Sunday, March 30, 2014

Why the Author Hates Makeup

All the best stories ever (and never) told have one thing in common:


Article written by George Stefano Pallas in concurrence with National No-makeup Day.  Irrational distaste and cynicism expressed by the author are his alone and do not necessarily reflect – OK, this one actually was written by the Author.


“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” ~ Thomas Jefferson


Thomas Jefferson trembled wrongly, at least according to the founder of a rapidly growing, multi-million Massachusetts start-up that’s making headlines and provoking long overdue discussions of beauty and gender.  Says sitting CEO Apollo Guys of Jefferson’s conceit: “I cannot lower myself to worship a god who blesses one sex with so much more natural beauty that the other has no choice but to expend untold time and resources on applying cosmetic products so as merely to equal the glory of their superiors.  That god knows no justice who endows the race of men with physical perfection but condemns the race of women to forever play catch-up with their partners.”

His solution: in order to counter the discriminatory and unshared burden that human nature has long imposed on females to impress their male companions, the chore of obtaining and properly administering makeup should be balanced with a parallel industry of facial products designed to soften the glamor of those bearing the Y-chromosome, a vacuum that his appropriately titled Makedown business seeks to fill.

He explains, “The underlying idea of Makedown was always: ‘How can we most effectively level the romantic playing field to eliminate inequality in the datingplace and finally ensure that women stand on the same ground as their genetically more attractive partners?  And so we thought, rather than forcing women to continue fulfilling a disproportionate share of the burden, endlessly smoothing over their natural ugliness and making themselves up out of consideration for men, let’s try making men down instead.”

“There’s literally nothing else like this on the market at the moment,” claims Guys proudly.  “All the major cosmetics corporations – L’oreal, Olay, Avon, Capitol Covergirl limited series from Catching Fire – immediately assume that feminine products are the best answer to America’s widening beauty gap, but up to this point no one has seriously weighed the alternative as a viable option.  That’s the definition of bigotry right there.”


Top-selling makedown products
Mascarea
Darkens and defines lashes for more brooding, mature, adult-like image.  Best bought and applied in conjunction with eyeshad’oh items.
Eyeshad’oh
Darkens and defines eyelids for broader, more youthful, child-like image.  Best bought and applied in conjunction with mascarea items.

Dipstick
Brightly reddens lips to create dramatic contrast with pale skin for bloody, menacing, vampiric vibe.  That’s a good thing.
 Con-sealer
Disguises blemishes, imperfections, and other evidences of masculinity, including bruises, battle scars, blood, sweat, and typical signs of toil; downplays hardened physique and virile toughness.
Primerr
Makedown applied just for the sake of applying other makedown.  From 3-31 to 4-30, get one tube free in store with a qualifying makedown purchase of $30 or more.

Basic fairness is the main principle cited by Makedown’s investors and consumers for their support.  In order for all people regardless of gender to stand on an equivalent legal plane and comfortably cohabitate with one another, both sexes have to make compromises in their physical appearances, the men no less than the women.  One waitress at the fancy date restaurant Mangy Benny says, “Lipstick, lip gloss, eyeliner, eye shadow, eye concealer, fake eyelashes, fake blush, fake skin, you name it, I seen it here.  Us poor, homely girls have busted our butts since ancient Egypt to comfortably live with these gorgeous hunks we call our husbands, bosses, boyfriends.  It’s about time that the dudes took their fair share of the trouble and tried to experience how women feel around them.  If the men’d just stoop down a little closer to our level, then maybe we wouldn’t need to strain ourselves so hard to reach their own beauty.”

Makedown’s commitment to equality of natural squalor and plainness has won the company an official endorsement from the Department of Health and Human Services, which recently proposed and unilaterally ratified another amendment to the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacares, that declares basic coverage of makedown products to be a necessary component of all insurance premiums and orders employers to freely provide these products to all their male workers.  Fundamentalist religious groups have fiercely decried the mandate on the basis that it violates their scripture’s admonitions against vanity and deceitfulness, but President Barack Obama lauded unelected bureaucrat and healthcare.gov architect Kathleen Sebelius for passing the reform without congressional assent, calling it a victory for his daughters Sasha and Malia and for any parents who actively worry about their children’s future sex lives.

Guys likewise commended the decision, saying “That it’s taken society this long to realize that maybe women shouldn’t be solving this crisis on their own is a bit of a tragedy, but I’m proud that we’ve progressed far enough from our misogynistic past to give this technology a chance.  The reason my company’s sales are so high is because we cater to a large sect of responsible men who are ready to start pulling their own weight and do their part to close the disparity between themselves and the opposite sex.

“When ‘makedown’ surpassed ‘selfie’ and ‘twerking’ and ‘hashtag’ as the word of 2013, I knew for the first time in my adult life that I was proud of my country.”

Despite the strong support that sexually progressive activists have shown for Guys’ innovation, polls have displayed that public opinion remains sharply divided on the foundational tenets of makedown.  A USA Today/Gallup survey of 3000 randomly selected men revealed that only 3% deem themselves “generally more attractive” than their partners and only 10% of that number said they would consciously attempt to make themselves less presentable for the women in their lives.  A companion survey of the same number of women, on the other hand, showed that 60% think their partners have a social obligation to “look their worst” and 53% think that men are doing them a disservice by abstaining from makedown.  The resulting consensus compiled from specific responses to both surveys reads that, “Men overwhelmingly agree that makedown needlessly falsifies or distorts its consumers’ real outer appearances, while women overwhelmingly agree that couples’ real outer appearances are unfair and unfit to be seen together in public. Neither group is overly satisfied with this arrangement.”

Voices of Orange County on makedown
Sally Conshance (fast food worker)
Stowe Neige (Baptist preacher)
Cody Mackerel (professional league surfer)
Obi Voss (Captain, U.S. Navy)
I think makedown is a great idea.  I totally encourage my B.F. to use it like all the time.  It really boosts my confidence knowing I’m in equally unappealing company, and I’m just so glad he cares about how he can make me feel better.
I used to believe that the underlying premise of makeup was the biggest load of bull-heresy I’d ever heard, and then along comes this demonic spinoff.  We are inviting God’s judgment on this nation if we insist we better know true beauty than the Creator of beauty Himself.

By God’s great design, women were created the fairer sex: why else have societies old and new declared it custom for men to lead women on a date or dance, for men to show the wedding ring to women, for men to emblazon images of women on their aircraft, for men to write love poetry dedicated to their women, yay, for men to dismember, decapitate, and otherwise slay each other by the blade for their fair lady’s sake?
Makedown is radical, dude.  I lay some down every morning before I hit the waves, with the grain, you know? and the lifeguard chicks totally dig it.  Before I was all like, “This beach sucks, bro,” but now I think I’m in love.  Ask me if I’m going back to my pre-makedown days and I’ll be all, “I’m not coming back!”
It kind of looks like rebranded makeup.

So too does the public disagree on the appropriate age to begin using makedown.  The company’s proponents argue that parents should spur boys to experiment with it earlier to more efficiently build the self-esteem both of themselves and of their girl friends at school.  “Kids are going to use makedown anyway,” reasons Guys.  “We might as well teach them to use it safely and responsibly.”  On the other hand, conservative organizations like the Boy Scouts of America claim makedown sends confusing signals to developing male minds and contributes to a regrettable trend of sexualizing children at ever younger, more innocent and more vulnerable stages of their growth.  CNN commentator and serial firebrand Newt Gingrich remarked that “it’s a strangely perverted society which trains boys and girls to perpetually ready themselves for sex but refuses them the opportunity to, I don’t know, mop a floor in exchange for money.”

Though he normally shies from petty and pointless fights about the psychology or effects of using makeup, the Author couldn’t resist adjoining himself to the national conversation on makedown, adding succinctly in his manner: “Women waste all their money trying in vain to make themselves look more ‘beautiful’ than God designed them and men waste all their money pampering these women so that they’ll mistakenly continue to do so.  At least they did until this charade.  Now that we dwell in a progressive, enlightened, sexually indefinite society, women are going to waste all their money trying in vain to make themselves look more beautiful than men, and men are going to do the exact same thing.  Welcome to the new age.  It’s a revolution, I suppose…”




“And no, before you all start writing your utterly predictable, snarky, gotcha comments, I don’t care that Lindsey Stirling wears ridiculous makeup she doesn’t need whatsoever in a couple lot of her music videos.  If this passes for ridiculous, I could put up with a little ridiculous.”