Anonymous beauty blogger, Miss Malcontent, has written a guest blog for Cult Beauty. She wants to know what’s so noble about going makeup-free anyway? And is it all that liberating? Who told this Gok Wan he was an expert in beauty anyway…
“Given that Gok Wan fever seems to have gripped the nation, girlfriend, it seems that in berating this omnipresent persona, I’m at risk of incurring the wrath of womankind. Well, I’m willing to risk it. The Gok may know fashion (although I’ve always felt oddly uncomfortable watching him coax his reticent subjects out of their clothes by complimenting their ‘bangers’), but having sat through the last episode of Miss Naked Beauty, I found myself questioning just what he knew, if anything, about the beauty industry.
Just five minutes in and I was picking holes in his logic, which seemed glaringly, and fundamentally, flawed. Being a ‘naked beauty’ is not the same as a ‘natural beauty’, for one, and it was clear which members of his chosen few fell into the former, and latter, categories. In this ‘new age’ of ours, we’re supposed to believe that all women are beautiful, but watching a man force his female protégés out onto the streets, bare of face and acutely embarrassed, I found the premise for his show belittling, insulting even – and not in the least empowering.
What really riled me, however, was the hypocritical and reactionary nature of the show. He’s helped women shed their clothes, so what territory was left to commandeer? Cosmetics, of course. But consider this – had Gok not called upon the country’s best hair and make-up artists to aid him in his makeover of the self-esteem-stunted women on How To Look Good Naked, it is doubtful that any of them would have removed a sock in front of the nation, let alone their underwear. How these women felt when they were ‘unveiled’ in front of the floor-length mirror had more to do with the way their eyes sparkled, skin glowed and hair glistened, than anything else. Aesthetic benefits perhaps, but still beautifully effective. You would have thought that spending years watching such transformations would have taught Mr. Wan a lesson or two. Namely, that the complex network of psychological associations that link women to their make-up are not necessarily negative.
And, I hate to play the gender card, but can a man really understand the intricacies of this relationship? How a magenta lip stain can brighten the day (and face) of the most world-weary woman or a set of false lashes transform the shy into a spotlight stealer? These are joyous, interesting and valid forms of physical and emotional expression. Stripping a woman of them does not only seem mean of spirit, but also oddly dispiriting. The step-by-step tips shared by the show’s expert, with a view to ‘enhancing’, not masking the face, also left me asking why on earth all women would feel compelled to follow the same, generalised make-up diktat.
Why should extravagant, eye-popping, over the top, extraordinary or extreme make-up be outlawed? Why be so prescriptive about something which amounts to nothing more than the will for self-expression? After all, part of what makes us Brits such an interesting bunch is just how much we like to prep and preen – and the fact that our peacock personalities have always refused to be stymied by the establishment. Women may have burned their bras to shed traditional associations of their birth-bound roles within society, but making off with the contents of a woman’s wash-bag is hardly progress. In fact, if you want to take a didactic detour, consider how women in the 1900s could be divorced for wearing make-up, leading fiery suffragettes, a decade later, to speak volumes by staining their lips red in defiance of patriarchal norms. With the arrival of the vote, came the subsequent shifts in power – and the alluring, if somewhat controversial act, adopted by women of applying lipstick in public, following the launch of the first twist-up versions. The man, Max Factor, might have created the look of Hollywood’s belles, but it was the women, Coco Chanel, Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden, who really shaped the future of real women’s faces.
I suspect that Miss Naked Beauty was conceived with the aim of challenging visions of extreme beauty, such as women with escalating addictions to plastic surgery or WAG-wannabes who bankrupt themselves in the pursuit of acrylic-nailed and hair-extensioned excess. Perhaps it also set out to help women adopt more realistic notions of how to look good – without sunbeds or skincare that requires a second mortgage. Valid notions, perhaps, but somehow, the show still boils down to little more than a misguided war cry, maligned by this particular woman, who has always seen her warpaint as just that – a secret, statement-making weapon that spells confidence, expression and individuality.”
xx Miss Malcontent
