I am going to begin this article with an overarching statement about society and the feminist struggle that is going to make you roll your eyes and lament about how sensitive and whiny our generation is. I am sorry in advance. But seriously, lets talk about gender roles. In American society, there are some very narrow conceptions of beauty, especially for women. The defining criteria for being beautiful/sexy/attractive/feminine put women in a much smaller box barred by many more stipulations for beauty than men. It has been studied and shown that women find personality to be a far bigger factor in attractiveness than men view personality, a trait that allow men a far bigger 'box of attractiveness' than women are allowed. Men and women are equally at risk for acne and pimples, yet men make no effort to hide these flaws, while women are expected by mainstream society to cover up these blemishes via makeup, and to go further to emphasize their eyes, their lips, to make their nose look smaller with contouring, and make their eyelashes bigger. Women are taught their flaws should be hidden, fixed, and are unacceptable to be shown. Men are taught to wear them blatantly and that they will be looked past like the insignificant things they are. This is not to say that men face no judgement or harsh words, men face their own standards of beauty and repercussions when society decides they do not meet them. However, men stand as what they are, full body hair, smelling of sweat, acne and blemishes, shorter or taller than their standards expect them to be, and they are not expected to hide a thing. Their hair and smell is expected of a man, and a source of attractiveness even. Their acne goes unnoticed and shorter men do not in majority wear high heels to improve upon their height. A guy friend once laughed at me for waking up an hour before I had to leave the house so that I could shower, shave, put on make up and do my hair. He said he woke up fifteen minutes before he had to leave so he could brush his teeth and gel his hair, (honestly I am skeptic of the brushing his teeth part because his breath was always something I avidly avoided.) Now years later I wish I could explain to him that that is because society has radically different expectations of what we both must do to be sufficiently beautiful.

I want to be sure that this doesn’t sound like an article railing on men and society for the endless plight of women, because the world is complicated and some things like beauty and feminine standards evolve and are perpetuated by many things. In fact, this standard isn’t necessarily always a bad thing. In light of this different expectation of beauty for women, many women have found a source of style, pride, and individuality. Fashion, make up and other constructs of female beauty have become an art, one used by women across the world to express their own femininity, power, and uniqueness. While unrealistic photo-shopping and the horror stories many models have to share of the way they were bullied into making their bodies look a certain way are art forms that offer more detriment than beauty, many people would be greatly offended and distraught by a war against feminine beauty and all the wonderful, creative techniques one uses to achieve it. As they should. Everyone should be allowed to feel beautiful.

So what is so wrong with telling girls they don’t need make up, Elise? What is your point? My point is that girls don’t wear make up because they think that they are ugly without it. They don’t need the proverbial knight-on-a-white-horse to come in and save them from some all consuming perception that they need make up or fancy clothing or entirely hairless bodies to be beautiful. Girls wear make up because A) as a girl in our American generation it is widely conceived as more beautiful to have a painted face, lips, eyes than to appear natural with patchy skin, even if their natural look doesn’t bother them a bit; or reason B is that they like wearing make up and feel that is a way to express themselves and a way to feel beautiful and what’s wrong with that? Most girls will unquestionably take it as a compliment when someone tells them they don’t need make up, or look beautiful without it, but it is time we end that line. Telling a girl they don’t need make up isn’t a compliment, it should be an expectation. Telling someone they are beautiful without altering their natural state, without removing their hair and shaping their body to conform to the societal standards of beauty shouldn't be a statement offered up like some rare token of appreciation. It is not as if the girl who is told they 'look fine without make up' is different from the other women in the world who 'need' make up in order to be considered worthy of attention, beauty, or a feeling of their own self worth. It is time we start changing beauty expectations so that all genders are playing in the same field, and every time someone tells a woman they don’t need to wear makeup, they say "I know."