Our lives go a hundred miles an hour and we are constantly taking in media whether is be in the formation of TV, Adverts or just the Internet. One thing I have come to noticed is the high standard of beauty us woman are expected to uphold. We are expected to look like Beyonce, to have popping eyes and flawless skin with cheekbones so sharp they could kill a man… But we couldn’t possibly wear makeup to achieve this look because then we would be “false advertising” right? But whats wrong with that? If the magazine articles can do that then why can’t we?
It’s hard for woman because we are expected to maintain this flawless skin and amazing facial structure simply because this is how the media has portrayed a “natural” look on a highly edited celebrity. Now i’m not too sure if everybody knows this, but you see celebrities have access to high end makeup-artists, who have only the best of the best makeup, and before their faces are plastered all of a magazine they have been heavily edited using state of the art photo editing software. So someone please tell us, how else are we expected to keep up without the use of makeup? You want us to look like Beyonce well I’m sorry to say but that doesn’t come naturally.
Now a lot of people, particularly men, started to get offended but how far a lot have woman had come with their skills of applying makeup. So one man took it into his own hands to create the meme “take her swimming on the first date”. Now this meme originated last February 2015 when twitter user @h_menace tweeted out this photo captioning it “The reason why you gotta take a bitch swimming on the first date”.
Now this caused a viral reaction where a lot of people agreed and felt outraged that we, as woman, had “fooled” men into believing we look a certain way. The meme started to spread like wildfire. There were thousands of new images surfacing every day of woman before and after makeup with the caption “Take her swimming on the first date”. Many people disregarding the feelings of those woman in the pictures. Not every one has perfect skin, and if someone has the ability to fix that with a bit of makeup to give them the confidence they need then why is that anybody’s business? What gives anybody the right to judge another person on what makes them happy? This sparked a lot of woman to clap back and make this meme a joke. Twitter started blowing up with woman captioning screen shots of over dramatic looks with “I really thought she was a ____, take her swimming on the first date” to put the supporter in their place.
I found a really interesting segment from the talk show bethenny. The show asks its guests and audience whether they feel wearing makeup is false advertising, I feel that Retta explains it perfectly in the video below saying:
“I don’t think that it’s false advertising in that, society has forced us into this corner, where we have to look like this.”
I feel like that statement really just sums up why woman feel the need to look a certain way. I noticed in the video that the first woman who spoke against false advertising was still wearing makeup, even though she apparently disagrees with it she still feels some form of pressure to wear it. I also find it interesting that the second person who speaks against makeup (male) immediately reverts to the rating woman by numbers – which for me personally shows how he judges woman by their looks first rather than their personality only pressuring woman to feel the need to wear makeup more. The host then goes on to say that she feels as though we need to look a certain way to lure men in so they can actually get to know how smart and amazing we really are, which seconds the idea of woman being seen for their looks first. Take a look at the video below.
I could go on about this topic till the cows come home. But the main thing I for one would really like to know why men feel so fooled? If you are the the one who’s stupid to think my lips come in 20 different shades and my eyes have natural black liner then that’s on you. I think we need to take a step back and stop getting angry at those of us who are trying to keep up when the medias standards and get angry with the media for creating them instead.
References:
Lips from banner
Video of Beyonce getting edited
Buzzfeed article on THSOTFD
Tumblrs search for THSOTFD