The Vagenda

11 thoughts on “On Make-Up

  1. When I was 17, I was stupidly late for an AS level exam and went dashing into college with no make-up on (no time for it that day!). On the way down the stairs to the exam room, I was accosted by a ‘friend’ with the words ‘What’s happened to your face?’

    Took me a while to shake that one off!

  2. At school whenever I wanted to skip a class I’d just go in with no makeup on and the teacher would invariably send me to the school nurse because I looked so unwell…

  3. I had a long-running debate with my mother regarding wearing makeup on my wedding day. I haven’t worn makeup more than once or twice in the previous four years, and my then boyfriend/fiance always said when he saw me in it that he preferred me without it. It took me a long time to persuade my mother that I was going to stick to my guns and walk down the aisle looking the way I knew my husband would prefer* – not how society expected me to look!

    *Reading it back that looks horribly submissive of me. To put it another way, my logic was: if I don’t like wearing makeup, and the man I was marrying agreed, it didn’t matter what anyone else thought. If he had wanted me to wear makeup I think I still would have stood my ground!

  4. I don’t wear much makeup, but whenever i go without any makeup at all, i get “you look … tired.” or something similar. I always just say very bluntly, ‘no, im fine. this is my face.’ But yeah, it can still hurt.

  5. I was once told I looked like ‘death warmed up’ when I dared to go without make up. Another grudge is all the period dramas that feature women with really heavy makeup, in a time where it hadn’t been invented yet. I know it adds the the magic, but you wouldn’t have people wearing jeans in the 1600′s would you?

  6. When I was quite young, I wore lots of makeup every day. Then I realised that it made me feel vulnerable in lots of situations where my makeup would run, and I tried to avoid those situations. Finally after having cycled three miles in the rain with one hand covering my eyes, I knew it was getting a bit silly.
    Over the course of about a year I gradually thinned my make up and finally went to school without it. No one really saw any great changes to my face.
    Now I hardly ever wear makeup and I look so much better without it, whereas before, I hated to look at myself in the mirror without makeup.
    The point I am trying to make, is its all in the mind. Others who point out that you look “ill” are saying so because a big change in the face can only lead to that explanation, do it gradually and no one notices. One more thing, I have to say, the most attractive qualities (in terms of looks) are inherited and makeup isn’t going to make much of a difference!

  7. Don’t know if anyone’s seen Snog Marry Avoid (don’t, it’s an awful “makeunder” show) — what annoys me about it is while it goes on and on and on about looking “natural”, the presenter has been wearing more and more make up each series. It’s just another form of being mean about people’s appearances :(

  8. I once went without concealer for a day and my parents seriously sat me down and asked if some one had punched me in the face as i ‘looked as if i had two black eyes’. So, what do owe my parents? £4.50 and a complex about my dark circles.

  9. I currently have dermatitis so have stopped using make-up. When I do wear it, I jump when I catch site of myself as now it looks just weird. And it’s quite freeing to know that I will look like this all day and can rub my eyes or get caught in the rain without looking like a panda. Balls to what everyone else thinks!

  10. My wife doesn’t wear any make-up. She didn’t before we get married, and she doesn’t now. I think she looks beautiful, and there’s nothing that some make-up could improve on.

    Funnily enough I asked my wife the other day whether she’d ever considered buying lipstick, and she said she hates how it feels artificial on her lips. That made sense to me *shrugs*

    Death to make-up … I know I can’t hide behind it, nor do I want to, so I say forget about it. You can’t always wear make-up, any more than you can always wear high heels: the people you love will have to love you without them, and if they don’t you have a more serious problem.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>