i know this is an old story now, but i just haven't managed to get around to writing about it til now. there was a bit of a furore when secretary of state appeared at a press conference sans make-up. the press conference wasn't about make-up. it was sanctions against iran. but guess what everyone was talking about.
the whole thing gives rise to several issues. first the focus on appearance for women politicians, which is unrelenting. the commentary on fashion, footwear, pants vs skirt, hairstyle, teeth, voice etc etc etc ad nauseum. we saw it here with helen clark, in australia with julia gillard, and its something that almost every woman leader across the globe has to deal with. women are required to be immaculate in appearance, all the time.
it's annoying when it takes up time that these leaders should be spending on matters of political, social and/or economic importance. but it's more annoying when it distracts from the issue they are talking about, when it takes attention away from actions or debates that require our scrutiny.
at the time when ms clinton presented a face that was so outrageously bare, she had been visiting india. we didn't get much attention on the huge hypocrisy of this visit: that one nuclear-armed state was putting pressure on another nuclear-armed state to impose sanctions on a third state that isn't nuclear-armed. without the two nuclear-armed states having any intention of relinquishing their own arsenal.
we know the impact of economic sanctions. we saw the results quite clearly in iraq through the 1990s. one of the impacts was an estimated half a million children dying due to lack of medical supplies. of course there were many others impacts that directly affected the lives of people who were in no way responsible for the things the sanctions were trying to prevent.
what ms clinton was asking for will have serious and detrimental affects on the lives of millions of people. do we real care so much whether she is pushing for that with or without her lipstick on? are the lives of those people less important than her foundation and mascara? at least someone had the courage to ask madeleine allbright if the cost of the sanctions against iraq were worth it. instead of asking similar questions of ms clinton, the focus of coverage was on her appearance.
it may be that you're a person who supports sanctions against iran. fine. debate that issue - and it should be very well debated before pressure is applied to any country to enforce them. but please don't waste my time talking about ms clinton's make-up or shoes or the fact that she wears pant-suits, or any other triviality that truly just don't matter.
Showing posts with label Make-up. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Make-up. Show all posts
Tuesday, 5 June 2012
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Some weekend funny
Many thanks to captiver for sending this in (potentially NSFW, depending on your workplace):
Monday, 8 February 2010
The experiment continues
If you have a pretty long memory for a blog reader, you might recall that I've been testing Bio Oil on my cat bites for Pretty Pretty Pretty. I've got an update up there, thanks to the awesome Amy and Jo for the opportunity :-)
Thursday, 17 December 2009
An experiment
Thanks to Amy and Jo at Pretty Pretty Pretty for agreeing to host a modest experiment I'm carrying out over the next few months, taking advantage of the Basement Cat attack to test Bio-Oil. :-)
Friday, 8 May 2009
Lil' consumers
Thanks to a bung neck, I've spent today at home, and I happened to see a bit of kids' TV. At 4.30, whatever programme was on announced, 'Last week we showed boys how to dress - this week, we'll show girls how to put on make up!'.
Hmmm, I thought - body image pressure has gone equal opportunity. But it got so much worse. The next scene featured a girl of about 14, being taught by a specialist how to apply cosmetics - well over $100 worth, I would guess. The whole thing functioned as an infomercial for a particular brand of cosmetics, and although the girl featured in it was a young teenager, the programme seemed to be pitched at younger girls.
Kids don't need more peer pressure. They don't need more body image stress. What they do need, obviously, is a whole lot of money. I'm not going to launch into one of those rants that start, 'In my day...' - but it seems to me that the pressure on kids to consume has become far greater in the last 20 years or so. As a 'tweenie', I didn't have that much discretion over what I wore or owned, or much money of my own. I got some say in the clothing my mum bought for me, but ultimately, this was decided by the need to live on a slim budget. Other kids in my social milieu might have had a bit more in the way of consumer goods, but to own an extensive range of make-up at age 14 was unheard of.
Who's supposed to pay for this stuff? Either kids are more likely to have part-time work these days, or their parents are shelling out. It's enough to make me dread my own kids growing older. Already, my seven year old feels she needs a cellphone, although she really has no use for it.
The ability to consume, or not, matters a lot to kids and teenagers - it's a time in your life when peer pressure is acute. I just don't want to buy into this (pun intended). When my daughter asks for something frivolous, my first impulse is to say no. Often, though, I end up giving in: I feel guilty about my daughter feeling socially alienated because I have a political axe to grind. Yet, when I give in, I know the effect is simply to make some other kid feel bad that they can't keep up with the Joneses.
On behalf of our kids, I think we parents need to form a kind of fashion non-aggression pact. It seems to me that we do our kids no favours by letting them be placed under escalating pressure to consume - pressure that leads kids to compare themselves with one another, and try to stay ahead of their peers in the consumption game. By saying no to the consumption trend on our kids' behalf, we might help deflate the pressure to buy, get our kids to question the ethics of our consuming culture, and save ourselves a small fortune in the process.
Hmmm, I thought - body image pressure has gone equal opportunity. But it got so much worse. The next scene featured a girl of about 14, being taught by a specialist how to apply cosmetics - well over $100 worth, I would guess. The whole thing functioned as an infomercial for a particular brand of cosmetics, and although the girl featured in it was a young teenager, the programme seemed to be pitched at younger girls.
Kids don't need more peer pressure. They don't need more body image stress. What they do need, obviously, is a whole lot of money. I'm not going to launch into one of those rants that start, 'In my day...' - but it seems to me that the pressure on kids to consume has become far greater in the last 20 years or so. As a 'tweenie', I didn't have that much discretion over what I wore or owned, or much money of my own. I got some say in the clothing my mum bought for me, but ultimately, this was decided by the need to live on a slim budget. Other kids in my social milieu might have had a bit more in the way of consumer goods, but to own an extensive range of make-up at age 14 was unheard of.
Who's supposed to pay for this stuff? Either kids are more likely to have part-time work these days, or their parents are shelling out. It's enough to make me dread my own kids growing older. Already, my seven year old feels she needs a cellphone, although she really has no use for it.
The ability to consume, or not, matters a lot to kids and teenagers - it's a time in your life when peer pressure is acute. I just don't want to buy into this (pun intended). When my daughter asks for something frivolous, my first impulse is to say no. Often, though, I end up giving in: I feel guilty about my daughter feeling socially alienated because I have a political axe to grind. Yet, when I give in, I know the effect is simply to make some other kid feel bad that they can't keep up with the Joneses.
On behalf of our kids, I think we parents need to form a kind of fashion non-aggression pact. It seems to me that we do our kids no favours by letting them be placed under escalating pressure to consume - pressure that leads kids to compare themselves with one another, and try to stay ahead of their peers in the consumption game. By saying no to the consumption trend on our kids' behalf, we might help deflate the pressure to buy, get our kids to question the ethics of our consuming culture, and save ourselves a small fortune in the process.
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
Lippy
From this weekend's Sunday magazine:
What say you dear readers - is lippy only for the matron or the madam?
She says she felt she was being pigeonholed by the marketers into being either a shy, retiring woman, or a nightclubbing model. "Where was the lipstick that has a cerebral element that recongises we're not just putting on lipstick to greet the hubby at the door in our apron?" she asks. "That's not the function of my lipstick. Neither is the fucntion of it to go out and be a girl behaving badly, I don't have to put it on, go out and have sex with 10 men. I didn't want to have to make the choice between whether I was the intelligent girl or whether I was the attractive girl. Why can't I be both?"Australian Poppy King, the woman who launched two lipstick ranges, first Poppy which went belly up in the 1990s, and now Lipstick Queen.
What say you dear readers - is lippy only for the matron or the madam?
Thursday, 24 July 2008
The anti-chick
I once attended a Pride Week function where the speaker talked about how each of us 'acts out' feminity, masculinity, or some other gender identity of our choosing. She was expressing the idea that our gender identity isn't something unchangeable that we're born with, or even something that's so completely bludgeoned into us by society that we have no choice in how we look or act. There's heaps of social pressure surrounding how we should be masculine or feminine, but we still have some say in the matter. A woman in the audience piped up, 'I know what you mean. Look at women from Southland - they look more like dykes than we do!'.
It made me chuckle. I grew up in rural Southland, and the woman's comment gave me a strong memory of the sort of women I grew up with: standard issue bowl haircuts, no-nonsense corduroy trousers. These women raised families, worked on farms and, as often as not, had paid jobs too. They were relentlessly practical because they had to be, doing everything from feeding out hay to doing the farm books to whipping up a batch of scones.
Like my rural foremothers, I don't quite get the point of girl stuff. I do enjoy mucking about with make up, clothes and hair dye from time to time; but these are leisure activities, not an oppressive uniform, and certainly not things that my life feels incomplete without. I had kids quite young, so I've never had the disposable income to get fancy. And I've never much cared. To me, elaborate clothes/hair/makeup/shoes are a barrier. If I can't run about with my kids, do stuff in the garden, carry out my dubious home improvements, I don't feel like me.
Consequently, I don't see the point of Sex and the City. I don't see the point of clothes that look great but make you feel cold. I don't see the point of fabrics which kids' snot doesn't wash out of easily. I don't see the point of trying to have nice fingernails when I'll only get dirt underneath them. I make some concession to the sartorial demands of the workplace, but most of the time I'm a savage. And it's not just that I subscribe to rather old school, second wave views of the beauty industry (although, by and large, I do) - I really enjoy wearing trackpants and doing messy stuff. Nor do I consider myself a tomboy; I just have my own way of being female.
For the most part, I get away with my slight lack of conformity, including in the workplace. I have a sense, though, that this is because I'm a good worker, and I can hold my own against people who might otherwise look down their noses at me. Despite my generally cheerful, self-actualised disposition, I do feel inferior from time to time when I compare myself to women with more money to spend on beautification than I have, and more knowledge of how to look good. I have bleak moments of not feeling like a 'proper' woman.
It's not all doom and gloom, of course. My partner of almost twelve years once told me the reason he was first attracted to me. It was because I had boots and a shabby green jersey and plenty of unladylike left wing opinions on everything. It's a description which most women would rather not have made of them, but I kind of like it!
It made me chuckle. I grew up in rural Southland, and the woman's comment gave me a strong memory of the sort of women I grew up with: standard issue bowl haircuts, no-nonsense corduroy trousers. These women raised families, worked on farms and, as often as not, had paid jobs too. They were relentlessly practical because they had to be, doing everything from feeding out hay to doing the farm books to whipping up a batch of scones.
Like my rural foremothers, I don't quite get the point of girl stuff. I do enjoy mucking about with make up, clothes and hair dye from time to time; but these are leisure activities, not an oppressive uniform, and certainly not things that my life feels incomplete without. I had kids quite young, so I've never had the disposable income to get fancy. And I've never much cared. To me, elaborate clothes/hair/makeup/shoes are a barrier. If I can't run about with my kids, do stuff in the garden, carry out my dubious home improvements, I don't feel like me.
Consequently, I don't see the point of Sex and the City. I don't see the point of clothes that look great but make you feel cold. I don't see the point of fabrics which kids' snot doesn't wash out of easily. I don't see the point of trying to have nice fingernails when I'll only get dirt underneath them. I make some concession to the sartorial demands of the workplace, but most of the time I'm a savage. And it's not just that I subscribe to rather old school, second wave views of the beauty industry (although, by and large, I do) - I really enjoy wearing trackpants and doing messy stuff. Nor do I consider myself a tomboy; I just have my own way of being female.
For the most part, I get away with my slight lack of conformity, including in the workplace. I have a sense, though, that this is because I'm a good worker, and I can hold my own against people who might otherwise look down their noses at me. Despite my generally cheerful, self-actualised disposition, I do feel inferior from time to time when I compare myself to women with more money to spend on beautification than I have, and more knowledge of how to look good. I have bleak moments of not feeling like a 'proper' woman.
It's not all doom and gloom, of course. My partner of almost twelve years once told me the reason he was first attracted to me. It was because I had boots and a shabby green jersey and plenty of unladylike left wing opinions on everything. It's a description which most women would rather not have made of them, but I kind of like it!
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Artist’s Impressions
One thing that really gets my goat, really riles my styles, is Big Cosmetic advertising. On the odd occasions when I buy a Cleo or a Marie Claire, or flick through their ilk at the hairdressers, I’m inundated with arresting images of famous women with flawless cheeks, smooth lips, and skyscraper eyelashes. These pictures are presented as photographs, as true representations of exactly what I would see with my own eyes if I peered at these faces at this level of magnification.
And it’s all sizzle and no sausage.
Airbrushing creates known unknowns. We know that the face before us, looking for L'Oreal or smiling for Shisedo, cannot be utterly line-free and without blemish, even with hefty aid from the sponsor’s product. We all have wrinkles and spots. I kind of knew this, but it wasn’t until Wriggly came along, with his brow already furrowed from the womb, that I saw the clear evidence – at the level of magnification routinely used in cosmetic advertising even my dear sweet son, who is all of 5 months old, does not have skin like a baby.
And yet thanks to the artistry of photo retouchers cosmetic companies are able to make claims, visually, that they cannot possibly deliver on. It never fails to astound me that this isn’t false advertising. If I was selling house paint and I said that it would stay on ten times longer than it actually does, without any flaking or need to reapply, someone would rely on that promise and then take me to the Commerce Commission when the product, inevitably, fell short of the impossible claims I had made.
Many’s the time I used to look at a lippy advert and think “I’m gonna get me some of that and my lips will look more like that lady’s.” In hope I headed to the pharmacy, eagerly shelled out for the goods, then applied them with a sense of excited anticipation that my days of thin, pale, dry lips might be over forever. Invariably within two hours I’d be disappointed by the sad naked-lipped reality of Big Cosmetic’s big lies. Yes, I’m bitter.
Research song lyrics show that reading beauty magazines will only make you feel ugly. This is primarily because of the pictures used in advertising, and in “editorial content” which is anything but. I guess I’m a bit naïve, but I didn’t realize that a lot of the make-up articles are actually paid spots. That story on how best to deforest your legs this summer has been brought to you by the makers of razors and waxing strips, and a beauty salon owner or two, rather than as a public service designed to fairly inform you, dear reader, about your options in the defoliant department.*
Being a forthright political type, from time to time someone asks me what piece of legislation I would pass if I could choose any law change at all. I’m always tempted by my imaginary Truth in Advertising (Bring Down Big Cosmetic) Bill, but I’m too embarrassed so I push it to the back of my mental filing cabinet and bring out something more worthy and robust.
My solution so far has been to just avoid Big Cosmetic most of the time. I buy my make-up from a NZ company that doesn’t do the misleading advert thing (so far), and rarely do I put that face on. I quite enjoy it when I do get to dress-up, and play around with the ungents and powders, although I have very little expertise due to my formative years as a tomboy. I’m always a bit worried that I’ve done it all wrong, because I certainly don’t look like one of those adverts when I’ve finished dabbling with the brushes and pots.
At heart I believe we should expect more from Big Cosmetic, and from magazine publishers, than advertising that makes lying an art form. After all, aren’t we worth it?
* My observations here are that I’m too wimpy for waxing, too time-poor for shaving, too cheap for the electro-pulse thingy, too allergenic for those depilation creams, but also too conformist to go free range.
And it’s all sizzle and no sausage.
Airbrushing creates known unknowns. We know that the face before us, looking for L'Oreal or smiling for Shisedo, cannot be utterly line-free and without blemish, even with hefty aid from the sponsor’s product. We all have wrinkles and spots. I kind of knew this, but it wasn’t until Wriggly came along, with his brow already furrowed from the womb, that I saw the clear evidence – at the level of magnification routinely used in cosmetic advertising even my dear sweet son, who is all of 5 months old, does not have skin like a baby.
And yet thanks to the artistry of photo retouchers cosmetic companies are able to make claims, visually, that they cannot possibly deliver on. It never fails to astound me that this isn’t false advertising. If I was selling house paint and I said that it would stay on ten times longer than it actually does, without any flaking or need to reapply, someone would rely on that promise and then take me to the Commerce Commission when the product, inevitably, fell short of the impossible claims I had made.
Many’s the time I used to look at a lippy advert and think “I’m gonna get me some of that and my lips will look more like that lady’s.” In hope I headed to the pharmacy, eagerly shelled out for the goods, then applied them with a sense of excited anticipation that my days of thin, pale, dry lips might be over forever. Invariably within two hours I’d be disappointed by the sad naked-lipped reality of Big Cosmetic’s big lies. Yes, I’m bitter.
Being a forthright political type, from time to time someone asks me what piece of legislation I would pass if I could choose any law change at all. I’m always tempted by my imaginary Truth in Advertising (Bring Down Big Cosmetic) Bill, but I’m too embarrassed so I push it to the back of my mental filing cabinet and bring out something more worthy and robust.
My solution so far has been to just avoid Big Cosmetic most of the time. I buy my make-up from a NZ company that doesn’t do the misleading advert thing (so far), and rarely do I put that face on. I quite enjoy it when I do get to dress-up, and play around with the ungents and powders, although I have very little expertise due to my formative years as a tomboy. I’m always a bit worried that I’ve done it all wrong, because I certainly don’t look like one of those adverts when I’ve finished dabbling with the brushes and pots.
At heart I believe we should expect more from Big Cosmetic, and from magazine publishers, than advertising that makes lying an art form. After all, aren’t we worth it?
* My observations here are that I’m too wimpy for waxing, too time-poor for shaving, too cheap for the electro-pulse thingy, too allergenic for those depilation creams, but also too conformist to go free range.
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