WOMEN AND MAKE-UP

For some time now I've had this hang-up about women wearing makeup. It's not a religious thing. Far from it. I just don't get it.

I keep having flashbacks to scenes from Western movies, especially the part where the Indians are putting on their war paint; and then there are images of African natives all painted up, for some kind of confrontation, or maybe a mating ceremony; whatever. I can't remember the precise details.

The point I guess is that I somehow associate body and face painting with something that I can only call "primitive." But then I pan to the 21st century and see lipstick advertising everywhere, and never see a starlet without her lips painted. So why is it a problem?

Well, it's like this: on the one hand, it's easy to get the impression that we're trying very hard to keep advancing along the road of civilization, but, at the same time, we retain these face-painting habits that are virtually tribal. What's with it?

After reading Desmond Morris' famous (and wonderful) book, The Naked Ape, I think I might have an idea about what's going on. Apparently human primates engage in a lot of sexual signaling, but unlike other primates, human females can't go around publicly displaying their genital labia as a signal that they're ready to copulate. They have to resort to a signaling device. It's called face painting, specifically of the lip area.

Lips are heavily involved in reproductive posturing. It is natural to want to draw attention to them. And what is it exactly that the signal is communicating? Essentially that copulation (and of course along with it reproduction) is now possible. Looking at it this way, we can easily understand why mothers don't allow their young (pre-pubescent) daughters to wear it, often telling them they're too young, which of course means they're too young to engage in reproductive copulation.

Basically, coloring on the facial lips is a signal that menstrual blood is now flowing in the other lips (the ones that, in deference to social decorum, cannot be shown publicly).

But, be that as it may, it still seems primitive. I can't help but wonder if women's insistence on using such archaic signaling devices will somehow hold us back, actually slow down our evolutionary progress by keeping us at a certain level of social development. Will we (as a species) ever be able to move ahead, to truly evolve, as long as our females are painting their faces?