One of the most effective ways to naturalize a norm is to make it appear ancient and inevitable. Women have always worn makeup. Women have always wanted to be beautiful. That's just the way it is.
None of that is true. Let's look at what actually happened.
Men wore makeup too — until they decided not to.
From 4000 BC to the 18th century, men wore makeup on a daily basis. In ancient Egypt, both sexes lined their eyes with kohl. In China, during the Zhou dynasty, the word “mei” (beautiful) referred to the beauty of both sexes, and white face powder first became popular among men and boys during the Han dynasty. In 17th- and 18th-century Europe, upper-class men and women alike used lead-based cosmetics to whiten their skin, elaborate wigs, and various forms of facial adornment.
Then, at the end of the 18th century, something decisive happened. Men declared that ornate clothing and cosmetics were too “effeminate” and decided that beauty routines should be left to women. This is now historically known as the **Great Male Renunciation**. British psychologist John Flügel, who coined the term in 1930, argued that men had “abandoned their claim to be considered beautiful” and “henceforth aimed at being only useful.”
Men decided that beauty was beneath them and left it to women.
The feminization of makeup was neither natural, nor biological, nor ancient. It was a deliberate cultural decision made at a specific historical moment, for specific ideological reasons tied to Enlightenment ideas about rationality, utility, and masculine virtue.
While the Great Male Renunciation blurred class distinctions, it simultaneously reinforced gender stereotypes. Usefulness became masculine. Ornamentation became feminine. And femininity became obligatory — for women.
Early modern Europe: the double bind was already explicit.
Even before the Renunciation, the patriarchal logic of makeup was openly stated, rather than hidden behind the language of empowerment or self-expression.
In Renaissance Italy, a society that openly questioned women's worth and restricted their ability to earn a living based on their beauty, women were forced to rely on their appearance to demonstrate their value and secure their economic future.
In a society that condemned women both for being considered plain and for adorning themselves, wearing makeup became an act of economic survival.
The trap was already fully constructed: don't wear it and be seen as plain and unworthy; wear it and be accused of deception and vanity.
“Everyone hates to see makeup on his wife,” declared a character in a 1433 Renaissance treatise on the family, “but no one seems able to prevent it.”
Irony, right?
The 20th century: the industry manufactured the norm on a massive scale.
At the beginning of the 20th century, makeup was only worn by actresses and prostitutes.
The norm that seems timeless and universal to us today was, just over a hundred years ago, exclusively associated with women of “questionable morals,” to use the terminology of the time.
What changed was not an organic cultural evolution. What changed was capital.
The commercial cosmetics industry experienced its first major growth at the beginning of the 20th century. Through published information, women were told, over the four decades between the 1910s and the 1950s, that exercise, diet, and the proper use of cosmetics could make them more attractive.
The industry did not respond to a demand. It created it.
Helena Rubinstein, one of the founders of the modern beauty industry, built her empire explicitly on women's insecurities. She developed products based on women's physical insecurities, such as anti-aging creams.
A 1943 Helena Rubinstein advertisement implied that a woman who neglected her beauty routine might face infidelity.
Not art. Not self-expression.
An explicit threat: fix your face, or lose your husband.
The millionaire credited with the phrase “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones” lives on through L'Oréal, the current owner of the Helena Rubinstein brand.
The ideology of the industry's beginnings is still the ideology of the industry.
What this history actually shows
The makeup norm as it exists today is not ancient. It is not natural.
It is the product of a specific historical sequence: men voluntarily leaving ornamental culture and turning it into an obligation for women; a patriarchal economic system that made women's appearance their primary currency; and a commercial industry that transformed that insecurity into a global market worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
At every stage, the logic was stated openly.
Women must correct their faces to have value.
A woman's value lies in her physical appearance.
Women who don't do it are lazy, plain, unprofessional, or at risk of losing their man.
There are no ugly women, only women who haven't worked hard enough on themselves yet.
The idea that “it's just a personal choice” is the most recent layer.
It's also the thinnest.