Makeup: What It Hides And What It Reveals, Here And Over There
[guest post by Dana]
Yes, people, makeup. But sadly, this isn’t a frivolous girly post. Far from it.
The Washington Post ran an article a few days ago reporting on a Moroccan television station taking a lot of of heat from viewers because a morning talk show host did an on-air demonstration of how Moroccan women could effectively use makeup to hide the bruises on their faces after being pummeled by their husbands:
The smiling woman on the daily Moroccan television show spoke to viewers as if it were any other makeup tutorial, comparing brands and hues of face foundation and demonstrating how to apply it.
Seated next to her was a woman with what appeared to be a black eye and bruises on her cheekbones.
“After the beating, this part is still sensitive, so don’t press,” the host said in Arabic as she applied makeup on the woman’s face, eventually concealing the woman’s bruises.
“Make sure to use loose powder to fix the makeup so if you have to work throughout the day, the bruises don’t show,” she said.
The makeup tutorial, aired Wednesday on Moroccan state television, instructed viewers how to use concealer to “camouflage the traces of violence against women”[.]
According to the show’s host:
“It’s a subject we shouldn’t talk about, but unfortunately that’s what it is,” the segment’s host, Lilia Mouline, said in the tutorial. “We hope that these beauty tips help you carry on with your normal life.”
A normal life. This is what constitutes “normal” over there.
Obviously the video (at the link) is deeply troubling, to say the least. But also troubling, along with the normalization of domestic violence toward women in a country where “nearly two-thirds — 62.8 percent — of women ages 18 to 65 had experienced physical, psychological, sexual or economic violence,” is the Washington Post’s convenient avoidance of pointing to any root cause of this accepted degradation of women. When news outlets in the West choose to carefully apply their own unique brand of journalistic makeup in a willful effort to conceal that which lies beneath the bruising, it’s difficult to not see it as anything other than a tacit approval for that which is abhorrent or a willingness to go along to get along. Both of which reveal a lack of journalistic honesty and backbone. And no application of makeup can conceal that deep of a flaw.
And because we’re talking makeup in a part of the world where it is a powerful tool used to transform a woman’s face from a black and blue wasteland into some illusion of non-abused beauty, it’s worth looking at the truly mind-boggling other end of the spectrum where Hillary Clinton’s post-election decision to let her bruising loss show on her face, is ridiculously, and embarrassingly turned into some sort a holy sacrifice in the name of Freedom:
We shouldn’t be talking about Hillary’s face. The act of mentioning her hair (yet again) is like adding insult to injury after all she’s been through. But we’ve been studying that face for so long, and this shift is so significant — like when she ditched her glasses and cut her hair and took her husband’s name back in the early ’80s. Now, with her bare-faced post-election look, Hillary Clinton is once again a perfect societal inkblot.
Do you see Hillary’s bare face as a grim admission that she’s been striving too hard on the trail, or do you see her choice to forsake hairspray as a cathartic fuck-you to the whole damn operation of being a woman in the public eye? Are her puffy under-eyes an exhibition of grief or, as one callous article suggested, a ploy to stoke our sympathies? Did she send her hair-and-makeup team home or just decide (like a few other celebrities) that she was done living a lie? Maybe she was worried about crying. I know I’ve been avoiding eye makeup since the election for that reason.
…
“You can’t look at that face and not feel deeply moved by all of this. Whether you like her or you hate her. There’s beaten, and then there’s no-makeup beaten,” says Sharron, a woman of 68. “She’d been looking so terrific. It’s hard to see her just stop.”
Every day of the campaign, Hillary painted on a mask meant to obscure strain and effort, to give an appearance of unending, superhuman stamina. Now that’s been replaced by real stamina — the kind that makes you walk out the door and face the world without a lick of mascara.
–Dana
The abject hostage-holding of women in the ME compels the surreal morning talk shows to cheerily demonstrate how to conceal the sickness that is considered normal there.
At the same time, the luxurious comfort of the West allows utter inanity to be presented as something wise and profound. And the masses will buy it.
Dana (d17a61) — 11/30/2016 @ 5:01 pmit’s hard to live together, forever
well that’s what they say
happyfeet (28a91b) — 11/30/2016 @ 5:12 pmlol NY Mag has this fake news thing down cold
happyfeet (28a91b) — 11/30/2016 @ 5:13 pmSoledad O’Brien needs to find herself a nice moroccan boy
she’d be over the moon digging into his complexities and contradictions
happyfeet (28a91b) — 11/30/2016 @ 5:17 pmPretty much everyone born after 1955 is dependent upon the media for providing any meaningful context to a story like this. Which is to say that the cohorts in this age group (our fellow citizens born after 1955 who attended public school or trendy private schools catering to the elite,) are essentially cargo cultists with respect to history, physics, chemistry, economics, human frailty, and the evil that festers in some human hearts. Their indoctrination has been focused on more important issues.
One of those important progressive-media issues is that men are inherently abusive. This will lead the media to find this story a useful reference in supporting their claims. On the other hand, another, potentially contrary, theme underlying the progressive program of indoctrination is that the underlying cause of human conflict is a lack of appreciation for “diversity”. So we can be pretty sure that the media will not point out that these “makeup” tips are provided for working wives in a muslim country who have need of leaving the harem and thus potentially displaying their injuries to others. (Which might embarrass their master.)
The same makeup tips would probably be just as helpful and timely in any number of sharia neighborhoods in Belgium or London, or even Detroit. It will be interesting if this story is picked up and rebroadcast for that purpose.
BobStewartatHome (3f45b5) — 11/30/2016 @ 5:55 pmFeminists spend way more time thinking about the meaning of makeup than anyone else does. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t think my makeup routine (or lack thereof) affects my life one way or another. I “face the world without a lck of mascara” at least four days a week and am here to tell you that it does not involve bravery or stamina.
bridget (37b281) — 11/30/2016 @ 6:27 pmNot really. She probably just decided that this particular lie had so little purpose now, it wasn’t worth it. She’s probably never liked looking good. It didn’t make her feel good.
I had just caught a picture or two and wondered if this was change was real. It looks like it is.
The article doesn’t mention 1993 when she got rid of the headband, which she never wanted to get rid of. That was the big change.
Sammy Finkelman (a1f34f) — 11/30/2016 @ 6:40 pmSo finally after all this time, all the money spent, promises made and deals carved out they are admitting they L-I-E-D. And now they are “done living” that lie. All because TRUMP! Wow. What a catharsis. Her face as bad as it is without makeup belies the soul beneath it. She should thank which ever demon she worships we can’t see that.
Rev. Hoagie® (785e38) — 11/30/2016 @ 6:50 pmI’d like to think that Hillary has been injured by the loss, and is nursing some deep psychologic damage.
If there were only a way to make it hurt worse. Say like taxing her income at 100%, forcing her to subsist on foundation money.
That would suit me.
papertiger (c8116c) — 11/30/2016 @ 7:21 pmWomen like to look nice. So do men, although they have their own ideas of what looking nice is. 😉
I know women who might put on a thin layer of lipstick maybe a few times in a year for very special dress up occasions, and others who will not leave the house without their “face on”.
Hillary being well-coiffed and made up on the campaign trail is a very ordinary thing. That she is now appearing in public not as well-groomed could possibly be an indication of depression, or more likely that she wants to take a break from the stearates, glues, and paints, and let her skin breathe and her hair not feel like a helmet.
nk (dbc370) — 11/30/2016 @ 7:32 pmHillary has to maintain constant forward motion or the water will stop gushing past her gills, and she’ll suffocate.
What I want to do is turn er over on her back.
papertiger (c8116c) — 11/30/2016 @ 7:56 pmBut its a religion with a billion and one-half adherents world wide. It deserves our respect.
shipwreckedcrew (56b591) — 11/30/2016 @ 8:44 pmThis.
Surah 4:34 An-Nisa (The Women)
A word about the ayah or verse. Note that you wife doesn’t have to be arrogant or disobedient. Not that I’m saying that’s any excuse to for a man to beat his wife, or any woman. I’m pointing out the mindset. If a husband just thinks his wife/wives will get uppity, he is supposed to beat her according to Allah.
Also note that the words in brackets are not in the Quran. People who translate the Quran do this on purpose to try to make this verse more acceptable to Western readers.
“Oh, that’s only a last resort,” they’ll tell you. But it’s not. There nothing in Sharia that says this is a sequencem, an “escalation of force.” A husband can go straight to the beating and skip everything else. What is in the Quran is this; no one has the right to ask a husband why he beat his wife.
I keep saying husband as I can not bring myself to apply the word man.
Per Sharia, if a woman is beaten it’s her fault.
https://sunnah.com/bukhari/77
Notice Muhammad doesn’t say a word of rebuke to Rifa’s husband.
A man can divorce his wife just by saying “I divorce you” (he doesn’t have to say it three times). But a woman has to go to a Sharia court and get a fatwah. They issue one just because he’s beating her. They’ll tell her, go home and please him and maybe he won’t beat you.
I know Iranian women who had to flee the country to get away from their abusive husbands. Some husbands just like beating their wives.
Note what Aisha, Muhammad’s child bride, his favorite wife, and the “mother of the faithful” says.
I’m a noted “Islamophobe,” I know. But I take that as a compliment as only ignorant Westerners or frightened Muslims hurl it at me. I say frightened because they realize I am informed about their religion. That makes me a threat.
The Quran is the eternal, uncreated word of Allah. Muslims must adhere to every word if they take their Islam at all seriously. “The prophet” is the perfect moral example according to the Allah of the Quran. Allah says they no Muslim can have any faith if the do not make Muhammad the judge in all things, and once Allah or Muhammad have decided a matter then no believing man or woman can have a different opinion.
To a religious Muslim this is serious stuff. If they have no faith, if they have a different opinion after Allah tells them they can not, that means when they die they are going straight into the hellfire. Which is why no Sharia court can possibly make any different decision than the Iranian ones I mentioned earlier.
Not even in Britain.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/726807/Sharia-court-UK-protects-abusive-partners-domestic-violence-sabotage-criminal-proceedings
It can, but it won’t. What the hell were people thinking? That Muslims, particularly sheikhs in their mosques, don’t take their religion any more seriously than your average atheist Briton?
Sharia is Allah’s law. It is superior to any man made law. To think differently is actually the one unforgivable sin in Islam. It is called shirq; assigning partners to Allah. Most people who are aware of the concept of shirq thinks it simply means worshiping other gods besides Allah. No, there are a lot of ways to commit shirq.
And one way to commit shirq is to put some other lawmaker on par with, or worse, superior to Allah. Such as Parliament. Or Congress. Or state legislature.
So of course Sharia courts anywhere, including the US if God forbid we’re stupid enough to go down this road.
Jihad is just one aspect of how much trouble we’re going to have if we import Muslims in bulk. Then there’s this. Wife beating is not only not a crime in Islam, Allah tells them to beat their wives. Muhammad, the perfect moral example and the judge in all things, condoned wife beating. Therefore no Sharia court is going to report men who beat their wives to secular authorities, because as far as they’re concerned there is no such thing as a secular authority that can compete with Allah, Muhammad, and Sharia.
I have to admit, on this point Trump is more right than he knows. And unfortunately I mean that, because I’m sure he has no more clue about these issues than the lib pols.
The problem is none of these people can grasp the concept of people taking their religion seriously. They can’t when it comes to Americans (no, really, Obama tells a San Francisco audience at a fundraiser, they actually are clinging to their Bibles), and they can’t when it comes to Muslims. That’s why Obama thinks the only reason these people are “lashing out,” is because they’re poor, jobless (Remember Harf at State, thinking all it’s going to take to get young men off the path of jihad is offering them a job where they can say, “Do you want fries with that?”), lack adequate health care, child care, and a chance to go to college.
Uhh, hello. Ayman al Zawahiri, the emir of al-Qaeda, is a medical doctor.
No, actually, it’s because Allah promises them paradise if they get killed “fighting in Allah’s cause.” And Muslims believe all the rest of it, too. Seriously. Try not to laugh.
Soon we’ll have beauty shows advising women how to cover up those bruises, and maybe that chipped tooth.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 11/30/2016 @ 9:10 pm* They never issue one just because he’s beating her.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 11/30/2016 @ 9:13 pmSteve57
We need to get these Muslims some phone books.
Pinandpuller (6f8e9b) — 11/30/2016 @ 9:50 pmThis young, modern woman sitting in a chair with her bruised face, as if this is normal. I guess there it is! Can you imagine still living with such a husband?
I remember reading a blog of a college girl who went to Jordan after 9/11 for a year abroad. Her host family and Jordanian friends were modern, fun, intelligent. One day they talked about honor killings. The boys of her family said, of course we would kill our sister if she had an affair! This turned into quite an argument, and the girl returned to America.
Patricia (5fc097) — 11/30/2016 @ 10:08 pmPatricia, diversity isn’t all that they claim it is. The girl who fled Jordan has more common sense than half the people who vote in this country. She probably had a great deal of difficulty explaining her decision to her academic “betters”. We knew a female engineer at Boeing who came from Iran. Her husband was a devote muslim. She was a very nice, very bright lady, but we feared for her life. We lost track of her. I can only hope that she found some peace in this world.
BobStewartatHome (3f45b5) — 11/30/2016 @ 11:16 pmAmen, Bob.
Patricia (5fc097) — 12/1/2016 @ 7:53 amYou can’t look at that face and not feel deeply moved by all of this.
I’m deeply moved every time I see Hillary. It’s really difficult to keep from throwing up. We doged a bullet on this past election.
Bill M (906260) — 12/1/2016 @ 9:45 amThank you once again Steve57. I read may of the books you read and I always refer to your links for broader understanding of Islam. Unfortunately I am not as good at writing down my thoughts on these subjects as you. I too am frequently called Islamophobe because I refuse to white wash the supposed religion of peace. I also use your comments with appropriate attribution. Keep it coming, the truth will set them (the people who think it’s just a religion) free.
Rev. Hoagie® (785e38) — 12/1/2016 @ 10:36 amStop it, #11 or Huma as it were (a decent lunch lost, I might add 🙂 ).
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 12/1/2016 @ 11:03 amMy bad. I was alluding to tonic immobility, the natural state of paralysis which animals (snakes, lizards, sharks, some poultry) enter when turned belly up.
I was comparing Mrs. Clinton’s lust for political office with a sharks need to keep swimming.
Going by the axiom ‘if the joke needs explainin then it wern’t that funny’, I apologize.
papertiger (c8116c) — 12/1/2016 @ 1:38 pmRev. Hoagie® (785e38) — 12/1/2016 @ 10:36 am, don’t worry about it. You were right about putting your confidence in Trump and I wasn’t. I backed the wrong horse.
Although I’m still adamant about this; Petraeus can never hold a position of trust in the United States Government ever again. Men have died to protect the kind of information Petraeus used to merely impress his mistress.
I know you feel very strongly about Old Glory, and you hate to see her desecrated. Me too. But that’s also how I feel about safeguarding classified.
Nuff said.
If I’m better at expressing my thoughts on the subject in writing, it’s only because I’ve been doing it for thirty years. I still feel a pang of guilt when I think of my Islam instructor in college. Keep in mind I was only going for the easy A in a beach town. Since I was concentrating my Poli Sci studies on the Soviet southern tier, the Soviet “stans,” it only made sense in my eyes I use the same term papers in the Islamic studies courses.
In order to maximize my time on the beach. And pick up as many cheap electives as I could.
Keep in mid this was almost two decades before 9/11. It was almost ten years before the first WTC attack. I think I was the only non-Muslim in those classes. The Muslims would gravitate toward them like the Hispanic toward the Spanish language elective. “Hey, I’m Muslim at home, easy A.” Not quite. But still my classmates were as easily as educational as the instructor.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 12/1/2016 @ 4:53 pmthis qualifies as willfull blindness
http://www.weaselzippers.us/310927-san-bernardino-terrorists-may-have-been-triggered-by-christmas-decorations/
narciso (d1f714) — 12/1/2016 @ 5:02 pmand insight from an unlikely source,
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2016/12/01/gitmo-detainee-saudi-arabias-terrorist-rehab-center-is-actually-encouraging-jihadists-to-get-back-in-the-fight-n2253379
unlike many, he’s a standup guy, he’s admitted he’s a jihadist, not a misunderstood engineering student,
narciso (d1f714) — 12/1/2016 @ 5:06 pmThat would be my bad for not getting it, considering my daughter’s fascination with sharks and a particular line in Blood In Blood Out (“now the snake lies Belly up, ese”)
urbanleftbehind (81e0a5) — 12/1/2016 @ 5:07 pm1.When you want to get money from a bank the first thing they will consider with startup business loans is your credit. You should have a healthy credit score that looks great. If your credit is bad it tells a lender that you do not repay your debts and this may stop you from getting a line of credit.
HERE►Click thiss …> https://www.facebook.com/Home-jobs-1613137108992487/app/190322544333196/
aleena (766b83) — 12/3/2016 @ 7:47 pm