Photo by Flicka Catherine.
This series of essays about whether women should wear makeup caught my eye.
Of the seven entries three say we should wear it. The other four think it’s a personal choice but all but one of them either regularly wear makeup or are married to women who do.
No one seriously questions why women feel they need to wear makeup or argues that our culture would be better off without it. No one even asks why we’re still having this debate in 2013, as if what a woman puts on her face is at all relevant for the 99.99% of us who aren’t professional models.
I know people who’ve worn it daily, occasionally or not at all for as many years as I’ve known them. Sometimes we gather in the same room and proceed to not care at all about what other people do with their skin.
If we were bored I suppose we could broach the topic but it would be an actual debate. One in which some think makeup is an expensive waste of time (or worse!), others who never leave the house without wearing it, and still others who find it useful for, say, formal pictures.
Framing these essays as a debate is like me asking if Star Trek: Voyager was the best drama of the 1990s or of the entire 20th century while one person argues that the last few seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation were better.
Trekkies may care but everyone else is wondering why the frame for the original question is so lopsided.
Respond
Do you find yourself equally irritated with loaded questions? What is the point of hosting a debate so heavily weighted from one perspective that everyone more or less agrees with it?
Most importantly, which series was better: Voyager or TNG? 😉