can be a Makeup: Not just for women

Jordyn Rossmeisl Columnist

The gender binary is losing its grasp on makeup, and I’m here for it. Society has started to shift its attitude towards makeup, no longer seeing it as purely effeminate. Many men are getting the memo, and are eagerly stepping up to meet the shifting standards. But, understandably, some guys have been hesitant to face the change- to change their faces. So, to the men who are reading this, let me wipe away your worries, and explain why you should stop avoiding makeup.

Every day, more and more men are beginning to take their looks more seriously, and thus have begun to venture back into the makeup scene after quite a long break. For those of you who didn’t know, makeup was not “just for women” until more recently in history.

According to Gentleman’s Gazette, before World War I, makeup was completely gender-neutral and often indicated higher status. Around the world, men wore makeup for a variety of reasons.

Gentleman’s Gazette explained, “Ancient Egyptians lined their eyes with coal, ancient Babylonians and Incans painted their plexion, and ancient Greeks and Romans used ochre and iron gall to paint their lips and cheeks to appear younger.”

It is ridiculous that makeup ever became gendered. Thankfully, people are now taking a page from the past, discarding gender-binary norms and making make-up for everyone. Today, in part thanks to social media, makeup is becoming a way for men to look and feel their best while also serving as a medium for self-expression.

According to L Makeup Institute, “With the rise of social media apps like Instagram and TikTok, men and masculine-identifying people are trying out makeup as a form of self-expression. It’s an increasingly common view that society should separate beauty from stereotypes and gender binary norms.”

Another reason why men should stop avoiding makeup is that beauty standards are evolving. Men are just more attractive with makeup. But don’t take my word for it.

According to IFL Science, in a small study, “researchers have found that men are considered more attractive when wearing a smattering of the old powder and rouge than when barefaced.”

Boys, beauty standards are evolving. It is time to man up and

I am a woman.

Femininity isn’t written in law, it isn’t written in biology, it isn’t written in the stars. It’s a code we write ourselves and adhere to personally. It’s something that’s different for everyone. It’s an outfit, it’s a mask, it’s a style and everyone’s femininity is unique in the way that they wear it.

The distinction between sex and gender is worth drawing attention to when deliberating womanhood. The World Health Organization states that: “Sex refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women. Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.”

Anyone can be a woman, just by the simple act of being a woman. All it takes to be a woman is to be a woman, and doing that just requires introspection and realization. One just needs to evaluate their own feelings, their experiences, the composition of their identity, and realize who they are.

To try and police who is a woman, who can be a woman and who has the right to be a woman is nothing short of authoritarian gatekeeping. What benefit does it bring anyone to enforce a patriarchal system that defines gender? What does harassing me, saying that what I’m doing isn’t real femininity but a performance mockery of femininity, on social media achieve?

What confuses me about when other women try to gatekeep my womanhood, is why they would even spend their energy on such an endeavor. You’ve let a patriarchal society turn us against each other, rather than try to connect to each other personally and share our experiences as women. We’re being pit against each other intentionally.

This policing of womanhood has grown to such drastic proportions that cisgendered women are being hurt by transphobic rhetoric. This argumentative gatekeeping of who gets to be a woman is what prevented Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi, two cisgendered Namibian teenagers, from getting to compete in the Olympics. Two cisgendered women were deemed too masculine to be allowed to compete, based on an arbitrary system that measures arbitrary levels of hormones. The rhetoric is harming more than transwomen at this point.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, with Caster Semenya having her Olympic title taken away from her because she tested to have high testosterone levels as an intersex person, meaning she has anatomy of both males and females. Despite being intersex she didn’t know that she was intersex until the test came back because she was born and raised as a girl, having no visible male anatomy.

Societal standards of womanhood and femininity are so rooted in western, white standards that they also intersect into racism. These standards are based off of anglo-saxon ideals, much like a lot of other societal standards, going into racist and colorist territory.

Having such strict, uniform definitions of womanhood is harmful to transgendered and cisgendered women, and only aims to further a patriarchal society’s agenda.

What is your definition of woman?