Make Up"Do you wear it?
Does it wear you?"
-Delta 5
It has always seemed a little distant, and a little strange - a boy commenting on girl stuff - but make up is so interesting that I can't shake it off. Growing up, boys watch their mothers apply their make up in their vanity mirrors with such care and concern. Gazing from across the room, she'd be backwards in the mirror and watching television in its reflection as she adjusts her liner or rouge. His mother has performed this morning ritual incessantly, gladly, automatically - watching a taped recording of the soap opera from the day before while applying make up to her face before going off to work. This precious hour, this sacred time, her religion. Before her mirror, through her mirror, into her mirror. The reflection changes: she colors her lips, blots, smiles. It is not quite a smile-smile though, now is it? It is more of a "this is how I smile" type of smile; a pantomime, a performance for no audience at all, an invisible gesture meant to imitate a real feeling. He'd doze off, wake up, doze off - and always to the smell of her coffee, which would call to mind all sorts of untasted tastes that boys that age hadn't yet experienced and she'd be there, on her little velvet bench in front of her heavy wooden vanity and mirror - watching her television show from the day before in reverse. What does this teach a boy? What does this teach a girl? His sister never seemed to care to watch this ritual, she had her own to perform. Growing a bit older, he eventually took to the bathroom with dad and watched as he'd brush teeth and shave. Yes, magical in a manly way and quite dangerous with that razor and the potential for some blood - dad has his mirror and his concentration, and his sacrament ("rite in which god is uniquely active"). But, didn't it lack a little bit of art? His making up was that of utility, the handheld and worked. Her making up was that of beauty, unneeded and attractive. One's goal is to simply look clean, the other's goal is to look better than clean.
And what of those reflections? The man, shaving in the mirror in an attempt to reveal as plainly as possible the exposed epidermus and the woman, applying layers of foundation and color in an attempt to cover up that very same skin, which is almost always prettier and cleaner than that of her male counterpart. The intention might be born from the same place: "Make face look better", the methods are entirely different (one done by addition, the other by subtraction.) Not to mention the non-physical implications --- make up is often blamed for its blind coverage of a person's natural features, thus making it a blight on nature and on whichever god we choose to blame for creating people in the first place. Though, oddly, the very act of addition of this obscuring factor somehow makes for a better vision of what's hidden inside. Make up is a real life wall of bricks that is built to cover the person's face yet somehow it remains transparent enough to get a better window into that soul which is just on the other side of that vague barrier. The colors of her eyes reveal as much as the colors of her cheeks, eyelids, lips, etc and it matters little which artist did the painting. Oh the face! Poor face, picked as the sole representative of some imaginary thing and always accused of this or that injustice.
The Delta 5 were a group of girls with instruments who played a special flavor of punk rock in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Along with bands like The Slits, The Runaways, Lora Logic, Liliput, and later in Bikini Kill, Delta 5 sang songs about feminism and racism. Their song "Make Up" idealized the moment with a poignant lathering of ample sarcasm:
"...its creamy, soft and moist
it makes your face feel important!
Better looked, than overlooked.
You wear it with a thousand others
who never looked so false.
At the most important time of all
no one will see the flaws.
Cover it! Roll it!
On or over!
Cover it! Roll it!
On or over!"
Yes, of course the Kill Rock Stars label eventually found the Delta 5's old records, dusted them off, and offered up to us a remastered collection of their songs amounting to a nearly complete "discography." They did the same for the old Essential Logic/Lora Logic records, and a number of other bands that dropped into obscurity as music changed for the worse. Kill Rock Stars still, to this day, puts out music that can safely be classified as "riot grrrl", and thank god for that.
Old Max Factor, first of the "make up men"... What of him? The advertisement for his "Beauty Calibrator" reveals the following:
"The device, remotely resembling a baseball mask, fits over the head and face with flexible metal strips which conform closely to the various features. The strips are held in place by set screws, allowing for 325 possible adjustments. If, for instance, the subject’s nose is slightly crooked --- so slightly, in fact, that it escapes ordinary observation --- the flaw is promptly detected by the instrument and corrective makeup is applied by an experienced operator."
We can learn enough about the man by examining his machine. What are his motives? Correcting flaws and distortions. What is a flaw or a distortion but simply a perspective, though, and from Mr. Factor's perspective a nose should always be straight. More importantly, why would a woman (who is the rightful owner of the body part in question) accept the perspective of someone who is not even in her body? This, I believe, is the reason why those old punk girls hated make up so much and treated it with such scorn in their songs and in their lives - they did not like these men telling them that they needed it to hide what the men perceived to be flaws. I can understand that - this body is mine, and only mine, and I have the right to call my nose crooked but no one else does. What scares me, particularily, is this inventions complete lack of flexibility and the fact that it completely reduces an individual's face into that of a schematic which can be applied infinitely to all faces. This is as frightening as a computer program that creates paintings - it is artifice replaced by norms, it is the preciousness of a single surprising second replaced with the commonplace. In short, it is removing the human from the human, and limiting the definition so severely that its now a strangle. While it may appear to be quite archaic and antiquated, the mapping of faces is very much apart of technology of today.
The arithmetization of nature, turning the organic into an equation - we've been warned! Poets all protest science for attempting such inane experiments (measuring and calibrating facial features, creating poems with an alogorithm, predicting something as spaceless as time) and imagine sterile rooms filled with white-coated people all with their special instruments huddled over roses counting petals and catalogging thorns so that in the end they can define this one particular flower as a "rose" and can use this "rose" to measure all other flowers that might perhaps be classified as such. And what of the poor thing with an unorthodox distribution of petals? What of the overly thorny stemmed specimen? It may be a micrometer off center, or the hue off by a shade, but is it not still entitled to its title? The face with the crooked nose - if it fails to be defined as a "face" then what is it? And, more importantly - what does it mean that a creation of god is corrected by the hands of a man? This, I think, is where the real disjunction is. The poet captures it much better:
"While you and I have lips and voices which
are for kissing and to sing with,
who cares if some oneeyed son of a bitch
invents an instrument to measure Spring with?"
It has always seemed a little distant, and a little strange - a boy commenting on girl stuff - but make up is so interesting that I can't shake it off. Growing up, boys watch their mothers apply their make up in their vanity mirrors with such care and concern. Gazing from across the room, she'd be backwards in the mirror and watching television in its reflection as she adjusts her liner or rouge. His mother has performed this morning ritual incessantly, gladly, automatically - watching a taped recording of the soap opera from the day before while applying make up to her face before going off to work. This precious hour, this sacred time, her religion. Before her mirror, through her mirror, into her mirror. The reflection changes: she colors her lips, blots, smiles. It is not quite a smile-smile though, now is it? It is more of a "this is how I smile" type of smile; a pantomime, a performance for no audience at all, an invisible gesture meant to imitate a real feeling. He'd doze off, wake up, doze off - and always to the smell of her coffee, which would call to mind all sorts of untasted tastes that boys that age hadn't yet experienced and she'd be there, on her little velvet bench in front of her heavy wooden vanity and mirror - watching her television show from the day before in reverse. What does this teach a boy? What does this teach a girl? His sister never seemed to care to watch this ritual, she had her own to perform. Growing a bit older, he eventually took to the bathroom with dad and watched as he'd brush teeth and shave. Yes, magical in a manly way and quite dangerous with that razor and the potential for some blood - dad has his mirror and his concentration, and his sacrament ("rite in which god is uniquely active"). But, didn't it lack a little bit of art? His making up was that of utility, the handheld and worked. Her making up was that of beauty, unneeded and attractive. One's goal is to simply look clean, the other's goal is to look better than clean.
And what of those reflections? The man, shaving in the mirror in an attempt to reveal as plainly as possible the exposed epidermus and the woman, applying layers of foundation and color in an attempt to cover up that very same skin, which is almost always prettier and cleaner than that of her male counterpart. The intention might be born from the same place: "Make face look better", the methods are entirely different (one done by addition, the other by subtraction.) Not to mention the non-physical implications --- make up is often blamed for its blind coverage of a person's natural features, thus making it a blight on nature and on whichever god we choose to blame for creating people in the first place. Though, oddly, the very act of addition of this obscuring factor somehow makes for a better vision of what's hidden inside. Make up is a real life wall of bricks that is built to cover the person's face yet somehow it remains transparent enough to get a better window into that soul which is just on the other side of that vague barrier. The colors of her eyes reveal as much as the colors of her cheeks, eyelids, lips, etc and it matters little which artist did the painting. Oh the face! Poor face, picked as the sole representative of some imaginary thing and always accused of this or that injustice.
The Delta 5 were a group of girls with instruments who played a special flavor of punk rock in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Along with bands like The Slits, The Runaways, Lora Logic, Liliput, and later in Bikini Kill, Delta 5 sang songs about feminism and racism. Their song "Make Up" idealized the moment with a poignant lathering of ample sarcasm:
"...its creamy, soft and moist
it makes your face feel important!
Better looked, than overlooked.
You wear it with a thousand others
who never looked so false.
At the most important time of all
no one will see the flaws.
Cover it! Roll it!
On or over!
Cover it! Roll it!
On or over!"
Yes, of course the Kill Rock Stars label eventually found the Delta 5's old records, dusted them off, and offered up to us a remastered collection of their songs amounting to a nearly complete "discography." They did the same for the old Essential Logic/Lora Logic records, and a number of other bands that dropped into obscurity as music changed for the worse. Kill Rock Stars still, to this day, puts out music that can safely be classified as "riot grrrl", and thank god for that.
Old Max Factor, first of the "make up men"... What of him? The advertisement for his "Beauty Calibrator" reveals the following:
"The device, remotely resembling a baseball mask, fits over the head and face with flexible metal strips which conform closely to the various features. The strips are held in place by set screws, allowing for 325 possible adjustments. If, for instance, the subject’s nose is slightly crooked --- so slightly, in fact, that it escapes ordinary observation --- the flaw is promptly detected by the instrument and corrective makeup is applied by an experienced operator."
We can learn enough about the man by examining his machine. What are his motives? Correcting flaws and distortions. What is a flaw or a distortion but simply a perspective, though, and from Mr. Factor's perspective a nose should always be straight. More importantly, why would a woman (who is the rightful owner of the body part in question) accept the perspective of someone who is not even in her body? This, I believe, is the reason why those old punk girls hated make up so much and treated it with such scorn in their songs and in their lives - they did not like these men telling them that they needed it to hide what the men perceived to be flaws. I can understand that - this body is mine, and only mine, and I have the right to call my nose crooked but no one else does. What scares me, particularily, is this inventions complete lack of flexibility and the fact that it completely reduces an individual's face into that of a schematic which can be applied infinitely to all faces. This is as frightening as a computer program that creates paintings - it is artifice replaced by norms, it is the preciousness of a single surprising second replaced with the commonplace. In short, it is removing the human from the human, and limiting the definition so severely that its now a strangle. While it may appear to be quite archaic and antiquated, the mapping of faces is very much apart of technology of today.
The arithmetization of nature, turning the organic into an equation - we've been warned! Poets all protest science for attempting such inane experiments (measuring and calibrating facial features, creating poems with an alogorithm, predicting something as spaceless as time) and imagine sterile rooms filled with white-coated people all with their special instruments huddled over roses counting petals and catalogging thorns so that in the end they can define this one particular flower as a "rose" and can use this "rose" to measure all other flowers that might perhaps be classified as such. And what of the poor thing with an unorthodox distribution of petals? What of the overly thorny stemmed specimen? It may be a micrometer off center, or the hue off by a shade, but is it not still entitled to its title? The face with the crooked nose - if it fails to be defined as a "face" then what is it? And, more importantly - what does it mean that a creation of god is corrected by the hands of a man? This, I think, is where the real disjunction is. The poet captures it much better:
"While you and I have lips and voices which
are for kissing and to sing with,
who cares if some oneeyed son of a bitch
invents an instrument to measure Spring with?"
-E. E. Cummings
Yes, scientists are a bit one-sided/one-sighted/myopic/"oneeyed" - their vision is fixed on supplying an answer to a question they created for themselves. Rather than appreciating the mystery of some unsolved wonderment, their focus is narrowed entirely on the nasty business of attempting to untangle something as knotted as gods gifts. Our voices, our lips, our faces, Spring - these are all givens, gifts on loan, and should be smiled at and accepted but never questioned, measured or tested. Oh crooked tooth, you are vulnerability manifest, you are the heart of the story. Dear little tooth, sticking out slightly from the rest of the row, you are a beautiful and perfect thing. Like the error coin, you are beauty manifest, you are the spontenaity of the cosmos and you are all that is wonderful. Freckle, dimple, blemish- our fingers all applaud you! The texture and color you provide is appreciated. You, this thing which needs correcting, this uncorrected error - you are truth in art and life.
The two arguments against make up: one based in the foggy and dark world of Gender Differences while the other is a bit more of a Natural dillema, but both accusing the face of having flaws. Flaws! As though these faces are responsible for their mis-allignment, as though these faces should be blamed for their misfortunes, as though these "blemishes" can even be categorized as such - it leaves no room for intention and purpose, it is as useless as criticizing glass for not being as strong as stone.
And the boy? He has watched his mom apply her make up, he has watched his dad attend to his appearance, and he has grown up listening to the Delta 5 and reading the poets. We can see him sweating over his decision, we can see him fretting and pacing and mouthing words to no one at all while walking back and forth up and down his hallway. A short but high-wattage little burst:
Yes, scientists are a bit one-sided/one-sighted/myopic/"oneeyed" - their vision is fixed on supplying an answer to a question they created for themselves. Rather than appreciating the mystery of some unsolved wonderment, their focus is narrowed entirely on the nasty business of attempting to untangle something as knotted as gods gifts. Our voices, our lips, our faces, Spring - these are all givens, gifts on loan, and should be smiled at and accepted but never questioned, measured or tested. Oh crooked tooth, you are vulnerability manifest, you are the heart of the story. Dear little tooth, sticking out slightly from the rest of the row, you are a beautiful and perfect thing. Like the error coin, you are beauty manifest, you are the spontenaity of the cosmos and you are all that is wonderful. Freckle, dimple, blemish- our fingers all applaud you! The texture and color you provide is appreciated. You, this thing which needs correcting, this uncorrected error - you are truth in art and life.
The two arguments against make up: one based in the foggy and dark world of Gender Differences while the other is a bit more of a Natural dillema, but both accusing the face of having flaws. Flaws! As though these faces are responsible for their mis-allignment, as though these faces should be blamed for their misfortunes, as though these "blemishes" can even be categorized as such - it leaves no room for intention and purpose, it is as useless as criticizing glass for not being as strong as stone.
And the boy? He has watched his mom apply her make up, he has watched his dad attend to his appearance, and he has grown up listening to the Delta 5 and reading the poets. We can see him sweating over his decision, we can see him fretting and pacing and mouthing words to no one at all while walking back and forth up and down his hallway. A short but high-wattage little burst:
Make up is to the Face as a Sweater is to a Tree.
He now has his sentence, he now has his thought. A tree is as natural and godly as a face, and the compulsion to knit a pretty sweater for it is entirely a human concern and should be protected and allowed. It is a collaboration between creation and recreation, master and servant, artist and apprentice - we know trees are skinless and therefore are not subject to bouts of shivering in inclimate weather, we know they have no eyes with which to appreciate these wonderfully wooly colors, and we know they are pretty enough on their own with their leaves and limbs but still, we as humans are always in competition with our maker (or, whomever we attribute our being here to) and because of this we will always attempt to beautify things.
He now has his sentence, he now has his thought. A tree is as natural and godly as a face, and the compulsion to knit a pretty sweater for it is entirely a human concern and should be protected and allowed. It is a collaboration between creation and recreation, master and servant, artist and apprentice - we know trees are skinless and therefore are not subject to bouts of shivering in inclimate weather, we know they have no eyes with which to appreciate these wonderfully wooly colors, and we know they are pretty enough on their own with their leaves and limbs but still, we as humans are always in competition with our maker (or, whomever we attribute our being here to) and because of this we will always attempt to beautify things.
