Gender Equality?

After spending two hours, four days a week talking about gender in my Gender & Society class I find myself noticing more how much as a society we rely on gender as a way of organizing our daily life. And while I fully support gender equality there are still times where I find myself realizing that I too rely a good deal on "gender roles." One of these came up in conversation with a friend of mine the other day: male makeup. Up to this point I had always thought of male makeup as being for theatrical purposes. Its one of those advantages that females have of being able to apply concealor to those little imperfection, whereas men are forced to show the pimples and marks. So I was extremely surprised to find that men use makeup. This had been a conversation for quite some time with my friend as we know males who use cover-up, but came up further by a question asked by a reader in a recent issue of Cosmopolitan about male-friendly makeup. Intrigued I googled the Clinique product (www.clinique.com) and found that the makeup mavens had a complete skin care line designed for men with the sole premise being that they were packaged in guy friendly tubes (black) so that men would not be embaressed to use concealor. While I don't know how many guys will be sold on the idea of manly makeup, I was more shocked my reaction to men using makeup. Realizing slowly that we are all suceptible to labeling certain things as "male" or "female." So if you know any men who have complained about not being able to hide acne marks like females you can inform there are guy friendly makeup options available...who knew!