The Deception of Perfection

  Is it better to lie about who you are but to look picture perfect than is it to be truthful and less than the rest?

Recently I was listening to the T-man show (absolutely my favorite radio show) and they were talking about women and make up. T-man was saying that men do not want to see pictures of women online (for example on sites like Myspace) if they are not wearing make up. This of course sparked some rather interesting phone calls, which is of course why T-man says things like this – he knows that it will spark a reaction. The resulting conversations were pretty fun to listen to, as is always the case on the T-man show.

Anyway this got me to thinking about the issue of makeup. When I was a kid I was never allowed to wear it even though all of the other girls in high school (or a large majority of them anyway) were wearing it. This gave them an edge up on me. They were always able to look that much better than me, being able to cover flaws while I walked around with all of my ‘blemishes’ out in the open. As a result of never being able to wear makeup as a teen, as I’ve gotten older the concept of wearing it has become less and less appealing. I mean who wants to spend nearly a trillion dollars on a bottle (or jar – I don’t even know what it’s called!) of mascara just to poke out their eye out while trying to put it on? In the end I look like an idiot with black streaks dripping down my face and I’m forced to spend an extra half-hour in the bathroom ferociously trying to scrub my skin to get the stuff off. All of the scrubbing results in excessive pulling of my eye skin, which leads me to believe that I really need Eye Cream more than ever. While most other women learned the proper techniques and tricks to putting makeup on all the way back in high school, I (obviously) never learned how. I am terrible at it. As a result I don’t often wear it. Although I do have some Bare Escentuals, which I am able to put on pretty well, but that’s another story in and of itself.

Luckily my partner is not into makeup. He thinks that wearing it is equivalent to lying because you are hiding what is truly there and thereby deceiving others. Yet in a world where most people wear makeup and pushup bras it’s hard not to fall into that way of living yourself. I feel like in order to compete with most other women, or in order to at least match up to them, that I have to wear makeup. There’s no way that I can look as good as the woman who is covering all of her flaws (broken capillaries, slightly discolored patches of skin, zits, blemishes, small chest, etc) by wearing face paint and/or making her chest look deceptively larger with a Wonder Bra.

All of this leads me to the following:

Why is it that women are expected to wear makeup and men are free to simply be who they are, flaws and all? Why are women the ones who are expected to be perfect, or at least to fake perfection? It doesn’t seem fair to me, but then again who ever said that life is supposed to be fair?

I feel like I’m damned if I do (wear makeup) and damned if I don’t. If I wear it I’m considered (by some) to be a liar. If I don’t wear it I cannot even begin to compare to those who do. I’d like to just be happy being who I am, flaws and all, but it’s hard when there’s so much to measure up to. While it’s true that my boyfriend doesn’t like makeup or pushup bras he still can’t help but to at least momentarily drool at the made-up Wonder Bra queens who walk by. Who wouldn’t drool when they look so perfect? I don’t blame him or other men for getting aroused at the simply sight of beauty queens, but at the same time it’s incredibly frustrating to observe. It makes me angry because I too could look just as good as these made-up queens (with a few lessons on how to properly apply face paint) yet instead I walk around (most of the time) truthful about who I am and what I have to offer. I am not utterly disgusting yet at the same time I am not drop dead gorgeous. What I am is real and concrete – like Angela from My So Called Life. In The episode Self Esteem  a similar issue is addressed. This is the episode in which Jordan Catalano finally acknowledges his love for Angela. It hits him while he’s in English class reading Shakespeare. Shakespeare is talking about a woman who is not the prettiest girl, but who is loved and adored because she is real and has flaws. She’s not imaginary or ‘made up’ (pun intended).

All in all I suppose that in the end it’s better to have someone drooling over who you really are then to have them drooling over a ‘disguise’ or ‘costume’ that you wear. Yet it doesn’t change the fact that being truthful about who you are can often make you feel like less than the common denominator.