All Made Up

Standards of beauty change over time, and makeup creates and entrenches those standards.

As long as society judges a woman’s worth by her appearance, makeup will remain politically charged. Makeup communicates a message. It can beguile, disguise flaws, accentuate wealth or privilege, and express individuality. Throughout history, from Empress Wu to Queen Elizabeth I to Hillary Rodham Clinton, famous women have used makeup as a tool to gain and maintain power in a male-dominated world.

Women have a complicated relationship with makeup in a patriarchal society, in which men’s ideas about womanhood impose beauty standards that can sexualize and oppress women. A woman can wear makeup to demonstrate that she is powerful or to show that she is weak and needs male protection. White women with money control beauty standards, creating societal standards that pose difficulties for women of color, who might not conform to Eurocentric beauty ideals.

Society’s determination of what usage of makeup is acceptable relies on gender, wealth, race and sexuality, among other factors. Sometimes, cosmetics confer worth; sometimes, ...