Tag: makeup

Facial Care and Makeup, Part I

~ Clarissa ~ 10 Comments

I have a hobby, people. I’m into makeup and facial care like there is no tomorrow. So I decided to share my knowledge of different products with my readers. For every pricier product, I will suggest a cheaper (or free) alternative because some of these products can be quite expensive.

1. Make-up removal is a very important thing to do. Please, people, never go to bed with your makeup on. It’s a horrible, horrible mistake. You can be sopping drunk or falling over with exhaustion but you should never forget to remove the makeup before sleeping, OK?

My favorite makeup cleanser is Bioderma Crealine H2o Ultra-mild Non-rinse Face and Eyes Cleanser. Mind you, it isn’t any Bioderma, it’s this specific one. A 500 ml bottle costs $27, which isn’t cheap. But it’s a very good, mild and, most importantly, effective. I tried many of those cleansers that come in the form of napkins, but they look like such a waste. And the napkins dry out soon, too.

When I don’t have money to buy the pricey Bioderma Crealine, I prefer not to buy any product at all. One can remove makeup with water, very easily and water is always good for one’s skin.

2. Facial masks are great. They offer one an excuse to relax in the bathroom and have a much needed break in a busy day. (I’m really not into this “How can I be expected to have time for myself” kind of vapid martyrdom, so please keep it out of the comment thread.) I have tried an endless number of masks and have discovered that the best mask ever is Clinique’s Turnaround 15-Minute Facial. A 2 ounce can costs $29, which is quite a lot. The good news is that you only need a small portion to create a mask, so the can lasts for quite a while.

Still, this is too expensive and many people can’t afford this mask. For such people, there is an alternative: Montagne Jeunesse masks. They are very good, there is a good variety of masks, and they only cost $1.99 each. Alternatively, one could make one’s own masks from different foodstuffs. My favorite is a sour-cream mask that only requires some  good (not fat-free, of course) sour cream to be applied to the face and kept on for 20 minutes.

Sometimes, however, even that is more than a person can afford. The important thing to remember, though, is that the central thing about facial masks is not what’s in them. They matter because they are applied while one is lying in a bath, in semi-darkness, and enjoys thoughts about one’s spectacular beauty. So as long as you can spend 20 minutes lying down, thinking happy thoughts and not rushing anywhere, you don’t really need to have anything on your face.

3. I have dry skin, so a moisturizer is crucial for me. I tried I can’t even tell you how many, including the insanely expensive La Mer (which I didn’t buy and would never consider buying because I’m not insane.)

The very very best moisturizing cream I could ever find was Olay Regenerist Micro-Sculpting Cream.  Everything they say about it in the commercial is absolutely true. It doesn’t last me very long because I use it at least twice a day, especially in winter. And it’s cheaper than almost everything else on the moisturizer market. What a wonderful product!

If you can’t afford it, you can still do many good things to moisturize. Don’t dry off your face after you wash it and let it dry on its own. (But don’t go outside in cold weather with a wet face, of course.) Never spend any time in direct sunlight without sunscreen. Wash your face with an ice cube at least three times a week. (This is a very good thing for everybody to try. If you do it in the morning, it also wakes you right up and gives you a beautiful natural blush. Highly recommended.)

A discussion of products that allow even the most clumsy people to create a beautiful smoky eye at home is coming in part two of this post.

Passive Voice Feminism

~ Clarissa ~ 36 Comments

I know that everybody must be sick and tired of my rantings about the excessive use of the passive voice in feminist writing. This is an important topic, though. Just like #OWS protesters, many feminist writers suffer from addressing vague complaints to unidentified sources of aggravation and this undermines any hope for productive activism. Take the following excerpt, for example:

I wear makeup. Not much — unobservant people would call me a non-makeup wearer — but enough to cover the “imperfections” and make my lips and cheeks a bit more rosier than they were when I woke up? Why do I do this? Generally I’m treated better when I look “prettier” in society’s eyes. Conversely, I have the choice of going barefaced, which I have on occasion. But that choice comes with the baggage of being labeled “unfeminine,” “unkempt” or “unprofessional.”

This post leaves the most interesting part of the story concealed from view. Who are the people that treat this blogger better when her cheeks are rosier and label her as “unkempt” when they are less rosy? These must be people with a lot of free time on their hands to enable them to notice the degree of rosiness of everybody’s cheeks. So I’m genuinely curious who they are.

Another question that is even more important is how the feminist in question reacts to these observations. Let’s imagine she is at work and her boss comes up to her to say, “Look, your lips aren’t all that rosy today which makes you unfeminine, so that promotion we discussed? Forget about it!” I’m not saying this can’t happen. Idiots abound, so everything is possible. It would be great to hear what the insulted feminist does in response. Takes the jerk up on a sexual harassment charge, I hope. Now, this is a story I would like to read about instead of these vague complaints about some unspecified evildoers who treat one badly and label one all kinds of things.

I’d love to participate in this struggle myself. However, I haven’t encountered a single person in the course of my long and eventful life who would be willing to discuss the lack of rosiness of my body parts. I wouldn’t be averse to meeting such an individual, to be honest, because it would be so much fun to unload on them and then describe the process here on the blog.

Sometimes, I wear a lot of makeup. Sometimes, I wear none. And for the life of me, I can’t say that anybody even notices. My colleagues are very busy people who have more important things to do than notice whether I have lipstick on. My boss notices whether I have published anything recently but I can’t imagine him giving a rat’s ass about whether I use mascara. I’m certain that he’d prefer to see me with zero makeup but a stack of publications to seeing me with the best makeup in the world and no publications. My students obviously could care less about my makeup. My friends are supposed to love me no matter how I look and calling each other “unkempt” or “unprofessional” is simply not something that we do to each other.

Mind you, I’m not saying that women don’t get treated worse if they avoid makeup. I don’t know if they do or they don’t because every single article or blog post I have ever seen on the subject suffers from the same vagueness as the one quoted above. I suggest we start putting nouns into our sentences. That’s the only way to create actual change. Instead of saying, “I’m being treated badly and labeled XYZ”, let’s say “Today, Mr. Such-and-such came up to me at work and made an unacceptable comment about my appearance. I told him that he is a vile jerk and I will be reporting him to the Dean’s office. This is a procedure I followed and I hope it will be useful to other women who find themselves in the same situation.”

Wouldn’t you agree that the second course of action is a lot more likely to produce results?