( Caveat Emptor: I am a straight and non-trans male, so I may not know what I am talking about. Here be dragons. )
Most men do not spend a lot of time and money on beauty products, even though they often have their share of frustrations with their hair, and they look fine. As evidence, several heterosexual women who looked at some of the photos people took of me told me I looked handsome.
Moreover, most underage girls look cute, lovely, and beautiful, despite not using makeup.
The Scroll of Esther testifies that, during the time of the Persian empire (circa 470 BC), a woman's makeup process took 12 months, and these fictional women were blown out of the water by Hadassah (who became queen Esther), who was simply confident, was being herself, and doing it in her own (imperfect and thus perfect) way.
So I suspect most beauty products are the stone soup (or placebo) effect for women: they instil confidence, but then can be avoided altogether for an even better, more natural, and more beautiful look.
In my favourite sketch of the British comedy troupe The Mighty Boosh, the Ape of Death (a male) has suffered from hair problems even as a child, and then after six minutes of treatment says "Look at me. I'm so confident… and feel strong and supersexy!".
In the videoclip for the song “Nothing Compares 2 U”, the female singer Sinead O'Connor looks great bald. Moreover, the bald actor Patrick Stewart became a sex symbol, and a role model, playing the also bald Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the iconic television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
As of January 2021, the canonical “Alpha Female” (think Sarah Bernhardt or Marilyn Monroe) appears to be Emma Watson, who happens to be short and not busty. Some people will always be unhappy with how you look or just tease you for it (see the old fable "The miller, his son and the donkey" and the song "Keep on Singin' My Song" by Christina Aguilera); the important thing is to realise that you are awesome, and can be confident and competent and beautiful, and even take your "faults" to your advantage.
(If you feel that what enough, or even just one, people complain about has merit you can try changing your strategy, but the “media”, including Web 2.0 social media commentators, will always generate a lot of white noise in all directions, and I admit I may have erred on that too.)
Update (February 2022): I now think that makeup which deliberately looks unnatural may be useful as an icebreaker, not unlike captioned or themed T-shirts, dogs, or jewellery:
Author | Shlomi Fish |
Work | Tweet |
Published | 2021-01-03 |