Edition 05: The makeup haters of Hinge

The Ongoing Refusal to Just Let Us Live and what it means for dating.

I date to collect data. If I should find love in the abysmal place that is colloquially known as dating apps, then that would be a bonus, but I am there for anthropological purposes as a writer and professional meaning-maker. I am also an ethical researcher, as I state my intentions very clearly on the apps. In my ongoing research, many things capture my interest and will be the subject of future works. But, for this moment in time, my most pressing noticing is about straight men proclaiming on Hinge that they do not care to date women who wear makeup.

I respect personal preferences, yet the choice to verbalise them in a way where you can almost smell the bile of disgust for a cherry-tainted blush rising in their throats as they type, feels a little much. Am I surprised? Absolutely not. As a retired beauty and fashion writer, with thirty-four years of lived experience in girlhood, raised on a diet of women’s magazines, the internet and dating reality TV; women have been pounded in the face by a gust of contradictory advice when it comes to beauty.

Wear lipstick, but not too much. Look put together, but not like you're trying too hard. Try to look natural, but no-one actually wants to see your fresh out of REM morning face. Don't wear makeup for the boys, but also wear red lipstick to attract the boys, but not too much lipstick because then the boys will call you a slut.

The omnipresent contradiction of it all, doesn't seem to be any closer to withering. A recent TikTok trend on the ‘red lips and nail effect’ brought this back to life. Young women flocked to Sephora and salons to paint themselves in the kaleidoscope of reds from farmer’s market tomato to classic TFL Central Line. Nails done. Lips lacquered. All done in the name of a micro experiment to test if men will be attracted to red nails, like pigeons flocking to almond croissant crumbs. It worked. Yet if you go for a digital stroll on a dating app you'd be convinced that having the audacity to wear a lip colour in any shade other than the natural one you fled the womb in, is sacrilege.

Is this womanhood? Living in a cultural tug of war with a rope labelled ‘acceptability’, where everyone knows the rules of the game apart from us? Where one too many pulls blacklists you as ‘too much’ and go too far in the other direction and you're called ‘not enough’. We were brought up in a daze of beauty standards, and told to perform on a stage for the male gaze, where everything we did was only to attract men, to be seen as attractive or to reach the promised land and be crowned as Little Miss Acceptable.

Which leads us to the anti makeup coalition on Hinge. Probably on Bumble et al too, but I only have the emotional bandwidth for one. The same old tropes are still playing out, where women should only ever be thinking about makeup in relation to men. Naturally, they've not even entertained the idea that we might do something as wretched as want to play with beauty for the ritual of it. Or, for the knowing glances of mutual admiration from other women. Pause. I'm actually offended that the men on the algorithm think I'm wearing an indecently priced primer (Hourglass Veil, FYI) for their benefit. That I sit in front of the mirror every 5-7 days to apply a cluster of lashes (Lashify till I die) for them to compliment. I'm sorry sir, but do you really think I'm highlighting the inner corner of my eye for you? Absolutely not. I do it for the time I get to spend with me. I do it because makeup reminds me of the play corner at nursery. I do it because having another woman stop you in the middle of the street to rave about the exact shade of lip liner you have on is a fucking delight. But, of course, how dare we have agency.

I won't pretend that all of our reasons for wearing makeup or engaging in beauty culture are shrouded in the fabric of ‘live, laugh, love’. Beauty is basically salt-baked in a crust of eurocentric patriarchy. It may well be impossible to ever ascertain if there are any ‘clean’ reasons for participating in it. But, Anita Bhagwandas, Ellen Atlanta, Jessica DeFino, and Naomi Wolf have done the graft in unpacking it and are all well worth reading.

I’ve come to the conclusion that as far as dating apps are concerned, I've discovered two underlying fears of makeup:

1. A fear of fake things

2. A fear of being fooled

Most of the profiles I’ve read that have had a political stance on beauty, have mentioned it in regards to a dislike for fake things and a preference for the ‘natural’. We’ve seen the cool down-to-earth girls in films who wake up all ‘natural’, in their curated undone-ness. To the untrained eye that is. Makeup wearers know there’s a full face going on that's lightly swathed in a dewy setting spray to give the illusion of no makeup. To the untrained eye, here lies before us a natural goddess, untainted by the evil that is concealer and a shimmery lid.

“Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline,” would be the hate anthem for the Hinge guys. As that’s most likely the fear. What if her beauty wasn’t one that she was born with? What if it isn't natural?And, what does natural even mean? What fascinates me about this, is the aforementioned untrained eye. The women who men label as natural are often wearing makeup to some discreet degree, it might not be a cobalt eyeshadow and plum lip, but there’s still makeup there. So, the word when they're stating their unasked for preferences, should read as, “single guy looking for discreet makeup wearers only, and those with a penchant for Sunday roasts and a walk, who don't take themselves too seriously.’

This brings me to the second fear…

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The fear of being fooled. When I’ve asked people on dates I've been on, what some of their worst dating experiences have been, there’ll always be at least one mention of being catfished. They'll recount tales with avid gusto about meeting someone who looked nothing like their photos. The same tale is displayed on their profiles about being catfished, as a disclaimer for why they don't want to see you with filters on your photos. With little thought about why on earth women would feel the need to put filters on their photos to attract men. Hello, beauty standards imposed by those very same men who list the physical attributes they want in women on their profiles. We can’t win.

When they tell me about their catfishing experiences, they are rarely actual catfishing experiences, it’s a simple case of someone looking different to their photos. As photos are taken on a phone, a whopping hunk of tech, they are static and flat images. We might have facial recognition but a phone can't capture the essence of someones minutely gorgeous and unique details. Or even, just their side profile. Without generalising, for many women we just take more photos than men. We know how to pose, we know our best angles, we’ve been taught to conceal what we don’t like about ourselves and emphasise what we do. Gendered gymnastics at its finest. Makeup also looks different in photos to how it does in real life. So, yes people may well look different but it's hardly worth calling Nev on MTV’s Catfish.

Every single guy I’ve been on a date with has looked different in real life. I have never thought to declare this to them or say I've been a victim of catfishing. I simply assume they will look different because a photo is not an accurate depiction of someone. No shaming or judgement necessary. But, this fear of being catfished is one of a fear of being fooled.

In 2016, a meme went viral on social media, about taking women swimming on the first date, to get their faces sodden in chlorine water in the hopes that the water would evaporate any makeup to reveal the “true” face underneath. A test, if you will. Again, the untrained eyes should mind their business as correct application combined with a killer setting spray and that shit ain't coming off even in a tsunami-level wave of lido water. All in all, they wanted this test to see if their future match was beautiful enough to go home with.

The great fear of being fooled or embarrassed. The fear of women and their mysteries. The fear of witches and wise women. I mean, all roads lead back to Eve and the bloody forbidden fruit. The perpetual mistrust of women. The divide between maturity and all that implies for dating, which primarily is relationships based on qualities, values and integrity. Instead of immaturity, which prioritises the superficial, surface level, physical appearance as a marker of someone's viability as a romantic partner.

Yes, this is about beauty standards, as well as shaming and judging women for their choices. But, in the context of this being on dating apps, this is actually about what some straight men are prioritising in romantic relationships.

The shift has been too huge to go unnoticed. Think pieces about women staying single for longer, and men aren't meeting us where we're at. The rise of lonely men. Gender divides are growing. Women on social media in their thousands declaring that they are done with dating.

One recent post on Instagram, spoke about some men not asking women any questions on dates and apparently it's a universal experience. Even in long term relationships. The lack of curiosity about our inner worlds. The resistance to emotional growth that we ourselves take on the burden of. And it starts right on the apps.

What does it say about women's value in relationships? What does it say about what parts of us are valued, cared for and curiously questioned, if our potential partners are more concerned about if we wear false lashes, than the depth of our very being?