August 23, 2010
hepburn
Beauty would be boring and many women malnourished if they all looked like Audrey, but damn.
(via, appropriately, the impossible cool)
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The same might be said of you, Andrew.
too true, Joseph.
Why don’t women wear lipstick anymore?
Joel, you don’t, like, live in Madison or something, do you?
If what you note is a general trend, maybe it’s because Amy Mabli and I have created a shortage by hoarding the bulk of the world’s lipstick supply.
But we don’t just hoard it. We do use it. Liberally.
Heh. Grew up in Oshkosh, then moved out to Portland OR, so Madison’s not too far off.
It’s not a local observation though; if anything our native hipster girls are more likely to wear it than the general female population.
1. If you have long hair it gets stuck in your lipstick. Then what was once lively soft flowing hair is thick with goop. Then it flicks around your face, spreading the goop everywhere.
2. If you don’t have much money it’s hard to find a lipstick color that works with your skin tone. If you have money you can go to a department store and they slather you so that works okay, but then you have to buy them and they are kind of a lot of money.
3. If you buy one and leave it in your purse in your car, then it melts and you wasted money and its a sloppy mess.
4. Finding a perfect red lipstick feels fucking impossible.
5. Beauty trends have moved more towards a natural look for years.
It’s true that as une femme d’un certaine âge, I now try to avoid that “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” look and lean toward lip stains.
Hair + lipstick or gloss can certainly spell trouble. All I can say is that last month I bobbed my hair.
What I’ve found to be lip coloring’s major drawback is that men (or women, or whomever you are kissing) find that while it may look pretty, it tastes icky.
As Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro) says in Raging Bull (of an overcooked steak), “It defeats its own purpose.”
1-4 are certainly reasons not to wear lipstick, but 1 and 3 seem to equally be arguments against lip gloss, which is still popular, and none of those factors have changed much in the last 60 years. If anything, going by the ads I see on TV, lipstick is significantly more comfortable, better looking, and less likely to come off than it was back then.
I mean, I avoid even using chap-stick because I don’t like gunk on my mouth, so I’m honestly the last person on the planet who has any right to argue that women should have to. I’m more just curious about the cultural and stylistic changes that conspire to make that photo look like a product of its era, and not something snapped last weekend.
I count lipstick and lip gloss as the same thing.
It tastes terrible, you have to constantly re-apply it, like Sheila said it gets all over whomever you are kissing, it gets onto forks and glasses when eating.
I’m not entirely sure HOW MUCH the product has changed. I’m sure it has, but I still feel like there’s only so many advances that could possibly be made.
What I object to, perhaps, is the charade of it all. I resent the feeling that I must get “made up” for men, and I know many women love to do this for themselves, but for me, I don’t even like shaving my legs much less going through the complications of lipstick. Or blush, ugh, don’t get me started on blush. What makes me even more upset is people will ask after my health if I don’t wear make up but when I do wear make up I get hit on and people tell me I am so beautiful. I don’t know quite what to make of that except it makes me see the entire enterprise as a very particular sort of fraud. But fraud that I will commit nonetheless when there is a handsome gent in the offing.
Fashion’s always a bit behind, a bit of a regression, a bit of a return, an homage. Everyone I know looks like they’re living in a weird mixture of the 70′s and the future. I could take a series of pictures for you that would look like they were taken back then, but part of it has to do with actual film stock I think. I can almost always place a film movie to within a year of its actual release or production, based on the look of the film itself.
That is a fascinating aspect of this topic, Amae — what the look of a film, even or perhaps especially a period film (obvious and familiar example: Bonnie and Clyde), reveals about its year of production.
…none of those factors have changed much in the last 60 years.
Max Factor.
Max Faktorowicz.
Though she hasn’t been seen much lately, I would, perhaps, count Nicole Kidman the Audrey of a more recent generation. Probably not the “now” generation. Amanda Mae, do you have an opinion. Is there one whom we should be paying attention to, in terms of class and style (as we get to see it) as an Audrey Hepburn for the world of now?
I’m with you, Amae, when it comes to the daily grind. When it feels like a necessity, that’s a drag, as it is a damn time-consuming operation.
I don’t think of it as a charade, though — at least not in a bad sense. Of course, it is true that I “live to embellish,” so I would say that.
Maybe what it comes down to is that you and I, generally speaking, are a couple of whey-faced white chicks. A hint of tint makes for a dramatic change, and therein lies all the difference.
Two roads diverged in a wood, I took one, then backed up and took the other.
I carry a Blistik in my pocket all the time. (My lips can chap in an instant if I’m not attentive.) I leave my lip-prints on martini glasses every where I go. (And on the cheeks of fellow travellers I meet along the road.)
What interests me, Rick, about your speaking of Nicole Kidman is that no matter your damn* response to her, she always appears soignée in public, by which I mean that the paparazzi don’t catch her with greasy, uncoiffed hair or looking washed-out and hungover. Or so it seems to me. I’m out of touch with Reality these days.
_____
*Andrew Simone
Blistik. Balm in Gilead.
I know you can buy flavored Blistik. Is there a tinted version as well?
Sheila, it seems one could say the same about Audrey Hepburn, at least in my memory. Which is my point, I think? Even when she’s photographed in jeans with kids in tow, she looks unflappable.
For the Blistik, don’t want the flavors. Don’t know about color, either. My lips are thin, why draw attention to them?
Carey Mulligan is my pick for an Audrey of Today. She’s oozing grace and style, and speaks in the most dulcet tones, a kind of husky English accent. Also I interviewed her and she is the nicest.
But I’m not sure anyone can have that kind of an impact.
Kidman is too aloof for me to consider her an Audrey.
I have a few somewhat salacious views about lip balm, lipstick, and other things involving one’s lips, but I will reserve them for fear of offending then deli ate sensibilities of some flockers. They are there for the asking for adults, though.
Man, I am late to this party but I have to chime in. I wear no other make-up except lipstick, but lipstick I love. I have hair that varies in length from a chin bob to just below the shoulder blades (can’t be bothered to get it cut more than once every 8-10 months) and while I feel you on the lip gloss capturing strands of hair, I rarely find this problem with my lipstick. I exclusively use MAC and they have several reds that make this pasty Irish girl pop. Russian Red and Ruby Woo to name two. They also come in a matte finish, so less reapplying, less stickiness.
I am not much of a fashion plate but I do love my MAC lipstick. It’s the only concession I make to the outside world when I leave my apartment and it can often make me feel a little better if I’m not wild about the outfit I have on.
I like to wear the so-called natural minerals makeup including lip creams and glazes and the like. The cottage industries on the internet are not pricey by comparison. These places are also great about letting you order samples. As far as a gloss of sorts, organic, unscented coconut oil is fantastic, for the body and the lips.
About the deep reds, I’m whimsical. Clinique’s Earth Red had a cult following among some women I knew in the deep south for a while. “Everytime I wear it SOMETHING happens,” I was told back when. So I got a tube. I tried it one night when I was going out. Sure enough, maybe it was the placebo thing, but drama broke out.
I save it now for special occasions. Or, you know, a spell of ennui.
Your speaking of the Deep South, Cece, reminds me that I have got to find a salon nearby where they will tint my lashes and brows with the really long-lasting dye, not that wimpy pure vegetable dye that is scarcely detectable in the first place, then fades within a week.
The Deep South connection is a friend who moved from Alabama to the Midwest. Every time she goes back down to visit family, she has her lashes and brows tinted at a Birmingham salon “where they use the good, dark long-lasting dye that is probably carcinogenic and illegal.”
That stuff is a precious boon to those of us with invisible brows and lashes.
HA HA HA! You are absolutely correct about that Shelia. Beauty first, health, what’s that? You would think some transplant in Chicago would have a secret connection for something like that. I’ll keep my ears open.
I’m late to the discussion, also, but wanted to chime in that my most favorite makeup item is lipstick/lip gloss. And for Amanda Mae, I wanted to recommend MAC Dubonnet lipstick. I’m a Mexican with medium brown skin, however, I have three other friends who also use it and they are: another Mexican but with skin lighter than mine, a sandy blonde with ruddy cheeks and freckles, and a very pale brunette. So, it might be worth checking it out to see if it works on you, too!
To quote the title of Elliott Erwitt’s documentary about the Kilgore (Texas) Rangerettes drill team, “Beauty knows no pain.”
There is an Oak Street (Chicago) salon I used to frequent where they use the good (bad) stuff. But it is three-and-a-half hours from where I am now. Still, if it lasts for six weeks . . .
Instead of apologizing for my belated response, I’ll just dive right in!
Audrey Hepburn elicits a similar response in me, Andrew, though I can’t be sure how much of what you feel is sexual. And Amanda, I have heard the same sickly feedback when I don’t wear make-up as often as I hear how beautiful I look when I do. None of that affects how often or when I apply mascara, blush, or lipstick, though, because for me it’s entirely related to how much self-worth I’m sporting at any given time. The more make-up, the more unstable my satisfaction with myself. I haven’t worn anything more than mascara since I left Seattle because I finally exercised enough in that city to calm the Greyhound in me. I doubt I really gained that much weight between Saint Louis and Santa Fe, but boy oh man was I feeling the lethargy that comes with eating more and moving less. Make-up made it possible for me to embrace each day with y’all I visited without crumpling in a heap of self-loathing and tears. For that, I am thankful.
Wow, that’s interesting, Kelsey. I think it’s accurate to say that for me, not wearing make-up can be an indication that I am feeling down on myself!
Am I the only one who found Audrey Hepburn’s actual personality annoying? She was a hot mess before the term existed.
I don’t know; I’ve never met her.
My cat does not wear lipstick but has that certain je ne sais Audrey all the same, in my opinion.
For many years I have been an if-I-slap-on-only-one-kind-of-makeup-it’ll-be-lipstick girl, until I noticed that the friends of mine, male and female, whom I find most ravishing all have long, thick, dark eyelashes. So now I sometimes rock some mascara instead of or in addition to the lipstick. According to beauty magazines, you’re not supposed to emphasize both your lips and your eyes, but I figure since I wear glasses, the mascara doesn’t really get seen. It’s just a subtle suggestion that there might be eyes back there.
As regards the general philosophy behind wearing makeup, my feeling is that it’s not so much a pretty/not pretty thing as it is a masked/unmasked one. When I put on makeup, what I am thinking is something like, “Now I am prepared for whatever may happen.” It’s a defensive move. It’s a sort of camouflage. Only it’s not about hiding but about keeping options open.
For example, I don’t wear foundation every day, but when I do, I don’t expect it to hide my so-called blemishes; I just expect it to make them less distracting. And I put on lipstick for a similar reason—to create contrast, thereby playing down those flaws I can’t do anything about. So if I end up talking to someone who doesn’t already know and love me, he or she might be able to hear what I’m saying instead of standing there thinking, “What is that blotch? Is that a scar? A zit? I’d better not look at it. Not looking, not looking, not looking . . .”
Also, like it or not, study after study has shown that, in a vast array of contexts, if not all of them, people treat you better if they find you attractive. So, while I may not specifically give a shit about actually attracting anyone, I know that, all other things being equal, appearing attractive will smooth my way. I go through, like, one tube of lipstick a year; it’s a tiny investment in exchange for the potential of universally more positive outcomes.
India, I like the notion of camouflage that helps to keep one’s options open.
And I like the idea of going through one tube of lipstick a year. A while back, I realized that I did not need to own three dozen tubes, especially as there were only a handful that looked really good on me.
Now if only Guerlain had not discontinued its Terre Dorée.
I like to wear a little bit of this and that, but can be quite lazy about it. Plus, the Iowan likes it when I wear no makeup at all. “But I like to see your pretty face,” he pleads. Which is such a contrast because generally southern men like women in makeup. Or at least they used to. As my sister says about her husband, “the more the better.”
Well, you do have a pretty face, Carole.
I like what India says, though — that it is not about pretty vs. not-pretty. Cindy put it well, too, in an earlier comment — that it is about how each individual likes to present herself.
Or himself. I discovered a couple of years ago, en route to a summer evening garden party, that I am very good at doing make-up for men. Jon was uncomfortable about a little inflamed spot on his face, and I touched it up perfectly with a bit of moisturizer and concealer applied delicately with a good brush. This could be a new career path for me. There was an article in last week’s NYT Style section about lines of make-up for men.
I know what you mean about Southern women and make-up. Years ago there was a contest for a slogan for Dallas, and one of the runner-up slogans was, “Dallas: More Make-up Per Mile”.