So, You Have To Wear Makeup - Part 1

There are certain situations in which even the most reluctant of femmes needs to pull out the old mascara and “girl up”. It might be that your sister is getting married, and your mother specifically emails you to tell you not to wear “all the stuff around your eyes, like you always do.” It might be that you’re meeting your partner’s parents and they are super conservative and you want to convince them you’re not leading their spawn astray. But the most common, the most inescapable, is the job interview.

Situation: The Job Interview

Before we get down to nuts and bolts, I just want to say that I think it’s total bullshit that if you identify as female, you’re expected to wear makeup in the workplace. It’s a ridiculous patriarchal double standard, and I think the world would be a much better place if it was stamped out. But it hasn’t been. As much as these guys would like to tell you, it's not actually a feminist utopia out there. Potential employers might not be able to legally deem you unfit for a job because you don't wear makeup, but there is an expectation that you will, and plenty of alternate reasons to shove the blame under when it comes to turning you down if you don't.

Centrelink gives you the option of ramen or rice for dinner.

I also have a couple of caveats for this guide - firstly, I'm aware that when looking for a job I’m coming from a position of enormous privilege. I’m white, educated, literate, and financially stable enough to buy decent clothes for an interview. I am also lucky enough to live in a country that actually has a (mostly) functioning social security system that offers payments for unemployed people. It’s not a lot, and it’s not sustainable in the long term, but it’s enough that I don’t have to take any job at all that comes my way. I put this guide together from my position of privilege, so the advice herein might not to be applicable to those who can't afford to be as choosy as I can. I think that if you’re not in my situation, if you have to take whatever job you can find, then by all means do so without shame. If you have to compromise your feminist principles for money to pay your rent, then do what you have to do and hold your head high.

Crazy too!

Secondly, I also know I have two choices when it comes to the inherently unfair appearance expectations on women in the workplace. I can come at the corporate world head on, and tackle that shit. I can fight every inch of the way for recognition that my makeup does not reflect my work ethic, and by fighting hard enough perhaps make it easier for other people. But I choose to approach the issue in a less confrontational, although possibly less effective, way, and hopefully still be able to make it a little easier for others in my own way. As a person with a mental illness, and quite visible self harm scars, with big gaps in my resume, as well as being fat, queer, poly and a sex worker supporter (none of which I choose to hide,even if I could) I figure employers already have enough reasons to turn me down, and I can meet them halfway on at least one thing. I have decided to go along with this ridiculous makeup expectation to a certain extent for the simple reason that I would prove nothing to anyone by starving. I tried avoiding jobs that required “professional” dress for a long time, and still won't apply for anything that requires "corporate" dress. I can deal with a lot of downsides in a job, but if I can’t feel at least a little like myself I get horribly depressed, and will inevitably end up losing the job anyway.

You might feel like wearing makeup at all is too much of a compromise, that it will change you. I can't promise you that it won't - what will and won't affect your sense of self is something only you can decide. But I can tell you that when I started this whole femme adventure I was deeply concerned it would change who I was. Make me more superficial, more petulant, stupider, less well informed as to the world around me. That it would make me too inwards focused, that I would become someone I didn't recognise. In my ignorance, these are the qualities I associated with women who were "into makeup". I also have to tell you that this hasn't happened. At all. If anything, tinkering with the things I consider "me" has given me a stronger, more coherent sense of self. Getting to know people in the beauty blogging community has made me realise how unfair and totally wrong my assumptions about "girly girls" were. Wearing makeup to work every day has made me feel more professional, and take a more professional, assertive attitude to my job. Thinking about the reasons why I wear makeup, and why it makes me feel good, has given me a much clearer idea of what makes me tick - what things pump me up, and what things bring me down. But that's just my experience. Your experience might be totally different, and that's absolutely valid. If you're dead against wearing makeup at all, ever, then this probably isn't the blog for you, and definitely not the makeup guide for you. I doubt I could, or even really should change your mind.

It's not like there aren't jobs out there that don't require makeup - I did a lot of them for a long time. There are a bunch of small businesses out there that don’t care what you wear so long as you can do your job, and you don’t mind getting paid below market wages. But those small businesses unfortunately also have a habit of going under, and taking your career with them. Even if you're not working for a small business, the departments of large businesses that allow you to dress how you want tend to shed staff as frequently as I shed skin. You could certainly run your own business - I tried that too. But let’s assume for this guide that you’re where I was about two years ago – you love jobs where you can go to work in your Converse even when it’s not Casual Friday, but if you hear the words, “You’re great at what you do, but we just can’t afford to keep you” one more time you’re going to puke. You have the skills to GET a job, but your choice of workplace is making it almost impossible for you to keep a job for any significant length of time.  You're sick of being on the jobhunt AGAIN, and sick of having to face yet another round of time-wasting recruitment agency appointments. You've tried running your own business in between jobs, and found that it's just not for you. You're running out of options if you ever want financial stability.

It’s time for a Real Job.
A job that pays market wages. A job with annual leave. A job where you have to do annual productivity reviews. A job that won't have to let you go again in six months time because a client didn't renew their contract. The Holy Grail of job searches.

Unfortunately, I am yet to come across a Real Job that doesn't requires at least a minimum of makeup for people who identify as female. (There are some exceptions to this, but they tend to be in highly specialised areas like programming, science, medicine, etc) But if you’re anything like me, you also don’t want to get yourself into a situation where you’re expected to wear full on makeup every single day. So how do you manage the employers expectations and make sure they align with what you're willing to do, in the fifteen minutes it takes for them to interview you, while at the same time as convincing them they absolutely must hire you?

I could not pull off this much makeup even once,
let alone every day.

Over many, MANY interviews, I have put together a "recipe" for a makeup look that says, “I am willing to work within your expectations, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to wear foundation every single day.” Just as with your outfit, your makeup should be a little bit fancier than what you would wear every day, but not so fancy they expect a level of presentation you can't/don't want to keep up.Wearing Paris Hilton level makeup every day is simply not something I could do without losing my sense of self (or my mind), but I will put on the bare minimum, and I want a potential employer to understand that. If I show up for the interview in this makeup "recipe" I have concocted, I know from experience that if I get hired, my employers are willing to deal with what I'm willing to wear on a day to day basis.

If you have a friend you can borrow the products required from, that’s awesome. If not, my recommendations are based on getting the best bang for your measly buck. If you’re going to a job interview, I’m going to go ahead and make the assumption you don’t have a ton of cash to throw around. You can get really, really cheap makeup – but in some cases it’s a total waste of time and money. This guide is designed to tell you where you can scrimp, and where you shouldn’t, based off my experience of throwing good money after bad in my lust for a bargain.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the nitty gritty of what you will need!