In which I am pathetically grateful... or, yay for makeup (but only for white women)
I've been obsessing and gathering data about make-up in the last month or so. It's a pattern: Around finals time every quarter/semester, I develop a creative obsession to allow me to ignore finals. Baking! Origami! Watercolor painting on very small paper! Bookbinding!
So, I've been poking through a lot of cosmetics companies' websites and product descriptions, comparing them to the recommendations of actual humans, and wading through the bullshit. It's been a fun run, because I get to play with pretty colors and brushes! And feel pretty!*
But I've noticed quite a bit how there is a clear discrepancy between the cosmetics websites and the actual human reviews and make-up vids. The vids contain humans performing femme (all cisfemale as far as I can tell/they're willing to tell) of all shapes and sizes and races. Particularly, there are people of color in RL vids, comparing notes and talking about techniques that work well with the range of skin tones and facial shapes associated with their own race.
But on the corporate websites? I have found one website so far that has any vids especially by/for POC's. ONE. (BareEscentuals, if you care.)
At first I was like, yay! Good job, BareEscentuals! I was just kind of happy that they noticed that hey, not everyone trying to buy makeup from [insert company] is as white as KitewithFish! Just pleased, really, I was.
Except that I shouldn't really have to be this pleased by such a little thing. I should think this is standard. Because it should be standard. Unless a company wants to have their slogan be, "[Insert company], cosmetics for Whites!" just as some companies really have made similar slogans about marketing themselves specifically to people of color.
My mind is trying to make me go to an angry place about this, because I've always associated the kind of passive attempting-antiracism mindset that notices the lack of POC's in the big make-up companies' mind with a kind of righteous rage about it. But more honestly, my first reaction is to just be sad. It just makes me sad that this thing that was just fun for me is hurtful and erasing to other humans, because I have to go shopping for clothes and find out that no-one had someone as short and as fat as me in mind when designing clothes and I feel erased and hurt, so I turned to make-up to be a one-size-fits-all-and-looks-great-doing-it solution, only.... not so much.
*Which goes to show just how deep the whole performing femininity thing goes, yes, but also works with my growing sense that I get to play femme my way, rather than the way I was told to back in eighth grade. I play with femme with the parts of femme that I enjoy, like choosing "girly" clothes, high heels when I want to bother, thinking about making my body look as good as I feel, picking out jewelry (or accepting it with pleasure as a gift), and playing with make-up.
Hair? bah, not my thing. I'd consider shaving my head again this summer but I think that I'd get more flak on that than I am willing to deal with. So I have some hair at the moment, but it's about an inch and a half and I've not done anything do it-just let it grow out from my peach-fuzz cut and washed it as needed. It's not a part of femme I feel like experimenting with right now.
So, I've been poking through a lot of cosmetics companies' websites and product descriptions, comparing them to the recommendations of actual humans, and wading through the bullshit. It's been a fun run, because I get to play with pretty colors and brushes! And feel pretty!*
But I've noticed quite a bit how there is a clear discrepancy between the cosmetics websites and the actual human reviews and make-up vids. The vids contain humans performing femme (all cisfemale as far as I can tell/they're willing to tell) of all shapes and sizes and races. Particularly, there are people of color in RL vids, comparing notes and talking about techniques that work well with the range of skin tones and facial shapes associated with their own race.
But on the corporate websites? I have found one website so far that has any vids especially by/for POC's. ONE. (BareEscentuals, if you care.)
At first I was like, yay! Good job, BareEscentuals! I was just kind of happy that they noticed that hey, not everyone trying to buy makeup from [insert company] is as white as KitewithFish! Just pleased, really, I was.
Except that I shouldn't really have to be this pleased by such a little thing. I should think this is standard. Because it should be standard. Unless a company wants to have their slogan be, "[Insert company], cosmetics for Whites!" just as some companies really have made similar slogans about marketing themselves specifically to people of color.
My mind is trying to make me go to an angry place about this, because I've always associated the kind of passive attempting-antiracism mindset that notices the lack of POC's in the big make-up companies' mind with a kind of righteous rage about it. But more honestly, my first reaction is to just be sad. It just makes me sad that this thing that was just fun for me is hurtful and erasing to other humans, because I have to go shopping for clothes and find out that no-one had someone as short and as fat as me in mind when designing clothes and I feel erased and hurt, so I turned to make-up to be a one-size-fits-all-and-looks-great-doing-it solution, only.... not so much.
*Which goes to show just how deep the whole performing femininity thing goes, yes, but also works with my growing sense that I get to play femme my way, rather than the way I was told to back in eighth grade. I play with femme with the parts of femme that I enjoy, like choosing "girly" clothes, high heels when I want to bother, thinking about making my body look as good as I feel, picking out jewelry (or accepting it with pleasure as a gift), and playing with make-up.
Hair? bah, not my thing. I'd consider shaving my head again this summer but I think that I'd get more flak on that than I am willing to deal with. So I have some hair at the moment, but it's about an inch and a half and I've not done anything do it-just let it grow out from my peach-fuzz cut and washed it as needed. It's not a part of femme I feel like experimenting with right now.