Great post, Scorpiosis! Thanks for presenting "the other side." What you wrote about the reasons for wearing make-up make so much sense and serve as a needed counterpoint to my post.

Just to clarify, I don't feel pitted against women who wear make-up and I also don't feel jealous of my T, a man, nor did I feel jealous of my first T, a woman. (I am not sure I have ever felt the emotion of jealousy towards anyone.) As you pointed out, there are quite a few reasons one might wear make-up that have nothing to do with being superficial. Interestingly, the way you worded it was that there were many reasons why a woman might "make an effort to look presentable", referring to wearing make-up and coordinated clothes. I actually don't associate wearing make-up with being presentable! I wonder if all these years that I didn't wear make-up there were people who looked at me and didn't think I was presentable? Yuck. If a woman feels that in order to look "presentable", she must wear make-up, then I can see that omitting it might cause her difficulty (undermine her self confidence). In fact, as I've aged, my skin tone has gotten worse and I do wear foundation sometimes to help with that. So there are times I do wear make-up to cover up unsightly things about myself (but I tend not to wear it for ornamental reasons). I know I'm kind of being a hypocrite here since I sometimes wear foundation... I also don't feel like women with make-up will steal my boyfriend. I have always felt that if a man was impressed by that so much that he would get lured away, then he wasn't the man for me! Interestingly, in my professional field, women seem to get less respect if they wear make-up and dress up, so that probably added to development of my bias. I guess it's just part of that career culture, just as wearing make-up in other fields (business comes to mind) may be part of their career cultures.

I think it's called plumping and blending. I believe the idea is to hit the skin under your eyes so that it plumps up, and tiny lines are minimized due to the swelling that results. Here is a video that shows this technique. Makes me cringe to watch it. Oww! I feel I must be unusual because otherwise I don't get how women could do this daily to themselves:
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-...nder-your-eyes