Are Women Really Looking Good Just for Men? The Selarah Phenomenon [Opinion]

In a surprisingly insensitive move by a new beauty brand, Selarah, a dangerous narrative that erroneously feeds into female objectification is being peddled.

What makes it so worrisome is the impact it can have on impressionable minds as social media gradually becomes the driving force behind societal conversations.

The concept of makeup is as old as time itself. About 6,000 years ago, Egyptians created makeup because they believed that it reflected godliness and made them appealing to the Gods. As such, both men and women wore makeup. It was also used as a wealth symbol to distinguish between the rich and the poor.

Since everyone used makeup at the time in Egypt, the indicator of wealth was in the storage containers and applicators. The wealthy had access to delicately created, bejewelled, and ivory-made boxes, while the poor peasants could only rely on clay pots and sticks to store and apply their makeup.

It was not until the 1920s in Britain that makeup became normalised and accepted for everyday use owing to the use of mascara, eyeshadow, and lipstick in silent films of the era. What followed this period was widespread advertising and sales of colourful cosmetic products.

Based on this understanding, it can be fair to say that the phenomenon of looking good is not confined to female shenanigans. It is simply as human as it can get. In that case, altering the narrative to suit biases and age-long stereotypes about womanhood is not only sexist but harmful to progressive ideals.

And this is why Selarah is wrong. First, the campaign does not take into account the feelings of the woman. “Makeup for you. Just the way he likes it,” reads the tagline—arguably audacious but irreverently disturbing, particularly because it is the first-ever campaign from the beauty brand.

Second, the message it intends to pass can create an unwholesome chain reaction where women will find it harder to own agency over their bodies and whatever they choose to do with it.

In a time of enlightenment, this campaign completely falls flat. It fails to resonate with its actual target audience: women. From the brief history of makeup shared earlier, it’s been established that women do not (and have never) invested time and effort into looking good or engaging in beauty trends for the male gaze.

Male attention, as a matter of fact, has been the attendant result of women wearing makeup, and not the main objective. Now, while arguments may persist that women enjoy the attention nonetheless, it does not justify the incorrect view that they do it for that purpose.

And if we are being honest, many men struggle with distinguishing between the face of a woman adorned with makeup and one without. Evie Magazine did an experiment using photographs of women wearing both minimal and no makeup and found that men actually went for the photo with the woman wearing a “no-makeup makeup look” as opposed to her bare face.

The point is then made: if men cannot even be trusted to accurately tell the difference between a woman’s face on actual makeup and the one without, why, pray tell, would women want to go through the time-consuming activity just to be incorrectly judged?

Campaigns like Selarah’s “Makeup for you. Just the way he likes it” should be condemned for what they are: insensitive, dangerous, and divisive.