To be fed up with this type of make-up article?

[Flugelpip]

www.the-pool.com/beauty/beauty-honestly/2016/35/juno-dawson-on-discovering-the-sisterhood-of-make-up

The author is a YA writer who is transitioning from male to female, and this is her take on best make-up practice after wearing it for less than a year.

I'm not prejudiced against trans people - I know and like people across a spectrum of genders and none of it bothers me - but it irritates the life out of me that someone who has been wearing make-up for a year feels they can give advice to women who probably know a lot more about it than they do. I don't care what thirteen-year-olds think about make-up either although they are probably better at eyeliner than me. I'm not VERY annoyed at the author for writing it but I'm peeved as hell at The Pool for commissioning it.

[LiviaDrusillaAugusta]

Don't read the article?

Or read the article and start yet another trans thread?

Oh wait....

[icanteven]

The article comes off as mansplaining, which I imagine is not what the author intended, and is certainly not what The Pool generally goes for.

I care about what somebody like Lisa Eldridge says about makeup, or indeed anyone who has access to a wide range of products and many years of experience and trial and error with them, who can share this experience articulately.

As said upthread, this feature is utterly pointless as it is presented. If it was presented as a "I am transitioning and had to do all this from scratch (do you "have" to do it?) - these tips might be useful to someone else transitioning from male to female".

The Pool can do, and could have done, a lot better. I'm not annoyed at Juno Dawson at all, just The Pool's editing and presentation, really.

[TripTrapTripTrapOverTheBridge]

The reality is half of you are being incredibly vile and ignorant. You are not really thinking about the article, you are just peed off about a trans person in general,some comments make that VERY clear. Don't like them? You're choice but there is no need to be so horrible.

There is also no excuse for it causing you to be incredibly ignorant over anything they do/say/write. Do you have any idea how pathetic you sound?

None of you have ever talked about/shard the whole make up thing? REALLY?

Did none of you have your mums or sisters doing your hair when you were little? Possibly helping you with styles or care when you were in your teens? (S&B board posts about daughters hair and skin anyone?!)

Did none of you watch your mum/sister/aunt etc painting their nails or have them do yours? Or you ask to do them when you were little?

Did none of you ever have a female relative helping you do make up as a kid? Playing makeovers with other females?

Did that not ever extend to buying make up when out with friends in your teens? A friend or sister, for example, telling you something really suits you or laughing at you in that bright pink lipstick?!

Have none of you ever moaned about a sensitivity and had a friend mention some brand that is created for it? Or recommending something to cover a spot or dark circles? Or telling you your new foundation/lippy etc look great?

Absolute bullsh*t!

All of the above are perfectly NORMAL things that happen in a females life, most experience many of them (the kid stuff never applied to me BUT I'm not stupid and ignorant so I know it happens). THAT is what she means in the article. THAT is the 'talking' and passing of knowledge. She isn't meaning that women sit down and have a good long chat about bloody cosmetics!

Get over yourselves. You are an absolute disgrace to be so ignorant. You are just seeing 'rubbish' and not thinking BECAUSE she is trans. No other reason.

Where does it say she is a make up guru? It doesn't. The article is very much ' we didn't have the same female make up or hair thing when we were growing up, we didn't do the playing and trying things, we didn't have anyone advising us on what looks good or not and we now have to figure that all out. Total minefield where we can go so wrong! Here's what I've discovered myself and personally like.'

Now what the heck is so wrong with that?

You should be seriously ashamed of yourselves. You are laughing at and hating something someone has said purely because of 'what' they are. It's a bit like, I don't know, laughing and shouting about a black person writing a poem after learning to read when you think they belong elsewhere...

[MephistoMarley]

make-up strikes me – despite arguments to the contrary – to be a hugely feminist domain

No Juno. Just because lots of women do something doesn't mean it's a feminist act.

[FlyingElbows]

TripTrap, having grown up in a staunchly feminist household I can absolutely assure you that conversations about the power and necessity of make up were non existant! Do I use make up? Very occasionally. Do I sit round with other women discussing the intricacies of application and type? No.

I don't think there's much surprising about an article written by a walking male fantasy of what a woman should be which places far more importance on make up than actual women do. Ofcourse it's important to trans women (unless you're that beardy bloke in a skirt who want to redefine the boundaries if being a woman, or whatever bollocks his strap line is) but I think it's considerably more important to them than to the vast majority of women who aren't in that, possibly very similar, chrysalis teenage phase.

[TripTrapTripTrapOverTheBridge]

Again, more ignorance.

Where has anyone said anything about the 'power' or necessity of make up or having conversations about the intricacies?

She means the little things that are normal. Not sitting round having a conversation. Jeez.

[MephistoMarley]

The article literally compares conversations about makeup to sitting round a campfire sharing wisdom.

[TheSparrowhawk]

It also says some shit about make up being feminist. A person who was born a man and grew up male is seriously trying to tell women what's feminist.

[SianSteans]

Actually trip trap none of that did happen to me. My mother wasn't a touchy freely lets do dress up and bond type of person. Maybe because we were perpetually skint so money went on food not nail varnish. Nor could I afford shopping trips for make up as a teenager. The first time I really wore make up prroperly was when a make up artist applied it. I didn't feel like I was being inducted into an ancient sisterhood of make up wisdom sharing or whatever it is the author thinks they're now part of. That is the part of the article that is pissing people off here, because it is ridiculous.

[Unicornsarelovely]

I thought the campfire sisterhood in the article was pretty much bollocks (we used to tell ghost stories at sleepovers, is it now all waxing?) and the products were irritating and came across as mansplaining and lip fillers as part of a standard make up kit?

[MissMargie]

Don't encourage people to click on link as you are boosting the writers readership and thus advertising revenue of pool so they will use the writer again

[MephistoMarley]

My mum doesn't wear makeup, or shave her legs or dye her hair or paint her nails. I have no sisters. I don't see makeup as imbued with a mystical feminine sisterhood.

[Doobigetta]

Stop being mean. I remember the night my mother, grandmothers, aunts and cousins sat me down by the fire and handed me the concealer and the lipgloss, and whispered to me the Secrets of All Women.

Oh, no I don't. I remember my mum telling me I wasn't allowed to wear her eyeshadow, and then a few years later looking at my first attempt with the 17 Sweet Sizzle and saying "well I suppose at least it isn't red". Triumph of feminist mystique, it really wasn't.

[Lorelei76]

Trip trap, no, mum and aunties don't do make up either. Mum has the same issues I do with insomnia and after a while you get sick of people asking if you're okay (!) but beyond the essential concealer, no.

I also hate getting dressed up for anything - my friends' wedding photos show me in the one outfit I bought for the dreaded Wedding Years!

I can see that make up is a huge market but of course that makes me think even more, that article is just product placement, it's not really about what the author uses.

OP you mention being sick of the slebs and their views - I don't do much media but I know what you mean. However, Juno at least is already a writer so a bit less annoying - not as annoying as here's Kim K making her butt look bigger or whatever.

[GemmaWella81]

I'm struggling to see the difference between this writer and the endless numbers of girls on YouTube creating videos telling people how to apply make up, of course other people have gone before and already know how to do it. Only difference I'm really picking out is the genitalia the writer had/has.

[EttaJ]

triptrap wow you really are something else. What utter nonsense you spout. As for the last paragraph of your ridiculous outburst...

Great name though and very appropriate indeed.

[SoHairy]

It seems no one is allowed to criticise anything a trans person does or says, even if they think the person is spouting nonsense that is harmful to women.
See my previous post, the way the writer has talked about make-up is, in my opinion, harmful to women. I'd be saying that no matter who wrote it.

[MrsTerryPratchett]

Did none of you have your mums or sisters doing your hair when you were little? Nope. It was short hair and no make up in my 1970s feminist house.

I also struggle with being told what feminism is by anyone who didn't grow up experiencing being a girl, then a young woman, then a grown woman. My lived experiences aren't nothing. Those of my mother and grandmother aren't either.

And my grandmother was cold cream and curlers. No fireside talks about blusher there either.

[ageingrunner]

Juno seems to have got the impression that women are constantly approaching each other with makeup advice. This doesn't usually happen in my experience. The reason that it probably happens to juno is that juno needs more help in this area than the average woman, and the women giving advice can see the problem and are trying to help

[Misselthwaite]

Do you think she was paid less for the article now she's a woman?

[ageingrunner]

Presumably she asked to be paid less to get the full authentic being a woman experience

[OlennasWimple]

I missed out on the campfire where my elders passed on the secrets of makeup

[maybeshesawomble]

To be clear, I wouldn't have nearly as much problem if the author had come along and said 'I'm transitioning and so I've had to have a bit of a crash course in make up, this is what I've learned...'

Isn't that exactly what the article does? Here's the tips I've picked up from friends etc. as I transition?