I feel pretty...

[bethlakshmi]

oh so pretty...

Somehow this corresponds well with cristovau's post, but for an entirely different reason.

Instead of dancing last night, the Dancing Ladies (aka "Anne's Troupe", aka "Bad Raq Sani Sara" spelled badly) did a makeup night at my instigation. Sometimes I'm "Dancing Lady Special Ops", bringing in things that are tangentially related to Middle Eastern dance - like makeup, strip tease, and silk dying for costuming.


This time, Jen hosted and tpau graciously came and taught us the fundamentals of makeup and face care. dervishspin called it "Remedial Girl School" and in a way, she's right. This is stuff that I learned early on - between being girly, having a girly mom, having a totally hip, and very girly grandma, and being a theater geek. But at least half our little clan of ladies haven't had the same experience.

It was definitely a good class. I learned stuff I didn't know - stuff that has changed since the last time I had a full face care class:
- remove makeup with upward strokes
- moisturize and apply foundation with downward strokes
- don't rub with index finger, you can tear the skin, use last three fingers instead
- don't rub at all near eyes, the skin is very sensitive
- lipstick is now a three-tier thing - "liner" is now worn as foundation over entire lip, lipstick is worn on top, gloss is added for sheen and a slight twist on the lipstick color.
- applying liner from outside of eye to inside of eye gives more control, and helps avoid both heavy-duty cleopatra effect, and getting goop in your tear ducts (ouchie!)

Alot of other stuff was not new to me, but it's good to review.

I think it was good for all of us to have some time to play, and where the only thing we wasted by trying something new was a bit of time, and possibly looking goofy when we go home to people who love us. That's a very different state of affairs from putting makeup on pre-show. Having time to screw up with your experimentation is just as important with make up as with dance.

We did take plenty of time, the bulk of the ladies didn't get out until 11:00!! Jen and tpau and I didn't wrap up until 12:45! Oy! That's mostly my fault. I suffered a great makeup tragedy, loosing all my favorite makeup and the basics (blush, foundation, etc) this winter. Having given up hope, it was my goal to replenish the stores, and get the right face-care goop, as well, as I'm not a 23 year old chippie anymore. Sigh. My skin doesn't look bad -- but my goal is to keep it that way.


So... in celebration of my massive makeup shopping exploits, I am wearing a modest selection of it now. Not surprisingly, the one coworker who feels empowered to comment on the fact that I am female and sometimes do feminine things, noticed (in a nice way) that my face has color on it.


OK... so the sentence above forces me to have myself a little rant. The coworker above is a friend. The kind of friend that I actually feel comfortable talking about my actual life with. He actually made a fine judgement call in saying "hey, going somewhere special tonight?", meaning (in geek-speak) "You look nice, I see you made an effort, I care enough about you to be interested if you are doing something fun."

Now... I certainly don't want to drift all the way back to the 50's where management manuals advise males bosses to tell thier female secretaries that they look nice. Looking nice should not have to be part of the job description, if your main reason for working is to do things that are smart. I'm just as smart with makeup on as I am without.

But when did it become verboten to be both a feminine female and an engineer? I know that 20-30 years ago, women were fighting very hard for the same privileges as men - and that includes slacks in the workplace, and the right to go to work not-dolled-up - as well as equal pay for equal work, reasonable maternity leave laws, and equal opportunity. And I fully support that. I love that I can wear slacks - it's a necessity, I climb under and over machines on a regular basis and I work in a lab with floor vents.

But... I think in that time, we've given up some of the right to be women. None of the women around me wear skirts. None of the under-35 crowd wears makeup. The over-35 crowd wears extremely subtle makeup. Most of us have low-maintenance hair, many do have it long, but never wear hair in super-feminine styles - either it's down, or in a ponytail.

There's a "norm" here - the norm is, that if you are a woman, don't show it by dressing like a woman.

That ain't right.

Feminism should both include the right to not be overly "girly" and the right to be as girly as you want to be. The point is, the color on my face and the shape of my clothing has no bearing on the brain in my head. The only clothing requirement should be what you need to do your job.

It's small, it's subtle. Some of it, sad to say, is not made by men. They are somewhat victims. Anti sexual harassment propaganda has them in terror. They don't want to misstep so they avoid anything relating to being female with a vengance. Some it comes from "marketing chickies". We have a slew of business chicks who dress uber-feminine. Skirts, great makeup, great hair, tasteful jewelry. They look like a cosmetics commerical. Even if the Fabulous Fairy should come down now and smack me around for 3 hours, I would not look this fabulous for more than 20 minutes. And they are ardently non-tech. "Golly gee, how do these big servers work?" - no lie.

Ack! And so, the image of feminine female is equivalent to stupid marketing chickie. And if a miracle occured, and I came in looking that faboo on a daily basis, I'd get ever so subtly nudged into the "pretty but stupid" category. Giving presentations, handling the customer - that's different. We all get special dispensation to look nice then. The guys put on their ties, the girls whip out makeup. Even then, I usually wear slacks, with a jacket, and a nice blouse. Not a skirt.

Rant ended. Go in peace.



And... finally, while cleaning out my medicine cabinent to have some space for my new piles of makeup stuff, I found:

A LEFT CONTACT LENS!!!!

Yes, indeedy. I now have two, count 'em, two working contacts, one for each eye. And so I am wearing them now, and luxuriating in a frame-free day. And thrilled that when new_man takes a picture of me in London with Big Ben coming out of my head, my head will not be wearing glasses!!!


-Lakshmi

Comments

[mermaidlady]

Yay for no glasses! I'm also wearing no glasses again today. I love having peripheral vision again and looking like me again (not quite, the new haircut has something to do with that) and being able to wear sunglasses. However, I'm realizing how much better my vision is with my (slight) astigmatism corrected.

[tpau]

areyour lenses toric? if not, that can fix the astigmatism.

wait, you cut your hair? like short and stuff??

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Yup. I have astigmatism in my right eye, and my contacts correct for that. It's nice.

Considering my glasses are wow... eight years old at least....

[mermaidlady]

My lenses are soft and disposable. My eyes produce a lot of protein that even enzyme cleaning doesn't deal well with. After six months or less, standard lenses are yellowed and uncomfortable to wear. I've been using the 2-week disposables for more than 10 years. I only really noticed how much clearer my vision is with glasses because I just got new ones (after about 8 years with the same prescription).

[tpau]

my torics are 2 week disposables...

[mermaidlady]

Hmm... I wonder if disposable torics are made a strong as I need (-8.5).

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Wow! I thought my eyes were bad at around -6!

[tpau]

hmm, not sure, ask the doctor. my puny +0.25 and -1.25 do nto begin to compare on the other hand my astigmatism is mighty

[mermaidlady]

I'm the proverbial bat. If I ever hit -10, I'm having surgery.

[tpau]

you have no idea how nice it is to hear peopel say "oh my, that doesn't look bad on me!" peopleexpect makeup to suck. it is a sad sad state of the world...

[oakleaf-mirror.livejournal.com]

I've also seen the "marketing chickie" problem. The last office I was in, the women engineers either wore jeans and T-shirts, or bohemian skirts that would be considered "different" before they were considered "pretty," in order to be taken seriously as engineers. The secretaries and the marketing types were the ones that could dress up.

[tpau]

my issue has never beenthe "marketing chickie" i have neve rworked i nacompany big enough to have those :) but if i dres sup or wear makeup to work in any noticible way, i get askedif i have an interview that night.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to wonder if the question is an indicator of the state of the company, not unlike the Dilbert/Far Side Maxim.

Dilbert/Far Side:
- high numbers of Dilbert cartoons bode stuipid management -> unhappy engineers
- high numbers of Far Side cartoons bode well for happy engineers

Makeup/Nice Clothes Theorem:
While wearing nicer than usual clothes --
- if you are asked if you are going to a job interview - company morale (and probably profits) are low
- if you are asked about a potential hot date - company morale and profits are doing OK.

That's been true for me - when times are good, makeup must mean a hot date. When times are bad, even the presence of pantyhose instead of socks are an indicator of job-hunting, and they won't believe that "dressing up makes me feel happy" is a valid answer.

[tpau]

hmm. i never knew aobu the dilber stuff. makes sence.

i have goten the question in prospering companies as well as not. from employees and from managment.

is jsut htat i am always in jeans and t-shirt (is more cmfy that way!)

plus, i have the added fun that any time i wear a long skirt, everyone asks me if i have suddenly become religious. cause regular people only wear miniskirts...

[oakleaf-mirror.livejournal.com]

regular people only wear miniskirts...

Not with fat thighs they don't. All my skirts are below the knee.

[jducoeur]

Of course, then there's me, utterly confusing people by occasionally leaving work in a tuxedo. ("Why yes, I'm heading off to my part-time job as a secret agent...")

[mylisant.livejournal.com]

So strange, I've been thinking about things along these lines myself the past couple of days, mostly because I wore heels to work yesterday (which I almost never do) No one in my group (all male Software Engineers) seemed to notice or care. Although it was fun (for me) to notice the change in perspective that a couple of inched of added height can give you. (I didn't realize my boss was that short...) Maybe I'll try an experiment next week and wear makeup to work (something I've never done) and see what happens.

We're lucky enough here that the "marketing chickies" actually _do_ have brains, and are strong assertive intelligent women, so I don't feel your pain in that department so much. There are also some of the no-makeup, jeans-and-a-sweater types in the less technical disciplines here. All-in-all I'd say I've got it pretty good here, although it did weird me out when the Director sent roses to just the women in the organization on Valentine's day.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

In a conversation recently with a coworker (the empowered one) about "geek quirks" - the idea being that all computer geeks seem to have some sort of non-conforming social quirk - he said that my "quirk" is wearing 3" heels, and being 6' tall! I believe it went:

"You work, kiddo, is that you walk around, at 6 freaking feet tall, believing you are a "petite flower of feminity" in 3" freaking heels, and cute clothes. It works on you, I'm not saying otherwise, but there ain't a heck of a lot of people that would do that"

I decided it was a compliment. A far better quirk than being able to belch like Godzilla (another noticeable talent of mine).

A subcontractor last year put it this way:

"Oh GREAT! You're 6' tall you wear HEELS, too? What, you weren't intimidating enough?"

I used to break the poor guy's product on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis.