Masculinity and Men Who Wear Makeup

Mmasculinity AND men who wear makeup

Makeup has never been so celebrated as it is now. More accessible than ever in terms of price, lowered stigma, range of skin tones represented, and plain availability in nearly every drugstore, makeup is spreading to audiences never before imagined··especially men. Or so you may think. For as long as makeup has existed, men have been wearing it. You only have to look up Tutankhamen’s death mask or almost any color portrait of rosycheeked George Washington to know that men have always been a part of makeup trends, whether they are dramatic and artistic or understated and “corrective.” However, in the West, men’s makeup seems to have died out between the late eighteenth century and the late twentieth century, only coming back during the daytime pretty recently. Of course, it is impossible to write an article about men wearing makeup without mentioning drag queens, but what is new in the past couple of decades is cisgender men wearing makeup during the day, something that hasn’t happened in such a capacity since the days of French aristocrats. In that time, men wearing makeup was bonded _Q\PIVQUIOMWN MٺMUQVIKaLMKILMVKMIVL [M`]IT ambiguity. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Western world, when the bourgeoisie became the new symbol of decadence and frippery, the middle class man was seen as more feminine because he didn’t do manual labor and was more likely to use fragrance and have a more extensive personal care routine than the working man, who slowly became tied to the concept of rugged masculinity. Around the late nineteenth century and for most decades since then, ways of being masculine were polarized into two: you could either be a physically strong man who didn’t care about his appearance and eschewed personal care as a woman’s pastime, or you KW]TLJMIVMٺMUQVI\MUIV_PW_I[VW\XPa[QKITTa strong and whose sexuality was in question. So a man who wears makeup is forced into the second, feminine category, having been presumed to forfeit his masculinity in his use of cosmetics. Even today, a man who wears visible makeup often fears for his safety and LQOVQ\aI[LWQVO[WQ[\PW]OP\\WJMIVIK\Q^MÆQZ\I\QWV with other men, especially straight men. No subset

of person is as dangerous to the makeup-wearing man as other men. Social media accounts of the new male makeup elite such as Manny Gutierrez, James +PIZTM[IVL*ZM\UIV:WKSIZM[\MILQTaÆWWLML_Q\P homophobic and transphobic hate. Wearing makeup, a feminine-coded activity, and liking men, a femininecoded proclivity, often attracts the same kind of hate and has the same kind of defense: masculinity is not compromised by attraction or makeup. But why is there such a strong link between makeup and femininity? Is it simply because any kind of personal maintenance beyond brushing your teeth and washing your body is seen as incorrigibly feminine? In a world where you can walk into a pharmacy and see face lotion, and then, next to it, face lotion for Men, perhaps any kind of self-maintenance is seen as preening and pampering. However, there’s more to it than that: men who wear makeup are seen as feminine because there is no masculine aesthetic in makeup. Seriously! In her book, .IKM 8IQV\" <PM ;\WZa WN 5ISM]X, celebrated makeup artist Lisa Eldridge writes that makeup between cultures that had no interaction with or knowledge of each other, like Ancient Greece and China, both used cosmetics to make the skin TWWS TQOP\MZ <PM[M \_W LQٺMZMV\ K]T\]ZM[ ][QVO \PM same approach to beauty doesn’t make sense unless you know that women who haven’t carried a child before tend to have lighter skin. In fact, most makeup products used throughout history, like foundation, rouge, and dark eye makeup are subconsciously seen to simulate or enhance youth, high estrogen levels, fertility, and sexual arousal. If lighter skin looks younger or more feminine, then darker eyes and lips, which a lot of makeup aims to achieve, makes the skin look lighter. Red lips and cheeks signal high estrogen levels and sexual arousal, both fertility markers. Dark eyes with long lashes look partially closed, like how they might appear during close physical intimacy. “Corrective” makeup has been throughout history a feminine aesthetic, even when used by men. So men who wear makeup are considered to self-feminize because pretty much all makeup we wear today has a subtly feminizing purpose.

Is there a masculine makeup aesthetic emerging today? Surely the popularity of contouring for bringing out a stronger bone structure, a factor QVNT]MVKMLJa\M[\W[\MZWVMTM^MT[ L]ZQVOX]JMZ\aKIVPI^MIUI[K]TQVQbQVOMNNMK\)VL _PQTMMaMUISM]X often aims to make the eyes look relaxed and sultry, darkening the eyelid can simulate a hollow orbital socket, a generally more masculine attribute. While bronzer, a product used for skin-darkening, would be anathema to most makeup-wearers throughout history, it certainly lends a more masculine look because men tend to a) wear less sun protection and b) naturally have more melanin in their skin.

And who can forget the Instagram brows that have seen countless women throw down their tweezers? Makeup wearers throughout history have darkened their eyebrows, but now the fashionable eyebrow is thicker than ever, taking inspiration from the 1980’s and trying to forget the horrible travesty of the overplucked 1990’s and 2000’s. Having thick eyebrows is literally tied to having more testosterone, so it is directly masculinizing. While we makeup users are wearing more makeup than we have in previous KMV\]ZQM[UWZMWN Q\PI[IUI[K]TQVQbQVOMٺMK\\PIV makeup has had at any point in Western history. Maybe this mixed aesthetic is for the best. Instead of developing a masculine makeup look for men to wear while women continue to lighten their skin and darken their lips, we now have the responsibility to _WZS\W_IZL[IUISM]XIM[\PM\QK\PI\Q[ÆI\\MZQVONWZ every person that wears it. I wait for the time where makeup has no gender or set aesthetic, and with the \ZMVL[ 1¼^MJMMV [MMQVO ZMKMV\Ta 1IUKWVÅLMV\\PI\ that time is rapidly approaching.

By Phoebe Danaher Layout by Elizabeth Marics