#makeup discourse

When a man tells a woman something like, "you shouldn't wear so much makeup, sweetheart, you'd be prettier without it," even radfems understand that these remarks are misogynistic. Somehow when it's women who are shaming other women for wearing makeup or having plastic surgery, though, it's actually feminist praxis! /s

I wish people understood that 1. It's not okay to shame women for the decisions they make because of the patriarchy and 2. Women being interested in changing their appearances is not necessarily due to misogyny. Even if we lived in a non-patriarchal society, there would always be people of all genders who'd be interested in altering their appearances.

for me its like.... imagine if other artistic hobbies were treated the same way. women expected to pay big money on paints and brushes and being judged for not being good at it. and then when they say oh I dont want to paint actually, people are like oh thats ok! You can just do a bit of watercolor :)

this one night we were really quiet so once again i asked if i could have a quick rundown of how drive through worked so i could help when we were busy. the manager (who was a woman) called me into the office for a chat and i assumed she was going to take me through drive thru protocals so i followed. once in there, she closed the door and told me that the managers had all talked over the idea of me doing drive thru and agreed i’d be trained IF i started wearing make up to work. 

i laughed, thinking it was a joke because it sounded ludicrous to me as someone who worked both back area (making food) and front area (serving/cleaning) during shifts to do that because a) it was potentially unhygienic and b) any make up i did wear would innevitably be ruined from sweating, etc. plus, i wasn’t really someone who wore make up anyway but i always kept my skin clean, etc so i didn’t see the issue. 

i asked her why and if she was being serious and she told me straight up that while it wasn’t a written rule it was expected for girls on front area and drive thru to wear make up and i wouldn’t be trained on drive thru without it (btw, this was the only area i wasn’t trained in meaning it was the only thing standing between me and a higher rate of pay/ eligibility to be promoted to a crew trainer). i asked her again if she was serious, if she was telling me that no one would train me on drive thru because i didn’t wear make up because i wasn’t presentably pretty enough to work a drive thru at night and she nodded, apoligising. 

after i quit a few years later, i found out from a friend who used to manage various mcdonalds that often when female crew are reccomended to join overnight crew, it’s because they aren’t deemed presentable enough for the day crew, when the majority of customers are recieved. again, i was 20 and this was mcdonalds. 

But more than that, what about afab people trying to look good for others afab people? Whether in a solidarity way or in a romantic way.

What about afab people who put on makeup because it's fun or they feel good and nobody else will ever even see it?

But even more than all that, so much makeup that we see (especially in modern times) is NOT appealing to men. At all.