Female Beauty and

Cosmetics in Literature
Emma Horst

The Beauty Myth

As

females become more

liberated, there is more pressure
for women to be beautiful
Naomi Wolf claims:
It is seeking right now to undo
psychologically and covertly all
the good things that feminism did
for women materially and
overtly (Wolf 11).

The Beauty Myth

Women

must embody beauty and

men must want to possess
women who embody it
Keeps male dominance intact
The beauty myth is not about
women at all. It is about mens
institutions and institutional
power(Wolf 13).

Anti-Cosmetic View
Demonstrate a making up for
insecurities and imperfections
Farah Karim-Cooper:
Cosmetics are deceiving
Sexual entrapment
cosmetics are birdlime, a sexual trap to
make men captive to female
sexuality(Karim-Cooper 46).

Eavan Bolands
The Woman Turns Herself Into
a Fish
Unpod
the bag,
the seed.
Slap
the flanks back.
Flatten
paps.
Make finny
scaled

and chill
the slack
and dimple
of the rump.
Pout
the mouth,
brow the eyes
and now
and now
eclipse
in these hips,
these loins

the moon,
the blood
flux.
Its done.
I turn,
I flab upward
blub-lipped,
hipless
and I am
sexless
shed
of ecstasy,

a pale
swimmer
sequin-skinned,
pearling eggs
screamlessly
in seaweed.
Its what
I set my heart on.
Yet
ruddering
and muscling
in the sunless tons

of new freedoms,
still
I feel
a chill pull,
a brightening,
a light, a light,
and how
in my loomy cold,
my greens,
still
she moons
in me.

The Woman Turns Herself Into a

Fish
Females

rid themselves of the

true potency of womanhood
through the use of cosmetics
Attempting to conform to
impossible social and male
expectations
Must embrace feminine power
Not through beautifying oneself

Pro-Cosmetic View
Recreation

of oneself

Asserting oneself through the use of

makeup
Female creativity, community,
intimacy, and ambition
Females

declare their freedom and

identity
Contemporary culture of cosmetics
extend beyond vanity and into the
domains of theatre, art and poetry

Eavan Bolands
Making Up
My naked face;
I wake to it.
How its dulsed and shrouded!
Its a cloud,
a dull pre-dawn.
But Ill soon
see to that.
I push the blusher up,
I raddle and I prink,
pinking bone
til my eyes

are
a rouge-washed
flush on water.
Now the base
pales and wastes.
Light thins
from ear to chin,
whitening in
the ocean shine
mirror set
of my eyes
that I fledge

in old darks.
I grease and full
my mouth.
It wont stay shut:
I look
in the glass.
My face is made,
it says:
Take nothing, nothing
at its face value:
Legendary seas,
nakedness,

that up and stuck lassitude

of thigh and buttock
that they prayed to
its a trick.
Myths
are made by men.
The truth of this
wave-raiding
sea-heaving
made-up
tale

of a face
from the source
of the morning
is my own:
Mine are the rouge pots,
the hot pinks,
the fledged
and edgy mix
of light and water
out of which
I dawn.

Making Up
Cosmetics

as a metaphor for
female creativity
Females have the ability to
create and make an identity for
themselves
Freedom of expression

Conclusion
Eavan

Boland demonstrates both

positive and negative perceptions
of cosmetics
Intention/motivation behind
make-ups use
Awareness
Possible to stick to feminist ideals
and beautify oneself

Works Cited
Boland,

Eavan. Making Up. New Collected

Poems. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. Print.
Boland, Eavan. "The Woman Turns Herself
into a Fish."New Collected Poems. New York:
W.W. Norton, 2008. 118-19. Print.
Karim-Cooper, Farah.Cosmetics in
Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2006. Print.
Wolf, Naomi. "The Beauty Myth."
Introduction.The Beauty Myth: How Images
of Beauty Are Used against Women. New
York: W. Morrow, 1991. N. pag. Print.