Most manosphere misogynists have a love-hate relationship with cosmetics for women — they love to hate them. As far as the typical MGTOW or Men’s Rights Redditor is concerned, makeup is a devious and deceptive tool women use to look prettier than they really are. Using makeup is akin to fraud, and probably should be outlawed or something.
But it turns out that not all of these dudes think so negatively of makeup. Instead, some Red Pill dissidents see wearing makeup as something like a duty for otherwise ugly women — because their only job in the world is to look pretty for men, and makeup makes them look hot or at least passable.
In a recent thread in the PurplePillDebate subreddit devoted to the proposition that “Girls not wearing make-up should be normalised, a commenter called Jax_Gatsby lamented that the beauty industry
literally profits off women’s insecurities. Some women can’t even leave the house without it on, and the thing is it doesn’t actually do women any real favours. Sure it makes you look better, but everyone knows (you included) that that isn’t the real you. Its a mask.
But several commenters weren’t having it. As far as they were concerned, women wearing makeup are actually doing themselves and men in general a favor. Because looking good is the only thing they — or at least some of them — are actually good at.
Another commenter offered a more detailed argument for makeup, and basically against women.
These weren’t exactly popular opinions to the makeup-skeptical crowd; last I checked, TheLaziestPeon’s comment won him all of zero upvotes; Shreddit’s got a negative five.
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And in an odd twist, I find myself feeling somewhat sorry for the cosmetics and beauty industry.
Only somewhat, because although they can’t win for losing with these guys, at least they weren’t trying to sell to them in the first place…
The pay for this work is abysmal.
I hate how the men who wrote this bullshit because got it backwards. The only job men have in the world is to look good for me, do what I say and worship me. If they are inadequate or unable to do even the first part, which most are, I have no use for them and they should go away and leave me alone.
History shows that lots of men have worn makeup to improve their appearance.
(I know many of us know that already, but if bonkeyheads keep spewing their silly opinions, I’ll keep bringing up facts.)
If women are made to look good, then how come so many of us don’t according to these guys’ standards? Hardly natural is it if only 5% of women at any one time can fit into that box.
I mean as a 32-year-old (jesus, I started reading this blog back in my uni days. How time has flown!) I’m already too old and ugly for the manosphere. I demand to know why I haven’t been crafted as a perfect, eternal beauty if that’s what I’m MADE for.
I wear makeup when I want. That’s it. Those assholes can deal with it.
My boss and sweet friend cued me into this blog. The owner sure does lots of work mocking this shit.
I think one commenter compared the comments pages to an Enlightenment France era salon. I’ll geek to that.
@LollyPop: That Catch-22 is the whole point, isn’t it? The basic strategy for controlling women in a patriarchal society is to assign them particular gendered behaviors which you then mock and despise them for complying with. Or judge and shun them for NOT complying with. Either way, women lose, which is the goal of the system.
So, women are told that their job is to be beautiful and attractive to men. But when women work on maximizing their beauty and attractiveness, they’re disdained for being “vain” and “shallow” and “frivolous”. But if they DON’T present as beautiful and attractive, they get called “ugly” and “worthless”.
The whole purpose of the sexist-gender-norms game is to be rigged against women so they can’t win no matter how they play.
@Kimstu
And there are just SO MANY of these “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” standards.
Like Boomers telling younger generations struggling with student loans “If you didn’t want all that education debt, you should have gone to college” while telling those without a college education “If you wanted a decent job, you should have gone to college.”
Or telling protestors “If you want people to listen to you and not get arrested, you have to be peaceful like MLK.” They DO remember what happened to MLK, don’t they? Of course they do.
@Kimstu
That’s brilliantly said. I hope you comment more here.
And
“Put in some effort. Go for what you want. Don’t be a wallflower. Stand out from the crowd.”
Then:
“What a slut! Act like a lady! You’re weird and crazy!”
I just started a new job and did not see that in the list of responsibilities…
The cosmetics industry, like the arms industry and the advertising industry, sells to both sides of a red queen’s race. Somebody buys to get ahead of the competition; the competition all buy to catch back up; everyone is back in the same relative places except their pocketbooks are lighter; and the industry in question laughs all the way to the bank.
Such industries should be as regulated as natural monopolies (i.e., most likely nationalized).
Meanwhile, I am once again getting bombarded with emails begging for money from (among others) the NDP. An excerpt:
Sorry, I don’t have $63,000. And even if I did, if I donated it could you guarantee you’d win the next election? If so, then it’s possible to buy a desired election outcome here, which is really bad. If not, then this amounts to gambling, and I’m not very comfortable with gambling even $63, let alone $63,000. Furthermore, past a certain point (the minimum sufficient to run a basic campaign nationwide) additional campaign fundraising is also a red queen’s race.
I think we need to totally rethink how these things are financed, and likely that means some state subsidized system. How about an extension of one-person-one-vote? Everyone also gets some fixed number of charitable-cause tokens a year, which they can distribute as they see fit among registered political parties, political action groups, and other accredited charitable organizations. At rollover time, accredited organizations (the same set currently classified as charitable for tax purposes) can redeem received tokens for (untaxable) money from the government, unused tokens become void, and a new set are issued to every citizen of voting age. The money comes from a fixed pool of public funds, distributed proportionately to how tokens had gotten distributed; the size of the pool would be set by statute in constant dollars (so, auto-growing with inflation if not explicitly rejiggered by an act of parliament/congress/whatever).
A similar method could fund the production of arts, without the need to use artificial scarcity (either in the form of copyright, or in the form of restrictions on “foreign” content such as Canada’s notorious “Canadian content” regulations for broadcast media) and still letting the audience, rather than some narrow set of gatekeeping bureaucrats, determine the winners.
As if.
Look, putting aside science and technology and all sorts of practical things that have benefited his life in direct and indirect ways, what about entertainment/arts involving women? Can he be sure that all the shows he likes were exclusively written by men, had men doing the set design, camera work, editing, etc., and had men in all acting parts that didn’t just involve looking pretty??
@TyrantBitchGoddessStacey:
And
“Put in some effort. Go for what you want. Don’t be a wallflower. Stand out from the crowd.”
Then:
“What a slut! Act like a lady! You’re weird and crazy!”
And:
”Be authentic! Be honest! Be yourself!”
Then:
”No, no, NO! Not like that!”
And that’s before we get into the whole issue of how some people’s genetic hair texture and skin tone is unprofessional.
@epitome: More broadly, who fucking cares? Let’s say that women’s achievements are worthless to men. What if men’s achievements are worthless (in fact, often downright deleterious to) women? The statement just assumes that men are the only arbiter of value.
Of course, every man alive owes everything to at least one woman (or trans man), all accomplishments. I’ll give Stefan Molyneux something: His unfalsifiable, reality-denying, delusional anti-mother misogyny that obviates all male personal responsibility in contradiction to his other beliefs is at least an argument in favor of misogyny. Without it, women (and trans men who give birth of course) get to dangle at least one thing over men, always.
@Full Metal Ox
Exactly. Fucking with those patriarchal conformist assholes is one reason I love love LOVE being both as conventionally attractive a cis woman as I can possibly be while at the same time being as defiantly unconventional to the point of unreasonable in sexual relationships with cishet men.
My authenticity is in my anger, my whip, looking as awesome as I possibly can and my revulsion of men who don’t meet my “un-wheee-uh-LIZZZ-tik” standards.
I know. Assholes.
I still am conflicted about the work I did in and for the beauty industry.
But I did and do like seeing women realize how hot they actually are.
@ stacey
We’re just discussing magic tricks in the other thread. Something’s come up and it occurs to me it might interest you. And it’s about make-up so it’s even on topic.
How they did it was quite clever. He wore two sets of make-up on top of each other. Like a palimpsest. But they used different base colours; which showed up in different colour light. So by using filters on the theatre lights they could cross fade between the two sets of filters and the make-up would also appear to change.
Hope I’ve managed to explain that understandably.
But now there’s lights with dichroic filters. And with some of them you can dial in any colour options you like. With great precision.
So, to finally get to the point, you could wear multiple different make-up variations simultaneously; and maybe even paint patterns onto your outfits.
If you used translucent make-up/paint and did different patterns in different palettes, you could then decide which look is visible just by cross fading between the different filter options on the lights. You could transform slowly like a metamorphosis, or instantly with a crack of your whip.
I’m sure you could make something like that work.
Interesting. Now consider the possibilities with rotating polarizing filters on the lights, and suitable diffraction-based coloring (e.g. like how butterfly wing powder works) …
The replies are awful in an obvious way, but also, OP, can we talk?
That’s a bit dramatic, friend. If you’re going around looking at women that you believe are wearing makeup and thinking, tsk tsk, who knows what she really looks like under her shroud of mystery, that’s more of a you problem.
If looking prettah is a woman’s main job, then guys who use hair growth products and heel lifts are doing what? A side hussle?
I hate complaining useless men, especially if they slime-ily are try to hide their secret NiceGuy attitudes.
I wonder how many of these assholes are NiceGuys publicly.
I hate NiceGuys so much.
Men can wear makeup too. I don’t recall many ladies being turned off by Mr. Bowie’s.
And K-pop guys wear makeup on a daily basis if they’re appearing in public. They even do endorsement deals regularly. It’s just subtle enough that the red pillers probably don’t notice, but they hate pretty Asian boys anyway.
I don’t wear it yet somehow I have managed to get attention from men, and a long-term marriage.
@.45
If looking prettah is a woman’s main job, then guys who use hair growth products and heel lifts are doing what? A side hussle?
Oh, but it’s looksmaxxing when they do it.