April 22, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
14:12
2956 The Truth About Makeup
Makeup has been around for many centuries. When you look at the scientific evidence, it’s no wonder that over $40 billion dollars is spent on cosmetics each year. We are drawn to makeup because that it taps into our primal urge to find a young, healthy mate who will produce lots of kids so that we can pass on our genes. What is - The Truth About Makeup? | Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.fdrurl.com/donate
Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
We're going to dip into the truth about makeup, a fascinating historical and a multi-billion dollar industry around self-transformation of fertility for resources.
So let's get into some of the history.
It goes back, believe it or not, 75,000 years.
There is paint pigments that have been discovered anthropologically from people 75,000 years ago, suggesting that people may have used body paint Before they even bothered to put on clothes.
Our closest relatives, the Neanderthals, may have used colored pigments on their skin, oh, about 50,000 years ago.
So basically, when you're using makeup, you are using techniques developed 50,000 years ago in order to look like this.
Of course, it's pretty hard I'd hit that, but as you can imagine, I have a fairly significant and deeply troublesome forehead fetish.
So one of the challenges for we bipeds is that women's fertility signals in human species are kind of subtle.
And you can find it.
It's usually subconscious.
You don't usually notice that you're noticing it.
But there have been studies that show that women's faces are more attractive to both sexes during the fertile age.
Phase of their menstrual cycle.
And makeup fundamentally works because it exaggerates or of course completely fabricates these signs of fertility and sexual availability.
So it makes women seem more appealing by exaggerating the subtle signs of fertility.
So, there's a variety of ways that makeup achieves this.
Women as a whole tend to be naturally darker around their eyes.
And, of course, if you're using eyeliner or eyeshadow or mascara, that all enhances this effect.
It makes the face look more feminine.
In fact, you can switch people's perception of a face from female to male simply by changing the darkness around the eyes.
It also makes eyes appear wider and larger, and of course bigger eyes, in that startled baby sense, are considered to be more youthful, except Marty Feldman, who actually became dangerously close to imitating Roger Rabbit.
Women also have darker mouths than men in general, but when women are ovulating, there of course are two hormones, estrogen rises in comparison to progesterone, And this hormonal shift promotes vascular blood flow just underneath the skin.
And women who are near ovulation, when they're in fact the most fertile, of course say that they are more easily turned on, have more interest in sex.
And because of the rise in estrogen relative to progesterone, they have...
Red or lips, right?
And so when women are putting on lipstick, particularly red lipstick, they are accentuating this bodily signal of fertility.
And of course, blood flow for women also increases during arousal.
And so red lips are saying not only she's young, she's healthy, she's imminently fertile, but it also signals when you're talking to a woman wearing that kind of lipstick or that kind of makeup that she's primarily interested in you.
She's sexually turned on by you in the moment, which tends to get resources from men.
Now the blood flow that increases when a woman is just about near ovulation or ovulating, this also pinkens the cheeks and so blush adds to this effect.
Foundation and cover-up, of course, the older we get, the less even is our skin tone.
I can certainly attest to that.
And, you know, suns, scars, whatever you get, discolorations, liver spots, and so on.
So in about three years, I'll be looking about like this.
And so we are naturally drawn to even skin tones because they signify youth, right?
We're always looking for availability of eggs and egg quality, right?
That's what men are looking for.
Egg quality is significantly associated with youth.
Youth is associated with a variety of these physical markers that makeup tends to accentuate or cover up the opposite.
And availability of eggs is a woman's signs of ovulation and sexual turn-on which makeup tends to mimic.
One study has found that eye makeup and foundation are the most important in explaining why makeup makes women appear more attractive and younger.
So basically makeup is slapping a different do-by-date on the carton of eggs known as the female reproductive system.
So it all comes back to the production of offspring.
And...
Youth, of course, with its markers of sex and fertility and fecundity are all in hot pursuit, right?
Makeup is in hot pursuit of that.
And this works, right?
I mean, people don't do stuff that doesn't work for long periods of time.
There are lots of studies that women are rated as smarter and more successful when wearing makeup and so on.
And that makes sense.
Of course, if you show a picture of a man standing, a heavily bearded man in an old coat standing by a garbage can begging, and you show a picture of the same man shaven with a haircut driving a Maserati, most people will say the guy with the Maserati is more successful.
Sure.
Absolutely.
Makeup, of course, also signals that you're not doing a lot of physical labor, right?
And the avoidance of physical labor...
We'll get to high heels in a sec, but that's what well-heeled sort of fundamentally means.
Heels were originally invented in ancient Rome for butchers not to step too deeply into the offal on the floor, the bits of meat on the floor of the animals they were hacking up.
That which shows you don't have to work for women shows a higher reproductive value.
So, you know, white clothes, tottering high heels, makeup, because if you're working physically laboring in the field, I've never seen a female farmer with makeup on because you don't have to, you're sweating, makeup won't sustain itself and so on.
So it shows that you don't have to do any manual labor.
It's sort of like tans, right?
It used to be when most men worked outside, it used to be that not having a tan was a status symbol Now that most men work inside, having a tan has become a status symbol.
In the same way that it was more common for extra weight on the body to be a status symbol when food was scarce.
Now food is plentiful.
Thinness is a sign of higher social status because obesity is proportional to level of poverty.
So, wearing white clothes and tottering heels and having dogs in your purse and so on all signal that you don't have to work, which is high status.
Now, what about heels?
Heels are painful and can cause significant problems with the feet.
But there have been studies that show if a woman drops a glove on the street while she's wearing heels, men are twice as likely, 50% more likely to have a man Fetch it for her, as opposed to if she's just wearing flats.
They also did another study, not a huge study, but not unimportant in France, I think it was, where a woman stood on the street and asked men aged 25 to 50 if they wouldn't mind answering some questions, and high-heeled women did much better.
And it was actually dose...
Flat heels got a 46.7% answer rate.
Medium heels a 63% rate.
Highest heels 83% success rate from the men.
So heels are an investment that women make in order to get resources from men.
High-heeled woman in a bar waits half the time to get picked up by a man.
And there's a variety of reasons for this.
Male gaits of men, when we walk, we walk faster.
We have longer stride lengths and slower rate.
Men present more movement of the head and greater upper body sidesway.
Women display increased hip movement.
And of course, I think as one model said, wearing high heels is basically putting your ass up on a shelf.
Women display increased hip movement, which is exaggerated through heels.
Heels, of course, also cause a 25% extrusion of the buttocks.
They push the butt out 25%, also push the boobs out as you compensate for the forward movement.
They make a woman's legs, of course, appear longer in enhanced calf muscles and so on.
And it also puts women in a subtly suggestive sexual position, standing doggy style, butt out and so on.
Just look at a Beyonce video for more on that.
The research for this show is so tough.
And this is the case throughout the animal kingdom, that if you accentuate or biology accentuates sexually compelling markers, then men respond.
So female baboons with larger-than-normal swelling of the ass arouse greater sexual interest in males, and that happens when the female baboons are in the sexually receptive part of their cycle.
High heels, according to researchers, similarly exaggerate the sex-specific aspects of the female walk, which could cause sexual arousal in males.
Some birds prefer large artificial eggs, even ones they can't sit on, to their own normal-sized eggs.
The nose as well.
Why is the nose important?
Well, most facial features stop growing pretty much after adolescence, but the nose and the ears just continue to schnozify the planet.
And so, if you have a larger nose in relation to the rest of your face, that usually signifies age.
Ethnicity, of course, has an effect as that, but if you use a contour brush to make your nose appear smaller, it usually has a bigger impact on your appearance than $100 wrinkle cream you can buy in the store.
So, of course, it's artificial and, of course, it's false.
It has an effect.
And I've seen arguments.
I think they're interesting.
I'm not going to say, you know, the degree to which they're valid or not.
But I have seen arguments that this is a form of perpetual sexual harassment for women to promote...
Sexual displays in order to get resources and promotions and so on from men and women who wear makeup are also more likely to be promoted because they are indicating a sexual response to men that they simply don't have.
Because if they had it they wouldn't need the makeup.
So this indiscriminate promising in a subtle biological manner, this indiscriminate promising of sexual gratification to the males of the species in return for resources is pretty much a kind of manipulation.
Does it work?
Of course it works.
Absolutely it works, and you can see videos on YouTube of a guy in a Maserati just saying to women, get in the car, and they get in the car, because women are attracted to resources, and men are attracted to youth and fertility.
Right?
Your daddy's rich, and your mom is good-looking, as the old song goes.
It's kind of weird for women to think of men walking around with perpetual boners and how that would just be kind of creepy.
But of course, once you understand what makeup is all about and the degree to which it is promoting and promising sexual features, sexual fecundity, and sexual availability to men, then it is really the equivalent of watching men walk around with raging boners and massive amounts of resources.
Or whatever would get women going.
And again, I'm not talking about a little bit of makeup.
I'm not talking about anything like that.
I mean, fine, fine, fine.
But the significant exaggeration of sexual characteristics in return for resources, largely for men, that is kind of manipulative.
And as I said on the show recently, I was in a mall.
And of course, malls!
Ah!
Yeah, yeah.
It's such a patriarchy.
That's why male goods dominate malls.
Women control over 80% of domestic spending, and that's reflected in malls.
Where do the men go?
Well, to the men's washroom, and maybe to go and hide out in an electronics store, which is in a dirty and disused corner of the mall, beyond the acres of savage pharanome scent known as perfumes, and makeup, and women's clothes, and heels, and handbags, and blah-de-blah-de-blah-de-blah.
But it is important, I think, to understand what is going on with makeup and that it is a manipulative promise of sexual availability or a falsifying of sexual availability.
and it is sort of the equivalent of a man, you know, renting a Ferrari and borrowing a friend's house and going out with a woman, faking that he has all these resources when in fact he doesn't.
This is particularly true when a woman uses makeup when she's, say, 40 to look like she's 30, because the eggs are immune to foundation, the eggs have aged a further 10 years, and a man who gets invested in a relationship with that before finding out that the woman is significantly older, that is as false as a man and a man who gets invested in a relationship with that before finding out that the woman is significantly older, that is as false as a man
And women would be upset with that kind of falsification of a man's resources, and there have been some feminists who've suggested that a man who lies to get into bed with a woman is doing significant wrong, could be charged with rape.
Well, the woman doesn't have to consciously lie, I mean, I mean, if I show up, if I'm hanging out at an airport dressed as an airport pilot, then I don't actually have to say anything, but I've got the uniform on and all that.
And if women, oh, I never said I was a pilot, but you were dressed as a pilot.
It's like, well, I never said I was 30.
Yes, but you dressed to appear.
As if you were 30 rather than 40.
So it is a problem.
And I would like to see women, of course, take the challenge of being attractive to men without all of the war paint tools of the trade, right?
I mean, in the mall that I was in earlier, there was a makeup counter and above it said tools of the trade, which is really quite true.
So I just want women to be honest about it, that's all, and not to say stuff like, well, I do it just for me or just for fun.
It's like, no, you are simulating sexual fecundity and sexual availability in order to get resources from men.
It is an investment in tools of the trade, and I assume the ROI, the return on investment, is significantly high, which is why it is continued to be done.
But again, we just want honesty about what goes on between the genders.
