Casualties Of War Paint

I dragged my boyfriend into the makeup store Sephora, and he said, "Save your money! You don't need any of this stuff. I like you better without makeup." Huh? Why is there a huge makeup industry when so many men say they don't even like makeup?

--Pretty Confused

A friend of mine, bioethicist Alice Dreger, tweeted, "True story: I was on Oprah for a show about how appearance doesn't matter and there was a whole guy tasked with doing just her eyelashes." A whole lot of us are in some denial about makeup. And sure, there are men who really do like women better without a drop of the stuff. And then there are those who just think they do -- like the men on Reddit who posted all of these supposed "no makeup!" photos of female celebs. I particularly loved one of Jenna Jameson that a guy captioned "before all the surgeries and without makeup." Meanwhile, tiny type below the photo lists the makeup and hair goo she actually has on. My other favorite was one of Rihanna, who also very clearly was not sans maquillage. Guys, sorry, but cat-eye liquid eyeliner does not appear naturally on the female eye in the wild. Biological anthropologist Douglas Jones finds that men are attracted to women with somewhat "neotenous" features -- meaning somewhat babylike ones like big eyes, full lips, a small jaw and chin, and clear skin -- which correlate with health and fertility. So, basically, what we call "beauty" is evolution's version of a street-corner sign spinner: "Genes passed on here!!! Best babies in town!!!" In other words, makeup is fake-up -- a woman's way of making herself out to have more neotenous features and thus a higher mate value than she actually does. (The male version of this is leasing a top-of-the-line Tesla while living in a tent in Grandma's backyard.) So, a man will think he has an aversion to makeup, but it's really an aversion to being deceived by it. This doesn't mean you have to stop wearing it. Just keep in mind that -- except for special occasions and those special dudes who are into your looking like your office is a pole -- men generally prefer the "natural look." Of course, the reality is, this sort of "natural" is about an hour and a dozen products away from being "au naturel." What ultimately matters is that you don't look so dramatically different in makeup that when your boyfriend bumps into the barefaced you at the fridge in the wee hours, he puts his hands up and yells, "Take whatever you want; just let me live!"