Blog 10: Madonnarama!

This week I decided to connect my blog to Elijah Sarkesian’s blog Madonnarama, even though it looks like he is no longer in the class as the last blog update was in September. Madonna has had such an influence on pop culture, not only for her music, but for her ever changing look. Now, I  am not going to say Madonna is the best singer but I love her music and do have a slight obsession with her. Hence my little collage of Madonna looks.

Madonna has influenced many people’s style. Whether it is a celebrity, a Halloween costume, or someone stuck in the 80s, she has had enough looks for someone to take notes from.

When Madonna first came in the spotlight in 1983 she had bleach blond hair with black roots. She looked somewhat like tomboy and definitely had attitude. As she got older she changed her style more times than I can count. She was virgin Madonna, Catholic Madonna, sexy Madonna, disco Madonna, and Hindu Madonna.

Blog 9: Femininity, Drag Queens, and Drag Kings

Traditionally women are supposed to evoke the feminine prototype that was placed upon us from the dawn of time. We are the passive, feminine homemakers and the men are the aggressive, masculine providers. As stated in Tania Modleski's essay, "Femininity as Mas(s)querade: A Feminist Approach to Mass Culture," 'masculine=production and work; feminity= consumption and passivity'.


In the realm of makeup and beauty this still rings true. Makeup is typically seen as a woman's only thing and a way to enhance your femininity. However, guys have been getting in on the action too. Drag Kings have increasingly become prominent in pop culture. Quite possibly the most well-know drag queen is RuPaul.

More drag queen images:

And quite possibly my favorite drag queen. The sweet transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania (lyrics from the movie, not my own personal description of the character), Dr. Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The taboo of dressing and changing your appearance to change your social gender roles isn't restricted to men dressing like women. Although they are not as prominent in pop culture as drag queens, there are also women who dress and make themselves up to look like men. Drag kings. 

As mentioned in Judith Halberstam's essay, "Drag Kings: Masculinity and Performance," "Drag queens have been the subject of mainstream and independent movies, and straight audiences are, and historically have been, willing to pay good money to be entertained by men in drag."

However, drag king performances are typically less successful than drag queen shows. Even in the beauty industry, you will see more guys applying makeup to look like women than you will a woman applying makeup to look like a man.  

Blog 8: The Politics of Makeup

So, I could not really figure out a correlation between this week’s readings and my topic of makeup.  I came closest in finding a topic in Tricia Rose’s essay, “A Style Nobody can Deal With: Politics, style and the Postindustrial City in Hip Hop,” however, what I got from this essay was how hip hop developed from the postindustrial cities in New York in the 70s and 80s when the urban areas were basically left with a less than desirable economic situation, and how the youth of New York took these experiences and hip hop blossomed. To sum in up.  This, however, is not something I want to address in terms of beauty and makeup. So instead, since politics is mentioned in this essay, I am going to write about a recent political issue that was recently raised in the beauty community.

“MAC collaborated with designer brand Rodarte to release a collection called Rodarte, which they claim is inspired by the ‘etheral beauty of the towns that border USA and Mexico.’ In particular, they named two of their nail polish colours Juarez (a pale pink) and Factory (a pale green). These two names in particular received much backlash, as people accused MAC of exploiting the controversy and violence there for their own profit. In particular, Juarez and Factory were really offensive to many girls, because Juarez is pretty much a poster child for violence, drug crimes, cross-border trafficking, and border-town factories.”¹ But the main crimes in particular that are associated with this Mexican city are femicide and rape. Many women in this town are raped and go missing every year with little to no report of these crimes.

Even MAC’s campaign photo for the collection is quite disturbing:

If you look at the photo, the model is quite skinny, pretty much emaciated, and her makeup is done to make her skin look extremely pale, her eye shadow is just a ring of dark shadow around her eyes, and her face is contoured to make her cheeks and face look even more sunken. If you look even closer, on the left of the ad, you can see an outline of a women. A ghost.

Coming from an uber, major makeup company like MAC, I think they should know better and I find this extremely stupid and ignorant on their part. Yes, some companies like to push the boundaries such as NARS naming a couple of their blushes orgasm and deep throat, but they did not come out with an entire collection based on sex or porn. Even if they did I think it would have been less offensive than this Rodarte collecion.

1. http://musicalhouses.blogspot.com/2010/07/mac-rodarte-collection-how-to-give-your.html

Blog 7: Appealing to the Lowest Common Denominator

This week I will be drawing my inspiration for my blog entry from the following two quotes from Paul Willis’ essay “Symbolic Creativity”:

1.   1. Oddly and ironically, it is from capitalism’s own order of priorities, roles, rules and instrumentalities in production…that informal cultures seek escape and alternatives in capitalist leisure consumption.

     There is a widespread view that these means and materials, the cultural media and cultural commodities, must appeal to the lowest common denominators of tastes.

2. How this relates to makeup is exactly the same. The creative directors of these beauty companies have to appeal to both the upper class who supposedly have the high end taste, but also to those who are considered lower class.  There are a few ways the companies do this, but I will be focusing on two.

One way these makeup companies appeal to “the lowest common denominators of tastes” is by releasing products under different brand names that are their daughter and/or sister companies. Estee Lauder, for instance, is the parent company to both MAC Cosmetics and L’Oreal Cosmetics. Estee Lauder is also the parent company to many other brands, but these are the most known and best representations of the high, middle, and low ends of the company in terms of marketing.  You will never see an ad for Estee Lauder in a gossip magazine or a magazine like Seventeen. Just like you would never or rarely ever see an ad for L’Oreal in a magazine like Vogue.  Both brands are of the same company, yet marketed to different demographics.  One of the main reasons they do this is because the brand that is marketed to the lower end of the market will undoubtedly sell more products than that which is marketed to the higher end of the market. This is because, in reality, there are more people in the world who can afford L’Oreal than those who can afford Estee Lauder. This also happens in any venture in production and marketing. Many celebrities who choose to come out with their own line of products choose to release them in department store like Macy’s or supercenters like Walmart and Target. This is because it makes the product more accessible and more people can afford it, therefore, you sell more and make more money. 

For those who “seek escape and alternatives in capitalist leisure consumption,” may find MAC Cosmetics more desirable because it has the tendency to appeal to both higher end and lower end consumers by being priced and marketed to what is considered “middle range”.  Although for some of us MAC is still considered pricey, it is not as pricey as its sister and parent company, Bobbi Brown and Estee Lauder. 

Blog 6: Teens and Makeup: How Soon is Too Soon?

Once I had an idea of what my blog post would be about this week, I decided to look through a Seventeen magazine to see how many thing I could find dealing with beauty and makeup. And yes, I do still receive Seventeen magazine. Do not judge me. I did not have to look far because right on the cover was "Look Pretty Now!" and "653 Fashion and Beauty Secrets!" On a side note, I have always wondered why there is an excessive use of exclamation points on and in magazines. Must you yell everything at me? But, I digress. In this particular issue, there was a total of 11 beauty ads. This does not include the many other skin care and fragrance ads that were also in the magazine. All makeup.


As we watched the "Merchants of Cool" documentary in class on Tuesday, there was one scene that stuck out to me. There was a girl at a modeling expo being interviewed by a modeling agency. When they asked how old she gets mistaken for she says 16-17 years old. When they asked what her real age was, they were shocked when they found out she was actually only 13. Although the girl was only 13, she had on a lip color that a woman in her twenties would not even wear. Well, at least I wouldn't. I am personally not interested in looking like a 40 year old woman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3sdzBa88Q8 

When I did a search for teen makeup on YouTube, there were 2,990 search results. Many of these results were smokey eyes or some other form of heavy makeup like the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9p1ZLaT3Nk


Now, I know the title says "Teen Makeup or a Night Out," but, honestly, why would a teen need to wear that much makeup on any occasion? 
  
However, I did come across this video a while back when it was originally posted back in September of 2009. I think he has the right idea when it comes to teen makeup. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqSLyTTR_k0


But the one scene that stuck out to me the most in the "Merchants of Cool" documentary was when the teen girls were in their hotel room putting on tins of makeup and one teen girl, Barbra, says she has to, no, needs to look good for people or else it will ruin her day. This is very disturbing to me. Not only are they too young to have on all of that makeup, but it should not matter how people perceive you. You should not want or feel you need to look good for other people. Yes, I do wear and love makeup and believe it can enhance what is naturally there, but I'm 20 years old, not 13.


It is my own personal opinion that 13 is entirely too young to be wearing as much makeup as the girls in this documentary do. I believe at that age it is best to stick with no makeup or just eye liner, mascara and lipgloss at the most.