It’s easy to dismiss the notion that mascara is a deeply emotional item. But threaten to take it away, and you’ll feel the air pressure drop to a pre-hurricane atmosphere. How would we tell girl cartoons apart from boy cartoons if not for their feminine lashes, drawn lasciviously? Isn’t beauty’s task to appoint the windows to the soul with beautifully long, curled eyelid fringe? Decades of magazines telling us how to make our eyes “pop” would have you believe yes. Perhaps that’s why recent, novel allegations that mascara is “over” have set the Internet screeching in fury about prying their Diorshow or Lancôme Hypnôse from their cold, dead hands. Not dramatic at all, right?
I knew all that clean-girl propaganda couldn’t be trusted. Its mascara moratorium is logic-based (if we’re following the logic of aesthetic-labor erasure): mascara is one makeup formula that will always look like you’re wearing makeup. This is the baffling conundrum we’ve inherited from so much no-makeup makeup—eventually someone was going to dare us to actually not wear the makeup. That someone is (who else?) Gen Z, who has astutely pointed out that mascara ages you. We should’ve seen this coming after winged liquid liner was deemed cheugy. If Amy Winehouse were still alive, this never would’ve happened.
