Femininity (22 page)

A notion that one is doing something constructive, something beneficial, is another
part of the cosmetic urge. When the ancient Egyptians, man, woman and child, rimmed
their eyes with kohl, the effect was stylized and sensual, but it also reduced intense
glare from the desert sun and was believed to ward off infection. Purveyors of tinctures
and lotions always trade on the
hope and promise of scientific improvement, of medicinal wonders. Consequently, they
have often been charlatans with a grand disposition toward mumbo jumbo and unsubstantiated
claims. The modern business of cosmetics has its own Horatio Alger story: the young
woman blessed by nature with extraordinary skin who parlays a face cream, her “aunt’s
original recipe from the old country,” into a vast, lucrative empire. With a slight
variation in scenario, these heroines became known, in fact, as the Cosmetics Queens:
Madame Rachel, Helena Rubinstein, Elizabeth Arden, Estée Lauder, Irma Shorell, Madame
C. J. Walker and others.

Cosmetics and perfumes were used by aristocrats to preserve a haughty appearance and
to indulge the esthetic sense, but they and the aspiring gentry who copied their manners
were not the only people who set themselves apart by style and scent from the dreary,
unwashed masses. Face painting was a practical tool of the trade for two risky occupations
that existed outside the formal class structure—the actor and the whore. The professional
actor studied the art of greasepaint as he studied body movement and voice, to perfect
his craft of character transformation and visual illusion—a craft that included the
impersonation of women, who were not permitted to display themselves on stage. And
borrowing the tricks of the theater for the singular role she was permitted to perform
on the street and in the brothel, the professional prostitute blatantly colored her
face and perfumed her body to present the boldly magnified impression of gaiety and
erotic appeal that by an equally venerable tradition has advertised the selling of
sex and sexual fantasy from the hetaerae of ancient Greece to the hookers of Times
Square.

From its beginnings, Christianity stood opposed to the brothel, the theater and cosmetics,
often treating the three as if they were one composite evil. Preachings by Saints
Ambrose and Cyprian and the writings of Tertullian exhorted against cosmetics, jewelry
and bright clothing as a sign of the whore; a virtuous, submissive woman did not call
attention to the lures of her sex. A similar theme was expounded by Puritan moralizers
in Elizabethan England: painted women were shameful, dishonest
Jezebels and the cause of worldly sin. In fashionable Paris or in decadent Venice
where the Renaissance spirit inspired cosmetic decoration, worldly Catholics might
be immune to the idea that makeup was akin to moral looseness, but in stodgy Protestant
England and its American outpost the suspicion prevailed. In the nineteenth century,
a proper Victorian maiden made do with a blush of modesty, or surreptitiously pinched
her cheeks to bring out the color. Powder and rouge were wickedly French and belonged
to the arsenal of the fading beauty, the outrageous actress and the lady of doubtful
reputation, the demimondaine.

What can match the powder puff as an enduring symbol of femininity, even in an age
where powder, loose or pressed, has given way to liquid foundations, and the cotton
ball, the sponge, the sable brush or the tips of the fingers perform the delicate
veneer work that once required that celebrated round pad of pink or white fluff? Thirty
years have passed since powdering the nose was the quintessential feminine gesture,
but there are still Powder Rooms and Powder-Puff Derbies, and in certain parts of
the former British Empire the street term for homosexual is still “poofter,” although
the jest I remember from my childhood, “Hey, hit him with your powder puff!,” is probably
forgotten. Once the shiny nose was considered to be womankind’s chief affliction,
to be remedied several times during the course of a day with a dusting that rendered,
if it didn’t streak, a dull matte finish. Powder is now passé; its association with
upper-class whiteness and the courtesan’s wiles has been superseded by the skin that
glows with tawny color, cosmetic “proof” in modern times of vibrant health, expensive
travel and adventure. (Rouge, too, is passed but only in name. Identified too intimately
with jaded ladies of a certain age, rouge does better on the cheek and at the cash
register when it goes by the bright young name of blusher.) Femininity suffered an
identity crisis when the powder puff lost its place on the vanity table and the little
mirrored compact for touching up the shiny nose became a relic of the past. Lipstick
has been the all-purpose replacement, the modern portable expression of the feminine
soul.

When Sarah Bernhardt applied her lip rouge in public with the imperious manner she
adopted to shock the dull bourgeoisie,
she pioneered a breakthrough in cosmetic convention. The grand tragedienne was doing
for an audience what she had trained to do backstage, and what celebrated beauties
did privately in the sanctity of the boudoir—she was making up her face for the fun
and drama of it, in the pursuit of excitement and pleasure. Half a century later,
the Twenties flapper would also declare that the world was her stage, and she too
would put on bright lipstick in public to shock her parents’ staid generation, sometimes
going so far as to dab the color on her newly exposed knees. But the flapper herself
was a bourgeois creation, occasionally a deb but more often a shopgirl, a daughter
of the working class, and her lipstick did not come from Paris or the theater: it
was a standardized, mass-distributed product that she purchased in a drugstore.

What the flapper began, Hollywood took over—and magnified on the giant silver screen
with the aid of newly indispensable makeup artists. Vamps and sirens, the stereotypic
no-good women of the silent film, wore heavy eye makeup and lip paint to indicate
destructive sexuality. By the 1940s, the American motion picture was successful in
projecting an image of erotic femininity not necessarily connected with badness that
still managed to drip with dark-red lips and the latest sensation, a set of perfectly
manicured, brazen nails. Hollywood’s glamour girl of the war years (her acting was
secondary) was never without her pancake makeup, false lashes, fake nails and matching
lipstick and polish, and from the moment she made her stunning impact as the GI’s
pinup and hubba-hubba queen, the very words “glamour” and “glamorous” when applied
to women became synonymous with the razzle-dazzle of cosmetic glaze as much as with
a curvaceous figure, high heels and revealing clothes.

Glamour was good for wartime morale, and Rita Hayworth seemed more appreciated in
the foxholes than the factory work of Rosie the Riveter. On the home front, writes
historian Fenja Gunn, “the whole image of glamour created an unprecedented demand
for cosmetics,” and the demand was from women of all ages and all social classes.
A luxury tax was placed on an entire range of cosmetic items in the United States
because of the petroleum shortage, and in England and France lipstick became
a black-market commodity along with silk stockings. Inside the Third Reich, where
German women were not recruited for factory labor because it might affect their childbearing,
Hitler could barely bring himself to shut down cosmetics and hair-dye production in
favor of armaments. (Albert Speer, who reports this fact in his memoirs, also records
that he was made uneasy by the heavily rouged face, in private, of Hermann Goering.
The perception of glamour in women and decadence in men often turns on a few strokes
of artificial color.)

By the time I was old enough to identify my femininity with a Revlon color chart in
the 1950s, lipstick was a redoubtable emblem of the American way of life. While the
poor Soviet woman had to make do, we heard, with only one shade—a muddy yellowish
brown produced by the State—we in the free world were codifying our sexual mores,
guilt-ridden and trophy-oriented, according to the bright-red smear. A girl of thirteen
who put on lipstick after school was fast and headed for trouble. A girl of fourteen
who wore too much lipstick was boy-crazy. Lipstick on a cigarette butt was the sign
of a dangerous, sophisticated woman. Boys who came home from a date without lipstick
on their handkerchiefs hadn’t been able to score. Lipstick on a shirt collar was evidence
of a straying husband.

Intimately connected with those aspects of sex that were forbidden, smirky or hypocritical
(in actual practice why should anyone think of lipstick or any cosmetic as anything
but a barrier to the touch of skin on skin?), it is not surprising that the effort
toward sexual honesty that characterized the Sixties and Seventies should have had
an anti-makeup bias. If women in the Eighties now find they are returning to makeup
as feminine camouflage, even as they continue to raise their expectations, they are
saying that the competition—not with men, but
for
them—is so intense that the historic lure of bold, bright color and the teasing sexuality
it signifies cannot as yet be abandoned.

Putting on makeup well is an exacting craft that requires a sure hand, a knowledge
of theatrical effects and an aptitude for composition. Those who appear on camera
utilize professional makeup artists as a matter of course, yet the average woman is
expected to have skill enough for her daily routine of facial
decoration. As street makeup grows increasingly elaborate in imitation of professional
techniques, cosmetics companies disingenuously promote the myth of amateur proficiency
with color charts, diagrams and fine-point brushes, while those who can afford the
expense increasingly rely on the professional salon. The professionalization of skin
care and makeup for women who are not theatrical performers is another indication
of the pressures of competitive femininity. It is not simply that the rich can pay
for luxury and service, but that the rich can obtain a professional standard of cosmetic
beauty that is beyond the scope of most amateur efforts.

From all parts of the media the professionally cared-for face of the celebrity (it
doesn’t matter in what field the celebrity is famous) beams at us incessantly as the
face we must measure against our own. Obsessional worries about keeping up their looks
that have traditionally haunted actors, actresses and models now are shared by politicians,
executives, magazine editors, television-news reporters, talk-show moderators and
their assorted guests who, even when they are not in show business, are judged by
performance values. The media images we have grown used to are of the young and the
extraordinarily good-looking, the exceedingly successful and the remarkably well preserved,
whose preservation methods include the finest cutting and sewing that plastic surgery
can offer.

Pressures on a woman to keep up her looks are far more imperative than they are for
most men. Lately there has been talk among dermatologists that women appear to age
more rapidly than men because estrogen cumulatively thins the skin and decreases its
collagen content, causing a swifter loss of elasticity in the connective tissues.
While the thinning effects of estrogen may turn out to be a concrete, biological factor
in the promotion of wrinkles and sag, an inner sense of success or failure probably
affects skin tone and vibrancy more emphatically than any hormone or palliative cream.
If a man’s work has gone well for him, tangible achievements and the satisfactions
of power may give him a radiating glow of personal success in his middle years, but
in a culture where the chief criteria of feminine success are ephemeral youth and
beauty, a woman’s sense of failure is likely
to begin at the moment she is perceived by others as no longer young and desirable.
Society offers a woman few objective reasons to feel successful as she grows older.
More insidious, perhaps, society offers her few ways to
look
successful as she enters her middle years. Regardless of her accomplishments, which
may be substantial, given the conventions of feminine appearance there is little chance
for her to escape the look of defeat that is read into the face of a woman who is
“over the hill.”

How much of this is subjective? It is telling that the fine creases of age that define
the mature face are known in the beauty books as frown lines, for the etchings on
a woman’s forehead and the tracery at the corners of her eyes and mouth seem to project
an impression of harshness and dissatisfaction. Gravity pulls the features downward
into what might be construed as a glower. Would the effect be as devastating if feminine
charm were not measured in terms of unblemished radiance and the simple emotion of
an uncritical smile?

“After forty it’s all patching, patching, patching,” the actress Mary Martin once
observed with rueful candor; but the art of preservation begins for the female when
the bloom of youth is still on her. Thirteen years of age,
Seventeen
magazine once intoned, was not too early for a girl to begin the nightly practice
of creaming her eyes. On the warning track before she has reached the prime of life,
each succeeding year brings fresh anxiety, a new dilemma before the mirror, and the
recognition that an upstart Snow White is making her debut. How different things are
for men. The spectre of a wave of youth eager to displace them is no comforting thought,
but the younger men must prove themselves by feats of achievement, not by a dewy cheek.
The irrational dislike that sometimes overtakes a mature woman when she sees a vision
of loveliness many years her junior is based on a realistic understanding that this
is her competitor in a contest whose outcome has been preordained. There is little
solace in the knowledge that the new Snow White’s season will also be brief.

Of course the “correct” moral posture should be that mean-spirited jealousy of the
younger woman is unseemly in a person of generous character and sweet disposition,
just as attempts to
conquer the reality of one’s own diminishing attractiveness through extreme procedures
of cosmetic surgery should be beneath the dignity of a serious mind. But the irony
of the facelift is that it has become a logical extension of every night cream, moisturizer,
pore cleanser and facial masque that has gone before it, for the preservation of youthful
beauty is one of the few intense preoccupations and competitive drives that society
fully expects of its women, even as it holds them in disdain for being such a narcissistic
lot.