Stars Without Makeup

By all accounts, I was a very beautiful woman in my youth. 

I am unable to readily find the discussion, but I once talked about my no dating policy on an overwhelmingly male forum and my opinion that dating is far too often a polite form of prostitution. Someone said something like "You have strange ideas about dating." acting like I was neurotic and someone else replied to that with something like "Have you seen her profile picture? It's linked (here)." suggesting that I was very beautiful and perhaps that shaped my negative views of dating.

The photo in question was taken of me without makeup while I was homeless. I was in my late forties.

I didn't think it was a particularly good photo. It was more like a candid photo taken with a cheap phone.

I was surprised to hear someone use that photo as evidence that perhaps my great beauty made my weirdo opinions understandable.

Whatever I actually looked like, I never felt I measured up to cultural expectations of beauty. I spent too much time reading fashion magazines and feeling ugly in comparison to the photos found therein.

My mother was a very grounded individual and when we saw Terms of Endearment and I said something about some catty bitch being more beautiful than the woman she was insulting, she casually dismissed that as "She's just wearing more makeup."

I was somewhat taken aback by that remark and it stayed with me. I eventually made a point of regularly reading stars without makeup articles to deprogram myself and try to see the world more through my mother's eyes.

When I was friends with Genevieve, a troubled trans youth, she asked me for a photo and I sent her one of my unmade up face because I don't wear makeup. She was strongly critical and I knew she was brainwashed by movies and fashion magazines and such as I once had been and this was not healthy for her.

I told her "Look up photos of Madonna without makeup. I actually look kind of like Madonna when she's not wearing makeup."

She did some searching and sheepishly said "Yeah, you kind of do."

That's notable for two reasons:

1. Genevieve was an extremely gifted individual from an abusive family, so she was a particularly toxic perfectionist and hypercritical of everything all the time.

2. While the press regularly drags most celebrities about how they look without makeup, they have been surprisingly kind to Madonna about her unmade up photos.

I saw one piece where they head into it sounding like "We are about to talk shit about Madonna!!!" and ends with "She looks okay without makeup."

Sort of the same sheepish admission Genevieve made.

So when I tell you I look kind of like Madonna without makeup, I'm telling you that if you remove EVERYONE'S makeup and level the playing field, odds are good I'm one of the most beautiful women in the world. I just don't wear makeup.

And I'm a dirt poor loser with no life which MAY be mostly about my health issues. Or it may not be.

Wherever you go, there you are. I have no means to A-B test my life and determine what percentage of my financial problems are due to my lack of energy, what percentage are due to my lack of makeup and what percentage are due to other things.

But I can't help but FEEL like my lack of makeup is a primary root cause of being a social outcast with no real career. Given the evidence that suggests I'm quite beautiful, so beautiful that I actually never really learned a lot of makeup techniques because I never really wore a ton of makeup, it's particularly embittering to feel like I'm probably beautiful enough to be Cinderella -- if ONLY I wore makeup.

And that's not going to happen because of my genetic disorder.

I am generally pretty live and let live. I'm not REALLY interested in trying to tell other women they are "wrong" to wear makeup and I can prove that.

I posted a piece about makeup on Metafilter and it being Metafilter, the initial response was "Maybe women shouldn't have to wear makeup!" but one person also said If I misread the framing, my bad.

I didn't like this direction of the discussion, so then I replied with:

Or, you know, maybe I suck at titles and have limited experience at doing FPPs. "Walk a mile in her face" was taken from a line on the page it came from.

I think my interest was more in building bridges than in promoting some specific outcome or agenda (other than improved cross-gender understanding).

Because I actually have substantial moderating experience, so I knew how to crawl on my belly and get such things out of the way and let people of all types chime in.

To my satisfaction, one of the follow-up comments was casually pro makeup in a "This is just MY experience" kind of way and the cherry on top is it was left by some BITCH who fucking HATED me and was routinely ugly to me in the mefi chat room (of which there are no records).

I joke about being the next Twiggy but I don't really want to tell other women YOU shouldn't wear makeup. I just want to tell planet Earth "Get off MY lawn, assholes. I have an extremely compelling reason why I don't wear makeup. You feel free to do you but stop making MY life harder. I look fine without makeup."

Footnote 

This is a follow-up to my last post on this site because I felt like I didn't adequately elucidate this point. It's not that I'm UGLY without makeup. Yet I'm still not socially acceptable for playing the PR game, whether in person at an office job or online via profile pics which I currently don't have anywhere.