ABSTRACT
Make-up in western rhetoric presents itself as an integral step on the way to realizing femininity, where femininity is a state of achievement and ascription, not a fact of biology or gender. The road to femininity is not necessarily smooth. Linda Evans ‘re-vealed’ for example, has revealed that she was not always ‘a beauty’:
Dynasty’s Linda Evans turned herself from a Plain Jane into a beautiful star… by massaging her face with honey every day and trying to stick her tongue up her nose…‘But I reckon most women could do what I did’, she said. (Munday, 1986:13)
Femininity is a masquerade which involves masking, manipulating, and transforming the raw bodily material, apparently to the end of seduction but more pervasively in the exercise of narcissism. Consider these examples from beauty ‘queens’, Linda Evans and Britt Ekland. Linda Evans’ daily beauty routine is both daunting and bizarre:
Every morning before work she swims more than a kilometre in her pool, then goes through an elaborate facial exercise routine she swears has made her the beauty she is today.
