"It’s just wrong that men look just fine the way they are, but we women are encouraged to believe we don’t look good enough unless we 'fix' our faces."

Writes Roz Warren in her anti-makeup manifesto in the NYT, where the first commenter plumps her up with "You go girl!"

Which highlights my point: Women can use makeup OR not use makeup and people think it's just fine. Women are encouraged to believe we can be whatever we want, either glammed up beyond recognition or utterly fresh-faced or anywhere in between. It's true that the expression "fix my face" originated with women — women with a sense of humor, by the way. (And it wasn't just "fix my face," it was also "put on my face," as if — oh, horror, from the viewpoint of a Women's Studies major! — a woman without makeup is faceless!!!)

But the truth is, the woman could and still can fix her face as much as she wants or not at all, and most of the time it only takes a couple minutes and those who do more are having fun with it.



It is men who are deprived of the option to tinker with what they've got naturally. The quote I put in the title would make more sense rewritten as: It’s just wrong that women look just fine whatever they choose to do, but men are encouraged to believe they look however they look and they're not allowed to fix their faces.

Not that there aren't big brands like Marc Jacobs attempting to liberate men from their prison of fresh-facedness: "There's the Remedy concealer that has a really lovely palladium tip that really feels nice and cool to your undereye area, and God knows I can always use a bit of Remedy Concealer myself... Then there's the brow tamer which has a lovely soft application wand and the formula itself is soft and smooth feeling rather than sticky and gooey or hard... there's the Liplock which has a nice minty fresh taste. It's very important to have a nice moist lip so you're always ready to kiss and make out with that right person."

Yeah, you laughed at him? See how oppression weighs on the male?