To hear some incels and incel-adjacent Red Pillers explain it, the gravest human rights issue today is protecting the sacred right of all men: to date women exactly as good-looking as they are, no more no less.
But what if one’s seeming “looksmatch” isn’t really one’s looksmatch at all, but a sneaky uggo who uses artificial means to inflate her Sexual Market Value (SMV) to gain access to men who should be out of her league? What if women could buy magical elixirs that can turn a 2 into a 6 or a 6 into a 9 at every drugstore in the land?
Yes, we’re talking about makeup again, or at least the denizens of the Purple Pill Debate subreddit are. In a recent post, one indignant Reddish-Black Piller called Hoosker-Doos declares that “[w]omen claim they wear makeup ‘for themselves’ but they clearly do it to increase their SMV, which affords them immense privilege and attention they would not otherwise receive.”
As Mr. Doos sees it,
This is quite possibly the most overlooked and unfair advantage women are given a pass on. They are basically allowed to completely disguise their appearance, hiding their true level of attractiveness. I have seen pics of girls without makeup where they were unrecognizable from their main social media or dating profile pics.
Just wait until this guy finds out about Instagram filters.
Even in person I’ve seen girls I thought were cute but after seeing those pics or seeing them without makeup I was shocked at how unremarkable and even homely they were.
How dare these women commit the unforgivable sin of cleaning up nice.
I think we can all agree that despite the endless hoards of desperate men out there, these women would have a significantly different experience if it weren’t socially acceptable to wear a mask.
I think we can all agree that who fucking cares?
This allows them to play a solid 3-4 points above their already overreaching standards, and it’s not even real.
Neither is your 10-point system for rating people.
Can you imagine the outrage if a man were caught lying about any aspect of the laundry list of dating criteria women hold men to, let alone the primary metric of attraction?
You, you actually think that guys don’t lie about shit like this?
The claim that women wear makeup for themselves is quite easily disproven by the above phenomenon alone, women assume massive leverage in the dating world with their ability to dramatically modify their appearance.
What an outrage, having to date women who … know how to use makeup to look their best.
Additionally, if they were truly wearing it “for themselves” they would be wearing it all of the time and not just when they go out.
I ask again: so fucking what?
The only time this oft touted claim is accurate is within the small fringe demographic of cosmetologists and career makeup artists who do it for a career/hobby. This does not represent the majority of women making this claim, and these professional makeup artists are almost always very pronounced and flamboyant in their application, with even the untrained eye of any man being able to clearly tell that is not how anyone’s face looks naturally.
And men can’t discern when women are wearing makeup otherwise? They actually think that women’s eyelids are naturally blue? That women’s eyebrows are perfectly shaped on their own? That women’s lips naturally glisten?
Women (and men) have been painting their faces (and bodies) since prehistoric times. If men haven’t figured this out yet, that’s on them. Any man outraged that his date might be wearing lipstick and mascara is probably someone who shouldn’t be dating at all.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
Men can wear black lipstick just like I do if they want.
Actually, thinking about that, reminds me how on Tumblr once, someone tried to tell me I was doing black face because I was wearing black lipstick.
And I was like… yes I’m sure someone mistook a pale, Irish Dutch woman for an African woman because of black lipstick.
All I got from Hoosker-Doos tirade is that he watched Sailor J/Jahkara Smith’s makeup videos and thought she was serious about the “if men find out we use makeup, reproduction will cease”, and “if the men find out we can shapeshift, they are going to tell The Church.” jokes.
@Mediocrites
RED ALERT! This is neither the time nor the place to reveal our power to men! Take this comment to the Feminist Dark Web!
@Elaine the Witch:
Men can wear black lipstick just like I do if they want.
The men of the Wodaabe of Chad do:
http://static.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/wodaabebeauty.jpg
Reminds me of how I actually believed it when I was told basically all women in the US wear at least “natural” make up, and then was confused when about half of my female coworkers laughed at me and told me otherwise. Some claimed literally nothing, others said they stuck to just eyeliner, lipstick, or whatever.
(In my defense I grew up sheltered and have trouble with eye contact, so not like I was closely examining their faces.)
Errr… hold on. That almost implies women aren’t a monolith hive mind, but some guy on the internet said they were, so I guess I was imagining things?
They’re so ignorant they can’t even get the stereotypes straight! (which seems like a weird thought, but it seems to apply here)
Women wearing make-up, as part of the larger women obsessing over their appearance stereotype, is incredibly common in jokes and media and the assumptions people make everyday. It makes more sense to be surprised at the woman who doesn’t than the woman who does. Do they not think about what their sisters and mothers and classmates and co-workers do when out of sight? Do they only stop to think about women’s behavior when it comes to dating them? Though maybe they aren’t truly shocked but looking for excuses to complain about women, and how they supposedly have it easier.
I had a friend of 3 years who could not understand why I cut him out of my life without further ado when he said that he could easily rape me and I didn’t buy the “relax, it was a joke, don’t be oversensitive” defense to my outrage at his having lied about one of the primary metrics of friendship between men and women, that being: not considering assaulting them. Does that count?
What’s his problem? He is welcome to use make-up if he wants to. No-one is stopping men from doing so. In fact, many male celebrity crushes do so. Just look at Eddie Izzard, David Bowie and many K-Pop artists.
SMV 10, for sure.
Anyway, are the OP and his mates not the kind of persons hitting the gym not for their personal health but just to look good ?
Edit : hmm, don’t know how to display pictures. The old <img src> doesn’t seem to work.
Edit 2 : ok, the other link was not considered as a picture. Weird.
Twenty-one years ago as a first year undergraduate a group of us ‘girls’ sat our guy friends down as a group and explained that no, girls don’t wear makeup for them (men), nor do the dress for men, it’s for themselves and for other girls/women. We also explained periods.
I went to a pretty posh university, as a kid from a comp I was the odd one out in my friend group, most of the others went to single sex private or grammar schools, so I thought it might have just been that the boys hadn’t heard about this stuff/had little exposure to girls, but apparently not. Some of them had girlfriends and sisters too, it baffled me then and still does that men don’t understand that it’s not always about them!
I also used to be part of a band fandom, not now because it’s not my thing anymore, but I met lots of people on Facebook into the same bands. We were having a conversation about make up one day and I said I couldn’t wear makeup because it made my skin itch. Some people made suggestions for sensitive products, until I said I’d tried and the itching wasn’t from the ingredients but was a hypersensitivity to anything on my skin (including sweat, mud, and dust, I feel everything and it hurts – this was before I found out I was Autistic). One person said they never leave the house without makeup because they needed it to feel good and they felt sorry for me not being able to wear it. I told her I was sorry she didn’t feel confident without a mask of make up on and she needed to work on her vanity and insecurity. I wasn’t a nice person back then, unmedicated depression and anxiety made me unpleasantly blunt and occasionally cruel, but it’s no excuse. That person was wearing makeup to hide her ‘true looks’, as she saw them, not to pick up men.
My nephew wore make up for his mum’s 30th birthday party, he was 7 and dressed up as Adam Ant. Don’t know whether he’d do the same now as a 17 year old though. He’s started to feel the social pressure of what ‘men are supposed to be’ despite being an Autistic shut in like his Auntcle (that’s the word his sibling uses to describe me, their mum’s non-binary sibling).
People wear paint for all sorts of reasons, and many people don’t wear it at all. Anyone can and should be able to wear makeup if they want to, whether for fun, to help with self-esteem or to pick up dates, whatever reason or no reason. Or, not wear makeup if they don’t want to, it shouldn’t be compulsory either way.
How do these apparently grown men not understand that people are complex, multifaceted individuals who do things for many different reasons?
Has anyone already posted any of Megan Nicole’s comics satirizing this idea?
In online dating profiles, men lie about height, body type, occupation, income, hobbies, relationship status, and what they’re looking for. So no, we don’t have to imagine anything.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been catcalled/hit on while wearing no makeup and sweatpants. Bonus points if you were under the age of 15.
Maybe if these guys didn’t treat women like commodities, they wouldn’t be so angry and feel so hoodwinked. I’m surprised they haven’t tried to get the FDA to inspect and grade women, and investigate consumer dating complaints.
@Daughter
Eddie Izzard now uses female pronouns.
@North Sea Sparkly Dragon
I love auntcle.
I too have sat men down to explain about make up – that on one memorable occasion included a demonstration of making one eye look bigger and the other smaller on one of the men, but even more – as I don’t do make up either – about periods. I did the period talk to my kid brother when we were in our teens and I had awful periods, he has thanked me more than once because of the relief the women around express when he doesn’t do any of the normal stupid things men do when period stuff comes up. Thanked me for just giving him the basic information about female biology! But he went to a direct grant all boys school so didn’t even learn about his own biology.
Over the years I’ve encountered plenty of blokes wearing make-up, usually Goths or similar, but starting with the New Romatics and punks way back in the 70s then New Romatics in the 80’s. I’m glad that it is safer for blokes to wear make-up than it used to be.
Never mind that some workplaces pretty much require women to wear makeup to look ‘professional’. That’d be the one instance where it possibly is for men that women wear makeup (assuming it is probably men in charge of that workplace). And even then, it is to ‘not get fired’ not to ‘get male attention’.
Ugh. You know, quite often in film I see really cool facepaint that probably wouldn’t be deemed appropriate makeup. Hmm.
God, I hate men like this, throwing a pity party for themselves. You can wear make-up too, buddy! Even the playing field. All you have to do is face the same social resistance and ridicule that women face when we don’t wear make-up (or don’t shave, or dress for comfort, or cut our hair short or yada, yada, yada, you know the score.)
The obvious solution for this thorny problem is make-up for men. Now everyone can change they way they look (or not).
I’m terrible at make-up and generally don’t do it. If I’m going out of the house, I’ll fill in my fading eyebrows just using brown eye shadow because it’s easy and makes the biggest difference. Sometimes I do a pretty good job.
Loads of men seem to think those “transformation” make-up looks which go viral actually transform you, when really it’s an illusion that usually looks best in photos. It’s like drag queen make-up – the artistry is amazing but up close you can think “yep, this person is wearing a lot of make-up” not “oh this person is actually the spitting image of Cher”.
Sigh. I haven’t worn makeup for about 20 years. But when I first started working as a software developer, I wore it every day. That’s because I was young, and without makeup (and very good suits) I looked barely 16.
I wanted to be treated as my expertise deserved, not as a cute kid.
I wore makeup to work when I lived in a very southern city – specifically, Charleston, SC. In my case, it was mostly about protective coloration. All the other women in my department wore cosmetics to work, so I did, too. Mind you, it was the “swipe and wipe” variety – a bit of foundation, a bit of lipstick, a bit of powder. On the weekends I gave it a miss.
When I married Mr. Parasol, he confessed that he didn’t like makeup on women (that he was likely to be intimate with) because he could taste it (he’s sensitive enough that if we’re in a restaurant and somebody opens a packet of artificial sweetener within 6 feet or so, he makes a face) and he found the taste to be yucky. No problem. I stopped wearing it, especially after I started working from home and was free from any peer pressure. I wore makeup for a recent job interview, but that was about looking the part more than anything else, and I was happy to clean my face afterwards.
Seems like a good place to drop this: https://twitter.com/avishaiw/status/1506445920359047180
My wife is an amazing artist, and that includes with makeup. Sometimes she wears something conventional and rocks it. Sometimes she wears nothing and rocks it. Sometimes she wants to get creative or experimental. I think I am missing why I should be offended about this.
I’d like some of this magic makeup that makes me instantly more attractive. No matter what or how much I wear, I still look basically like me. Ain’t no makeup or makeup professional ever invented that can make my nose smaller, eyes bigger, or a better jawline. Nowadays lipstick is my only concession. My mother never went out without “putting her face on”, but I went to her funeral with only lipstick and a hint of blush. (And a basic black dress and pearls, because she did raise me right.)
Men can wear makeup too — it’s even encouraged in some cultures. Those K-pop boys you’re having conniptions about, miggies? They wear makeup and even advertise it.
@Elaine: The mind boggles. Did this person ever notice that Black women don’t have solid black lips, and also aren’t European pale?
@Buttercup: <raises hand>
@kupo: Delightful!
Full Metal Ox: fitting that it’s the Chads who would be breaking the incels’ delicate conception of the world.
Victorious Parasol: I’ve never been a fan of bling, makeup included, because I think humans are beautiful in the rough already. But, same as your partner, especially the stuff that gets on my lips if I kiss her! My poor ex would try to impress me with lip gloss and I’d recoil when we kissed 😉
@numerobis:
…fitting that it’s the Chads who would be breaking the incels’ delicate conception of the world.
Worse yet: those Wodaabe beaux technically qualify as Chad Tyrones.