slowly but surely changing our standards of what pretty teeth look like. "Teeth whitening … [has] made us aware of a deficiency that did not exist a few years ago," writes McMinn. "Those who can afford to have their teeth whitened will purchase beauty, and the rest of us will "grow increasingly uncomfortable with … teeth that only five years ago might have been considered beautiful."²

Costly Coverage

I worry that makeup may exact too high a price. And I don't just mean the money we spend — although cosmetics is an industry, and the CEOs Maybelline and L'OrèaL are more concerned with making a buck than they are with beautifying God's creation. The U.N. Development Program estimates that Americans spend $8 billion a year on cosmetics.³ $8 billion! Think about how much breast cancer research we could fund with that, or how many battered women's shelters we could support, or how many kindergartens we could bankroll, or how many churches we could plant.

I worry about the class privilege inherent in our beauty regimes. Yes, most of us can afford a tube of lipstick. But manicures, highlights in our hair, designer makeup, facials — all these add up to a standard of beauty that only middle-class and wealthy people can attain.

Unmasking Ourselves

I also worry about makeup because of what it tells us about ourselves. After I stumbled over that $8 billion figure, I jokingly (well, semi-jokingly) suggested to one of my officemates that she give up wearing makeup for Lent, and then donate the money she saved to her church missions fund. She was horrified by the prospect. "I could never go out in public without makeup!" she said. "I would feel so exposed."

Again, there's nothing wrong with wanting to look pretty. I definitely carry myself with more confidence when I feel good about my appearance. But my friend's idiom made me want to weep: She would feel exposed if she sallied forth into the world without makeup.

I'm not asking you to foreswear makeup forever (though I wouldn't object if you did). But maybe the next time you're pulling out the tubes and compacts, you might pause and reconsider the message behind the makeup.

I worry about makeup because makeup is a mask. When we put on foundation and blush and mascara, we are literally plastering our faces with a mask. It seems to me that part of the Christian story, part of the process of becoming new creatures, is that we learn not only to judge other people by more than appearances; the Christian story also transforms us into people who are able to take off our own masks, who are able to reveal our true, new-creature selves, vulnerable before the world.