Can feminists wear makeup under patriarchy?

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Indeed, in the modern world, meeting beauty standards, in particular through cosmetic practices, is almost an obligation for women. Which means makeup can rightfully feel like a burden. In an article for DOXA, Elya reflects on how makeup has become associated with oppression and consumerism and what to do about it.

“If you are so against capitalism and patriarchy, then why are you wearing makeup?” - with this question, critics have more than once tried to catch blogger Elyu Rei with inconsistency. It may seem that there is no satisfactory answer to it: you either have to be against everything bad, or you are deceiving yourself.

How beauty practices have taught us to overconsume

Beauty bloggers have been at the forefront of modern internet culture. In the 2010s, the popularity of makeup tutorials could compete with gamer streams. Thus, Maria Wei’s videos about make-up transformations collected hundreds of thousands of views. The phenomenon of beauty bloggers was that they created the feeling of a community of interests. For many girls they were like best friends.

But the unprecedented popularity of online makeup culture has led to the large-scale development of beauty consumerism. Author's make-up collections, holes Video format with unpacking a large purchase. , monthly favs Video format with an analysis of your favorite products, from the word favorite (favorite). and beautiful PR packages - beauty bloggers of the 2010s became one of the first influencers who were able to commodify relationships with their followers. Canadian author Daphne B. describes viewing beauty content as a proxy consumption experience. Looking at blogger:k, we can experience fleeting pleasure from a new acquisition. But it's never enough. Therefore, the next step is a real purchase.

Thus, for many, makeup has turned from a practice of self-expression into a desire for trendy cosmetic products. “I didn’t want to buy a product and then use it. I wanted to have it,” says blogger Jordan Teresa in her video essay about makeup collections of the 2010s . And beauty brands take advantage of this by releasing many of the same products in different packaging, damaging the environment and making sustainable production and consumption more difficult.

At the same time, any creative and political aspects of makeup are also exploited in order to sell more products. For example, singer Chappell Rohan always used bright makeup in the context of drag tradition, where cosmetics became a way to break heteronormative expectations. But now Roan has become an ambassador for the MAC brand, a subsidiary of the cosmetics giant Estée Lauder Companies. And Estée Lauder has more than once found itself at the center of scandals: they were involved in the use of child labor , as well as in racial discrimination among employees . One user X commented on the news of the collaboration with Roan: “The wok agenda is over, bills need to be paid.”

wok agenda is over, bills need to be paid https://t.co/uxETUsTMc8

— zәңgәr su ౨ৎ🧣 (@howlin_min) December 9, 2025

In the 2020s, we completely reached a new level in both the creation of beauty content and its consumption. Today, no one is surprised when applying makeup appears in a video where a girl simultaneously shares a traumatic story . Format " Get ready with me" Get ready with me. “while I’m talking about something” is a direct product of the attention economy. It is no longer enough for the viewer to simply listen to a story or just watch a makeup tutorial. To maintain attention, you need everything at once. As a result, we even stop noticing how unconscious beauty consumption is becoming.

Unbeknownst to ourselves, we constantly record how and what tools bloggers use. And social media is happy to help us give up all impulse control. For example, TikTok has a feature called Similar Products , which automatically scans items shown in videos using AI and directs viewers to the TikTok Shop for similar products. The time between thinking about your desires and purchasing should be as short as possible.

So maybe you should just stop wearing makeup?

Some people think that ethical consumption is only possible when you give up something completely. Are you against forced low-paid labor? Then first give up your smartphone with a lithium battery mined by almost slave labor in Nigerian mines . Don't want your boss to harass you? Just quit. Don't like patriarchy? No need to put on makeup. Against consumerism? Why do you need so much cosmetics?

Such reasoning completely ignores an important fact: we live in systems of oppression that leave few ethical alternatives and severely limit our choices. Moreover, such “advice” does not serve as a solution to problems, but only silences critical voices and maintains the status quo.

In the patriarchal tradition, there are unspoken norms and expectations about what kind of makeup is considered acceptable: long eyelashes and full lips, but at the same time it looks “natural.” Alternative and creative makeup can result not only in unsolicited attention, but also in sanctions at work or in educational institutions. You have to balance between “not too much” and “not too little”. After all, God forbid someone finds out that you are a person with dark circles under your eyes, pimples, pigmentation and wrinkles!

Naturally, in a context where makeup is largely associated with the desire to be “more beautiful,” it will be perceived as a prison rather than a space for creativity. If our society did not have such a hyperfocus on meeting the standards of conventional beauty , perhaps most women would have neither the desire nor the need to wear makeup.

However, makeup need not be seen solely as a patriarchal or capitalist practice. Applying paint to the face and body has a thousand-year history. As Maggie Angeloglou writes in The History of Makeup, early cosmetics served a variety of functions, from participation in religious rituals to creativity and self-expression. Moreover, people of different ages and genders used cosmetics.

Moreover, today there are matrilocal Societies where a man, after marriage, moves into the house of his wife and/or her relatives, and not vice versa. societies in which women wear makeup, although their living conditions differ significantly from patriarchal ones. All this shows: make-up cannot be reduced solely to tools of oppression; its history and meaning are much more complex.

How to resist the logic of beauty consumption without removing your makeup?

Firstly, it is important to shift the focus from products to the practice itself and what it can give us: creativity, curiosity, experiments with our appearance. You don't necessarily need "that" trendy lipstick that will make your lips look plump. Put your vision and imagination at the center. Then other questions will arise - for example, how to use what we already have to create more images? Do we need another useless product in pretty packaging? This approach is part of the realization that our consumption does not occur in a vacuum, but responds to collective impulses that can be controlled.

Secondly, it is worth asking more often about how the things we use are made. Such reflections almost inevitably lead us to learn more about the brutality of the capitalist production cycle. For example, eye shadow is made from mica, which is mined in mines , often for pennies and often by minors. Are other production conditions possible?

Daphne B. writes that if we really want to protect children from working in the mica mines, we need to make sure their parents have decent wages so their children can go to school. This, in turn, leads us to question how the market exploits cheap labor and incentivizes First World countries to exploit other countries.

Inevitably, such frivolous things as lipsticks and concealers lead us to think about the big picture: supply chains, imperialism and the global distribution of the Earth's resources. We should not be afraid of these conversations, because they increase our collective awareness and awareness. But it's also important not to turn them into virtue signaling competitions.

Continuing to wear makeup does not mean you are undermining feminism or promoting slave labor. Cosmetics, like everything that humanity produces and consumes, is only the result of human labor and collective relationships. The question is who benefits from this work and is a system that insists on instilling market value into every aspect of our lives really cannot be changed?