ABSTRACT
Tom’s comments serve to present Frenchy’s make-up as a superficial layer of badness that can be wiped away to reveal the true goodness underneath. His comments pit the mask of make-up against the truth of the face and clearly feed into the common-sense definition of the mask as a deceptive surface. Interestingly, Tom’s remarks also play around with the usual formula in that the vamp’s mask is said to hide her goodness rather than covering over her manipulative, devious nature.1 Importantly, the opposition between the mask and the face can be seen to support and sustain a series of further oppositions, notably: outside/inside, surface/depth, appearance/truth and appearance/reality.
