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By David Futrelle
One thing almost all online misogynists can agree about is that makeup is a lie — a way for women to hide their true ugliness and capture the attention of men who are objectively better-looking than them on that ten-point scale that these dudes are so obsessed with.
Some misogynists are so jealous and angry about these women supposedly dating above their station, looks wise, that they want makeup banned forever.
It’s easy to see how the allegedly involuntary celibate men who call themselves incels would get worked up about this: they;re convinced their own ugliness has rendered them permanently dateless, while women who are just as ugly as them can (supposedly) slap on a little lipstick and mascara and score themselves some Chad.
It’s a little more puzzling to see men who consider themselves Red Pill pickup artists extraordinaire, who spend much of their time trying to trick women into seeing them as hotshot alpha males, would complain about women “lying” with makeup, but they do.
You can see the full absurdity of this in a post on the Red Pill subreddit asking the question “Has make up made it harder for the average guy to get laid?”
Naturally, the OP, a guy calling himself masamune36, thinks this is so.
“You take two average looking people a guy and a girl,” he begins.
lets say on the looks scale they are both 5/10’s, put make up on the girl and that girl can EASILY become a 8/10, in fact I’m sure many of you have seen even more dramatic transformations where a girl who is way below average becomes quite stunning if she knows how to work that shit they lather all over their face’s right.
So an ordinary gal makes herself look more attractive. Isn’t this what everyone does? What’s the problem here?
As masamune36 sees it, there are two. First, it makes these girls think they’re actually kind of cute.
The girls that do this pretty much have this stuff on their face 24/7 every picture they post to social media will be this ‘masked’ version of themselves, even just going to the shops to buy some milk … I think many of these chicks actually start deluding themselves into thinking that is their true self and they are naturally beautiful and thus believe they deserve a man of similar looks and that 5/10 guy that was her equal is no longer good enough for her.
It’s amazing how often supposed Red Pill studmuffins sound exactly like incels.
Problem two?
The 5/10 man now looks at these women and starts doubting if hes good enough physically…he will probably approach with way less confidence… seriously take all that shit off her face and watch how different the interaction would go.
Meanwhile, there’s apparently nothing these guys can do to make themselves look better.
There is pretty much no way for a man to dramatically change his looks like this, at least not facially, i mean sure you can workout get a tan style your hair etc but that will only change you so much… the makeup these bitches apply is almost like they are walking around permanently photoshopped…
Let’s get the United Nations Human Rights Council to look in on this terrible injustice!
One Red Pill commenter tries to do the makeup math.
Basically guys who are 7s are on the hunt for virtual 6s but they’re actually 5s. A 6 who does not compete with all the fake stuff is then in there in the mix with the 5s who are jacked up. And a 5 who does not choose to jack herself up can’t compete for the 7.
When you get to an 8 guy who might be able to get an 8 girl, she can get to 9 or close to 10 with everything going right: clothes, makeup, hair, photoshop, instagram.
If that’s all a little confusing for you, this might help:
The commenter then moves from makeup math to makeup economics:
Anything marketed with lies and falsehood is basically going to appeal to a wider range of customers. This means more interest for the product, and so a higher price.
In case you’re wondering, all of this will be on the exam.
This song seems oddly appropriate here:
Note to editor: Sentence is properly “….objectively better looking than THEY.”
Why was the 6 afraid of the 7 (who was actually only a 5?)?
Because seven eight nine!
Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.
<3 Sheila, that's horrid! I hope some over the counter painkillers can fill the gap for you. No fun at all.
My makeup's all vantablack. I’m not a 6 or a 7 or an 8 or whatever, I’m goddamn complex aleph null
Math that ya PUA bastards.
see, @heebee, we’d be prone to believe you when you say that “ugly dudes can’t date” if you ever said anything else. Practically every post you’ve ever written has included it.
You’ve said that you’ve moved on from the desire of dating, that you’ve found peace, but you very obviously haven’t. If you had come to terms with that part of your life, you wouldn’t talk about it all the goddamn time. You’d have other things to talk about.
But you don’t, ’cause you haven’t. Resentment clings to you like a wet rag, the same resentment that fuels the incels.
Seriously, please. Cut it out. If you’re sincere, stop bringing it up and talk about other things in your life.
On the other hand, growing a beard can sometimes create the illusion that your face is a different and possibly more appealing shape. I actually appeared to have cheekbones after I grew one, which certainly wasn’t the case before.
If only that was an option available to men.
Now, now, friends, maybe heebee has a point. Maybe the problem isn’t that this supposed objective 10-point hotness scale is a pile of crap. Maybe the real problem is that the 10-point hotness scale is a law of the universe, but the men criticizing women are too low on that very same scale to be doing the criticizing. Let only hotter men talk about the duplicitous nature of women and their filled-in eyebrows, I say. Only 9s may take me to task for my bronze lids.
But Visc
you said only hotter mans could take you to task for your devious, duplicitous eyeliner! A 9-grade man just wouldn’t cut it!
Oh you! Silly.
Okay yes I don’t know how transparent images work obviously
What is needed is kindness on all sides. Both men and women vary in attractiveness. If one is a one or a two this does not make them worthless. I would not like to push an incel over the brink to suicide. It is the sort of thing that haunts a person.
Scildfreja:
vantablackface – the most efficiently racist costume accessory?
@WWTH Thankyou. Those are some lovely, consoling kittens.
@Scildfreja Thank you. Paracetamol took the edge off it a bit.
I think the worst is over and I’ll be able to sleep tonight
I brought this up in a sort of incel-adjacent discussion once; I recall that the reaction was oddly mixed. Some rejected it outright (usually alongside epithets like cuck, soyboy, etc.), but a few others seemed vaguely interested in the idea.
I am sympathetic to the difficulties here, though – because as is so often the case when it comes to personal expression, women have a lot more leeway than men. Really subtle application of makeup is hard to do well, so for a straight guy to do it in a way that would make him more conventionally attractive, he’d have to be pretty good at it – probably better than most women.
Instead of writing that text wall, he could’ve just said “I want women to be uglier because I can’t handle the fact there are men who are better than me”. lol
@Lumipuna: except vantablack turns everything it’s on into a seemingly 2D surface, so one basically wouldn’t have a face.
Except we don’t. We’re penalized for doing it wrong, constantly. And all of the ways are wrong. Too much? Self-centered and/or slutty. Too little? Not trying hard enough. Too natural? Lying liars. Too unnatural? Unprofessional.
Yeah, no.
Aaron: “Really subtle application of makeup” is already a thing. It’s a thing that lots of women do. It’s so much a thing that there are hundreds of thousands of stories of women who get told “you look better without makeup” by clueless dudes (and that’s just the women who bothered to write it down).
You see, the whole “lots of women do ____, so it must be easy” reasoning doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Don’t wear it all? Then we’re not even trying and how can we possibly be expected to land a job and/or a man if we don’t even care enough about ourselves to have a makeup regimen?
Aaron, maybe you could not tell us all about your sympathy for incels?
@Jane Doe – I should have been clearer: of course it’s a thing. It’s also a difficult thing, with a high failure rate and a learning curve. And this is important, because the social consequences for a man “caught” wearing makeup can be very substantial; this is generally not the case for women.
(This is not to say that women cannot be judged at all for their cosmetic/sartorial choices – obviously they can be, and are – indeed often more harshly than men. But certain Red Pill mathematicians aside, it is socially acceptable for women to wear makeup.)
But it’s not socially acceptable for women not to wear makeup. And, as I mentioned above, there is no “right” way for women to wear makeup. It’s all wrong, no matter what we do. We don’t have the freedom of expression that you implied. It’s like pieces of flair. We’re required to “express” ourselves through our style, but we also have to intuit what’s the proper amount and enthusiasm level for doing so, and if we try to ask what we’re doing wrong we’re told to just put more effort into it, like that’s helpful.
I think the correct answer to the question “does men or women get penalized more for expressing themselves ?” is “we don’t care”.
As in, going in circle to see who is more oppressed by the patriarchy don’t strike me as productive. Especially when it come down to compare subjective, context-dependant consequences like wearing make up in an inappropriate manner. It’s like trying to compare if in a factory, being scalded by steam is more or less painful than being hit by a piston ; the problem is workspace safety, and the way to improve it will be the same regardless of what is more painful.
Now, I do empathize with how thoses guys have bucked under societal pressures. I still remember that their answers to that pressures have becoming an assholes and try to force the social norme even more than usual.
If you can’t tell I’m wearing make up maybe stop getting your ideas of what women “naturally” look like from porn. If you can’t tell my lips are not naturally bright red, my eyelids aren’t naturally shiny & skin doesn’t naturally have a sparkly highlight on the cheeks maybe you’re too dumb to date.
@Kupo – Fair enough. I don’t intend to set this up as some kind of competition. I was just trying to explain why some men might be reluctant to use makeup to enhance their appearance, even if the idea appeals to them.
@Jane Done
With illustrations, too.
https://m.imgur.com/gallery/fm5Ok
@Aaron
It is assumed that there will be serious consequences. That’s not quite the same thing.