Racism, makeup and covid

[flexagon]

Hopping on the bandwagon of learning more about the twin topics of racial inequity and police policy -- well, there's something to be said about bandwagons. For a span of time, if other people are learning about stuff with you then it's easier to get conversations going. There's relevant material being promoted: note, downloading The End of Policing from VersoBooks is FREE right now, here. I haven't started it yet because I'm still reading So You Want To Talk About Race, but I did talk to a young black guy in my work group about the police in Ghana (where he grew up) as opposed to here.

I didn't grow up in an atmosphere promoting individual-to-individual racism, but I did grow up being taught hyper-individualism (helped along by my being a little geeky/aspie, no doubt). I seem to have spent my adulthood slowly figuring out that we are "90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee", as Jonathan Haidt puts it, and we do sometimes make decisions based on group affiliations. Both our own and others', including of course race. So, with a somewhat improved vocabulary, I'm comfortable now with saying that I was taught to be comfortable with systems that are institutionally and structurally racist, and have benefited from those systems based on my race.

It was interesting to have this stuff in my head a bit while taking an eye makeup class via Zoom yesterday, where the teacher was very careful to discuss how gender, age and general white/Western stereotypes all play a huge role in most makeup-related online discourse. How at the same time, there is geometry and shading of one's face to keep in mind, from a purely visual perspective, and choices one can make about "opening up" or "closing down" eyes, etc. My own eyes depart from beauty standards in at least three ways: they are hooded, they are narrowly spaced, and I have kind of a low "rise" between eye and eyebrow. We discussed the use of brow makeup to raise the line of my brows a little, and I played with doing a cut crease well above my natural crease (er, creases). Somewhat surprisingly, it works, at a distance or on the very small Zoom view of myself. The class was fun, except for Lioness unexpectedly being in it (I wanted to say "oh hi, totally just had an anxiety dream about you last night!"), and now I want to buy a contouring kit and take the teacher's other makeup class.

Time sure is passing. I have more and more "quarantine projects" that have both started and ended. This weekend's little move toward the new normal is hanging up a little clothesline for masks next to our front stairwell, so that it's easy to grab one on the way out the door... it does seem that masks really matter (new study as of 6/10) so they're going to be part of our outfits for some time.

Comments

[silentq]

Thanks for the book link, downloaded! I'm on waitlists at the library for other books, encouraging to see but annoying to have to wait. :-)

[meat_and_breath]

Oh, hey, can you point me to the person who does the zoom makeup classes?

[flexagon]

Johnny Blazes. I don't know if they do private lessons but, now that they know the group lessons work okay, they might!

https://www.instagram.com/johnny.blazes/
https://twitter.com/johnnyblazes?lang=en

[justplainuniverse]

was gonna ask this too! i feel pretty good about my stage makeup technique but am into the idea of a class that helps one understand what about one's personal face organization is different from the classical standard. bc youtube videos that assume a classical standard only go so far.