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THAT ISN'T LAZINESS

that isn't lazinesss: thoughts from a man who wears makeup by Eric La Rosee

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We’re at a party. I don’t know her. “I love your makeup!” She says. “Thank you!” I reply, genuinely grinning. I like it, too. “I wish I could do my makeup like that,” she adds. Still smiling, I do my best to silently urge her to let the compliment stand as it is. “I’m so lazy, though. Like, this is the most I ever do.” up, it is a gay thing, and it is meant to be an act of personal

I keep smiling, but my heart falls. There’s no good way to explain to her, quickly, why that last clause makes me sad.

I’m not lazy when I don’t wear makeup; to get my makeup how I like it takes between 45 and 90 minutes. That is ignoring the concerned calls and texts from friends whenever I walk home

hours a week I spend watching tutorials and reviews, and the years I have spent practicing whenever I get bored or lonely because it is my hobby.

Why are you considered lazy for not engaging with someone else’s hobby? You’re not even lazy for not spending time on your own hobbies if you do not want to—hobbies are necessarily opdefinitions of beauty: more men in bright, geometric eyelin-

tional. Otherwise, it’s just unpaid labor. The only people being lazy by not applying makeup are stage performers.

However, I’m not naive enough to think makeup is universally, solely about the artistry of its application, as has become a popular assertion among people selling makeup. I really wish it were.

Makeup is a half-trillion-dollar industry because as human beings, we care about being valued. Beauty is probably the most widespread and persistent way people have assigned value to themselves and to others, particularly to women. The purchase and use of makeup promises to make you feel beautiful, and by extension valuable.

So, when women compliment me and then use it as an opportunity to put themselves down, it sounds like they are admonishing themselves for not making themselves valuable through hours of unpaid labor that they don’t enjoy.

This is a heavy initial greeting for a party, but I am aware that my blurting out, “You’re valuable as you are and shouldn’t be expected to spend time on things you don’t enjoy to prove that to others,” as I would want, would seem to be coming from nowhere, so instead, I’ve taken to countering, “Please! Women never wearing makeup at all will always be more rebellious than me wearing a lot.”

There’s a lot that I’m trying to summarize here: The mirror image of me, a gay man performing a high degree of femininity because it brings me joy, is not a woman doing so because it is expected of her. A more apt parallel would be that of a lesbian who, taking no pleasure in performing femininity, chooses The short version leaves out that these are strongly tied to LGBTQ experience. To be clear, when I personally wear makerebellion.

I’m fairly safe wearing makeup because of decades of hard work and sacrifice by the people of the community who came before me, and because I live in a progressive area. However, I still get painted, and I know I still make some people uncomfortable at the parties I attend. So be it.

Frankly, I would love to see more of my peers in public looking eccentric for the sake of joy and in doing so expanding people’s rebelliously to perform none at all.

er, and more women reclaiming their energy, creativity, and unpainted faces.

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