The Value Of Makeup Is Declining

Like anyone would be
I am flattered by your fascination with me
Like any hot blooded woman
I have simply wanted an object to crave
– “Uninvited”

Women overestimate, and men underestimate, the impact makeup has on women’s looks. For the majority of women, expertly applied makeup adds half a point to 1 point to their facial attractiveness. A minority benefits from a generous 2 point increase to their beauty ranking. A few very ugly women see no improvement (lipstick on a pig syndrome). And a very few odd-looking catwalk models with angular, bony faces can see incredible leaps of beauty from makeup (and favorable lighting), sometimes on the order of a 4 or 5 point jump up the looks scale.

The average woman, of course, thinks that makeup conceals all her flaws (it doesn’t, particularly flaws arising from asymmetry or masculinized features, such as manjaws) and beautifies her beyond her relative beauty ranking in the general female population. The average man, who, it should be noted, has little experience bedding a lot of pretty women, thinks women won’t look very different in the morning, sans makeup. These neophyte men are often shocked by the difference dim light and eye shadow can play on their perception. Makeup may only grant a one point improvement to women, but one point is serious business on a ten point scale.

Since nearly all women use makeup on a regular or semi-regular basis, the advantage any one woman gets from makeup is that it allows her to stay in the game. Not using makeup is akin to walking into a heated mating environment with curlers in her hair and bits of tissue paper on her freshly popped zits. She’s gotta keep up with the Janeses. Unless she is part of the 1% of women with unearthly natural beauty that shines better without makeup, going out in public without her “face” on is accepting a severe handicap to her SMV.

So makeup does give women a nontrivial boost to their absolute SMV, if not their relative SMV. This matters, because absolute female beauty is more important than relative female beauty for attracting men. A plain jane in a roomful of warpigs will doubtless earn more male attention, but she still won’t be any man’s ideal mate. Men have the golden ratio embedded in their brains, and a less ugly girl is not the same as a pretty girl.

We know makeup has mating value for women, else they wouldn’t spend billions caking themselves in it. But does makeup have less value today than it did in the recent past? Think about the typical woman’s dating life 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago. She lived with her parents until she got married. Long courtships were the norm. She was dropped off at home by her date before the night was out. If there was a morning after, it usually meant wedding nuptials were exchanged the day before. If there was premarital sex, it happened under conditions (read: non-cohabitating) that ensured the woman would still be made up post-coitus.

The effect of this dating system was that men would hardly ever see the women they dated *without* their makeup on. Many a man didn’t see the honest, true woman he was dating/sexing until he put a ring on it. The women of yore benefited from this system that allowed them to avoid “just being themselves” just long enough to entrap entranced men in lifelong servitude.

Fast forward to today. Morning afters happen within weeks, sometimes within hours, of meeting a woman. This means men are seeing women in all their natural glory long before any marital vows are whispered about. That hot babe you wanted to fuck so badly the night before has morphed into a moldy loaf of bread with half her face mashed into a wrinkled mess in your pillow. The illusion shattered, a relationship with this creature has suddenly seemed a lot less inviting.

The power of makeup is not what it used to be, for the simple reason that men are seeing women without their makeup sooner, and more often. This unpainted state of affairs has hit cougars and marginal girls the hardest, for whom makeup is their last salvation from a life of depressing singledom.

Is the denuded woman’s face her worst foe? A good case can be made that a culture stripped of its illusory power of makeup has contributed to falling marriage rates and delayed marriage and men in general not giving a flying fuck about impressing women. Yeah, maybe it’s not a major contributor, (female obesity would claim the corpulent crown as a major contributor), but it could play a role. The story of decivilizing cultures is partly the story of women ousted from their vaunted position in society as sublime muses for men’s hearts.

PS Occasionally a dummy feminist hater (but i repeat myself thricely!) will stroll in this happy cunting ground claiming makeup allows her to fool men that she’s hotter than she is, and to get what she wants from them, even marriage. I always respond that such a claim conveniently overlooks the reality of the morning after. You can dye, but you can’t hide…