Dear boys who tell girls they look better without makeup,
You are not a superhero. You are not being the “good guy”. You are being a complete and utter douchebag. No girl wants to hear this. Girls have lived in their bodies enough to know what makes them look good and what makes them look bad. And it’s none of your business, it’s HER CHOICE. Not every single girl on the planet earth is an insecure mess, as you seem to believe.
But go ahead, there’s nothing more attractive than saying “I think you should stop doing something you like and prefer with your body because I don’t like it.”
While I agree with this to some extent, I also think that it IS a valid point in some cases when men (or other women) call out women for wearing too much make up. I’m a total advocate for putting on as much make up as you please, but at some point, there ARE instances where it shows that all of that make up is meant to hide insecurities.
As there’s nothing wrong with having a girlfriend that wears a lot of make up, there also ISN’T anything wrong with someone who prefers to have a girlfriend that doesn’t. Some of the time, they look better without it. Depends on the girl.
This sort of thing can get pretty ridiculous. OP: you don’t speak for all women, and some do want to hear it. Some women actually like getting complimented by men. I know! It sounds ridiculous I know, but some women actually change their appearance deliberately so that men will find them attractive! They don’t just do it because they prefer it.
According to the average Tumblr user who has skim-read feminism 101, if I compliment what a girl is wearing I’m policing her clothing. How dare I tell women what looks good on them? If I say a girl is pretty, I’m forcing my beauty standards on to women. Why should I, a man, get to decide what is attractive? I’m oppressing any girl I speak to. But in the real world, that’s not how people react. People can realise that a compliment is just somebody subjectively saying that they enjoy the way you look. They don’t see it as them trying to tell you how to look, or saying that you should be sculpting your appearance to impress them because their opinion is the only one which matters. In real life, people sometimes have common sense. So if I say ‘you look better without make-up’, I’m just voicing my personal and subjective opinion. I’m not demanding that the target lives to please me. I’m not policing her appearance.
It is her choice, but many girls make that choice at least partially because they want to seem attractive to men. They want their choice to be informed. They read magazines and watch TV shows about how to look their most attractive. They listen to advice. They appreciate compliments. This is because not every girl is a repressed Tumblr SJ-fanatic who will over-react to almost anything. Obviously, not every intended compliment will be appreciated, but a good number are, and so this sort of ‘stop telling women what looks attractive’ response is ridiculous. Most women want to be attractive to men, and so in many cases men do know better than they do. Our visions of ourselves are also warped, and so we’ll find certain features really unattractive when other people don’t notice them, or we’ll think something makes us look good when to an outsider it really doesn’t. The vast majority of people I know don’t have a clue about what makes them attractive to others. They’ll take any compliments they can get.
….The main problem with those stupid memetic posts are that they completely and utterly disregard any sort of social cues or situations. They’re a propros of nothing. If you walked up to a random woman you’d never seen before, you’d get a split down of reactions:
“You don’t need makeup! You’re beautiful!” you carol to a random woman on the street, and then you bounce off and away to boost yet another flagging self esteem! Sometimes it would garner a smile. More often than not you’d get a “WTF” and the thought “..I have never seen this person before in my life how the fuck do they know what I look like without makeup??” and it becomes a subconcious terror seed.
Tip: Because a woman smiles at your compliment doesn’t mean they take it as you intended. Maybe they’re just smiling so they don’t piss off the random nutter. Maybe they’re terrified and trying not to show it. And yeah, maybe you just gave them a fluffy memory to cuddle. A smile does not necessary tell you the right answer. They tend to be placeholders we drop in there because we don’t know how the fuck else to respond.
Those things also annoy me because they’re all identical. The one holding the sign is carefully posed, with a wonderfully artistic background, and so carefully groomed with a suitably soulful expression. Look at me! they say. I am sensitive! Soulful! Different! Aren’t I a suitable mate?
No, you’re spewing random shit and thinking it makes you look deep. It makes you look like a kid saying something you think you’re supposed to say, because you saw it on a movie once. And the message isn’t about empowerment of the marvellous female form, it’s about you. Look at me. Look at meeeeee
Saying something like that to a woman you know, and have a relationship with - be it romantic, casual, or even just someone you see on the bus every day - is a very different thing to blurting it out to complete strangers. My husband doesn’t say this to me - because he knows I’ve worn non-theatrical makeup exactly once in my life (wedding, because why the fuck not). Having a random stranger flounce up and say it to me would make me think you’re an addled twat because I don’t wear makeup. You don’t know me. It’s about you. You you you. And so far, you really haven’t impressed me.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I don’t have people flounce up and say this to me on the street - because actual face to face interaction makes people fucking stop and think “Yeah, this would be a stupid idea.” The internet strips those little brakes away and enables freeform jackassery.
It’s easy to say shit like this on the internet, with no intent, no actual messy face-to-facing, nothing of any form of interaction behind it. And it becomes meaningless noise, mass-packaged and flung out into the ether. There’s no fucking backbone behind it, no intent and it’s a mindless meme. For every one of these jackasses trying to be soulful there’s a thousand people who actually are - and they don’t need to fling it out like paper chaff under a fake name on the internet.
