Wife-beaters love the natural look: attacking makeup is an attack on women

I know it's been a while, but I've been meaning to post on this photo, which to date has about 100,000 shares on Facebook.

Ladies, show this to your boyfriends and husbands and ask how he would respond to this guy. If he would say "I'm sorry, what the hell is your problem?", keep him. (Even better if he says he'd pummel him for you.) If he laughs or tries to defend it, just walk out right now and change your phone number. No, really: the guy you're with condones violence against women, and you might as well leave before things escalate.

Few people see it that way, of course. Women have somehow been snookered into believing that the "natural look"--and men who purport to love it--is some kind of feminist ideal, one that lets women break free from the evil influence of the all-powerful cosmetics industry. But as liberal feminist blogger Amanda Marcotte explains, the women who believe this are "weak-minded" and need to wake up already, because "this is just some more bullshit oppression dressed up as liberation."

It’s not just because it’s these guys don’t get that the problem is that they embrace the paradigm that holds that a man—any random man—has the social permission to appoint himself The Judge of All Women. It’s also because these guys are committed to an even more stringent and oppressive beauty standard than the one they’re denouncing. In their fantasy, the “natural” beauty rolls out of bed, fluffs her hair and walks out the door with every hair in place, exuding a natural dewiness that accentuates her naturally bold features and naturally smooth skin and naturally hairless body. In other words, they want you to be a woman who doesn’t exist...The worst part is that this image of the so-called natural beauty isn’t just implication-free, either. The image of the dewy natural beauty is associated in our culture with virginity, innocence, youthfulness, naivete, etc. When you encounter a guy who’s insistent on it, you usually find out quickly that he’s a little afraid of bolder women, and he takes that out on women who wear bolder make-up. You get the feeling when guys rant about hating make-up that they’re kind of calling you a slut for wearing it. 

Apparently, a lot of people believe the only reason a woman squirrels away that eyeliner and mascara wand--even while pretending it's "all natural"--is to attract men. Women never want to look good just for the sake of it, of course! Makeup is never an outlet for personal and artistic expression, or even just a way to have fun and try out different identities. In some (exceptionally small) minds, women only wear makeup to attract men. Therefore, the amount and type of makeup a woman wears is similar to the length of her skirt--and some are clearly "asking for it" when they become victims of male violence.

Every woman-hating culture on Earth has a problem with makeup. The Taliban banned all cosmetics. The punishment for daring to express yourself with makeup? The Taliban cut off women's glossed lips and ripped off nails decorated with polish. In countries like Iran, women who "ask for it" by wearing heavy makeup are subject to police harassment and rape.

If you have a problem with women who wear makeup, it's guaranteed you simply have a problem with women, period. Yes, even if you're a woman yourself. Being a woman doesn't bar someone from believing in her own inferiority and natural second-class status.

The perfect example of a sexist asshole--who, based on the interviews I've read, is also a flaming idiot--who sings about the evils of makeup is John Mayer. He wrote a song in 2002 called "Comfortable," claiming he loves girls in grey sweatpants with no makeup. Weak-minded women swooned.

He then ran off to date Jessica Simpson. So it seems the man who pretended to love bare faces and grey sweatpants actually wanted a busty blonde with eyelash extensions who's forced to pretend it's "natural." After the breakup, Mayer demonstrated his respect for women by bragging to Playboy magazine, of all places, about his sex life with Jessica, spilling personal details that anyone would find degrading. What a charmer! I have no doubt that Mayer singled out Jessica Simpson for this humiliation because of her bubbly blonde, ultra-feminine persona. "Male feminist" my ass. After seeing his true colors fly in Playboy, I'm truly shocked that he didn't hit her.

Which brings us back to the subject of wife-beaters. This photo attracted over 100,000 comments, many from women trying to man-please and prove how cool they are by saying it's totally fine to smash some girl's stupid makeup kit--which they deny wearing themselves, of course, because they're so laid-back!--and that she's "full of drama" if she complains. Many ask "What's the big deal? It's just makeup."

No one should care that it's "just makeup." This still qualifies as "destroying property" for a clearly stated reason: to make the woman do what he wants. This is on every domestic violence checklist in the book. It's no surprise he doesn't want her out with her friends. If a woman's friends start seeing and hearing too much of him, they'll probably tell her to leave. Therefore, the makeup that allows her to leave the house without him must be destroyed.

I'll leave you with the music video for rapper Eve's "Love is Blind." As the video shows, many wife-beaters actually like leaving visible bruises on their victims' bodies. Therefore, the makeup that covers it up--and might even give her the confidence to leave him--is a threat to his power.

Sarah Palin and Bristol are not hypocrites on abstinence, get over it

Just to clear things up, this headline from Salon is lying to you. Ever since Bristol Palin announced her second out-of-wedlock pregnancy last year (daughter Sailor was born December 23rd), spiteful libs have been compulsively sneering that Bristol is an "abstinence mascot," and that she and mother Sarah Palin are hypocrites, because...well, they won't say why. They keep bringing up Bristol's past position as a spokeswoman for the Candie's foundation, subtly suggesting that this group an advocacy group for abstinence.

This is false. The Candie's foundation is a teen pregnancy nonprofit. Even people who support comprehensive sex ed and access to birth control can agree that teenage girls should avoid getting pregnant. The cards are stacked against teen mothers and their children; only about 1% go on to graduate from college. And if encouraging teens to postpone sex helps them avoid this situation, so be it.

Yes, I said "postpone." Can people learn the difference between people who think kids shouldn't be having sex and people who believe nobody should do much of anything before the wedding night? Liberals believe anyone who looks askance at the thought of 13-year-olds being handed a birth control packet and told to go ahead and have "safe sex" belongs in the second group. Actually, no. One position is a radical idea embraced by religious radicals of all stripes, including fundamentalist Christians like the Duggar family and, yes, Muslims. This group even opposes dating, believing future spouses should "court" under strict parental supervision. Fundamentalist parents will even brag about how their kids saved the first kiss for the wedding night, which is absurd. These people don't even know each other. Some end up in marriages like Josh and Anna Duggar's. (Although fundies will always insist their marriages couldn't be any more wonderful--and so much better than yours!--it appears many are just saying that, either because their beliefs are all they know, or they have to justify them somehow. Later on, many will admit their wedding nights were traumatic. I imagine it's hard for two people with zero sexual experience to go from kissing to intercourse in a matter of hours.)

The other position is a perfectly reasonable one backed up by the facts: nothing good comes from kids having sex too early. Young girls are more susceptible to STDs than mature women. They don’t include information about the cervical transformation zone (or T-Zone), a ring of cells that is vulnerable to infection. The transformation zone is dramatically larger in a teenage girl, but it shrinks as she gets older. Isn't that reason enough to wait five more years? Liberals reply that they can use condoms and be taught responsibility. But on a strictly neurological level, kids are not really able to make a mature decision to have sex. In adolescents, the areas of the brain responsible for impulse control and accurate risk assessment are not fully developed – and won’t be until their 20s. Adults acknowledge this medical fact when debating other issues affecting kids. For example, teens’ limited capacity for risk assessment is often cited as the reason not to let them drive until age 16 or drink until age 21. If we think high school seniors are too immature to have a beer, why do we think eighth-graders are able to understand the risks of sexual activity, let alone use condoms and birth control reliably?

Not to mention that even the liberal, pro-contraception Guttmacher Institute found a link between early sexual activity and sexual violence, including rape.  It seems a lot of those 14-year-olds being handed pill packs and told to have fun aren't really consenting.

In any case, the kids themselves have spoken: 78 percent of all teenage respondents believed that teens shouldn’t have sex at all. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 72 percent of girls and 55 percent of boys say they wish they had waited longer to have sex. 

Back to the Palin family. This Salon headline sneers about "Palin Family Values," as if they've ever portrayed themselves as a group of squeaky-clean Christians with well-behaved children who save it for the wedding night, much like the Duggars. (Who, as we now know, aren't as wholesome as we've been lead to believe.) When have they ever done that?

I've always admired the Palins' unapologetic attitude about the fact that they're not perfect: the Down's syndrome child, teen pregnancies, and rowdy hillbilly behavior. This is not a Stepford family. People pretending to be pure as the driven snow don't cause a ruckus at a white trash bash in Alaska. I use that term affectionately, by the way. You know the old question about which candidate you'd rather have a beer with? The Palins are a rowdy bunch of country people that I would like to party with. So would a lot of other Americans, which is exactly why so many "average Joes" and blue-collar conservatives loved Sarah Palin. If you're looking for a wholesome family with straight-laced kids and a beautiful, classy, conservatively dressed 1950s housewife type who quit her job to support her man, you'll have to look to these people.

That said, I find it annoying that Bristol jokes about "burning welfare checks" when she's a 25-year-old with two kids by two different guys, at least one of whom is a complete loser. (And the second guy isn't looking too good either.) Does she know how the Republican Party treats 99.9% of women in that situation?  The daughter of a former governor and vice presidential candidate who has sold millions of books will always have a roof over her head, food to eat, and insurance to cover her children's doctor appointments. But most 25-year-old, never-married mothers who started having babies at 18 have two options: the welfare office or the abortion clinic. If I were in office, I would only vote to ban abortion if there's an agreement that we'll just have to pay for it: Medicaid to cover the birth, housing assistance, etc, and if people whine about personal responsibility or government spending, tough shit. Abortion would be the "responsible" option if our main priority is everyone paying their own way. Abortion is most common among low-income black women who already have a child. Do Republicans ever wonder if these women agree with them, and that the stereotypical ghetto mother who keeps having babies she can't afford is exactly who they want to avoid becoming?

You can't have it both ways. I take personal offense to the idea that these women should just "pull themselves up by the bootstraps." Bristol Palin doesn't have to, so she can say that. In the future, I hope she finds a new activist position and speaks out about how hard it is for women in her position to keep and raise their babies.

As for her new legal battle with babydaddy #2, I think she can hold her own. I have a feeling that behind closed doors, Sarah and Bristol are exactly like the woman in Austin Webb's music video for "All Country on You." Why do you think Todd Palin always has that nervous look on his face?

No, Obama did not use an onion to cry fake tears over shooting victims, cut the bullshit already

I missed Obama's press conference on gun control yesterday, so I don't know the details of his executive orders. Still, my news ticker lit up with stories about how Obama had cried angry tears over the Newtown shooting during his speech, saying "it gets me so mad."

This shouldn't be a newsworthy statement, let alone a controversial one. I doubt Obama's strong feelings about this issue stem from his personal hatred of guns, although that's what the NRA hardliners and hysterics raving about "tyrannical government" will believe. Did you ever wonder if it has something to do with the fact that he's a dad? A lot of politicians don't like guns, but they don't get worked up enough to shed tears over school shootings. My guess is that Obama has pictured himself in the shoes of a Newtown parent. The thought of getting that awful phone call telling him there's been a shooting at his childrens' school--or worse, finding out that they're among the victims--is probably what gets him "so mad." 

That's not a radical response, it's normal. If the image of terrified first graders being mowed down with AK-47s doesn’t make you want to cry, what does? Anger and grief are normal responses to the grisly murder of small children. John Walsh titled his book about his murdered 7-year-old son "Tears of Rage" for a reason. 

But that was before American culture took a nosedive toward the futuristic America in Mike Judge's "Idiocracy." (If anyone out there has still not seen it: Great movie. One of my favorites.) So as soon as I saw the headlines, I thought, "Fox News is going to accuse him of faking it." And I knew it wouldn't stop there. Internet hacks and bush-league conservative blogs were bound to go full crackpot, making it a race to the bottom to see who could throw up the stupidest headlines. 

“He was secretly squeezing an eye dropper the whole time!”

“How do we know it wasn’t an Obama body double with Oscar-worthy acting skills?”

I’m not trying to be funny. They would say that. The audience for any conservative media outlet includes a sizeable percentage of birthers, who believe Obama was low-down enough to fake his birth certificate. So why not fake tears? The right-wing media has great trouble admitting that Obama is sincere about anything. Doing that would piss off the audience. I know, because I've worked for them. During the 2008 election cycle, I worked for a big-time conservative news site, and we had to set an official policy of hanging up on birthers. My editor tried to explain that the rumors about Obama's birth certificate had been investigated and debunked; these buffoons would just start screeching. Two days later, they'd call back to harass us again. We refused to give any support to their stupid theories, but we also had to tiptoe around birthers, since our audience had so many of them. 

This is a built-in problem for news sites and cable stations that explicitly market themselves as "conservative" or "liberal." They all face some pressure to preach to the choir; their very existence relies on backing up the audience's beliefs. 

Sometimes, this results in serious journalists engaging in outlandish buffoonery to attack "the enemy." Anyone with half a brain could read this headline and judge it to be a total crock. End of story. Really, there's no other discussion to be had: it's just a huge crock of shit.

First, onions do not make people cry. Chopping onions releases eye irritants that makes them water, similar to an allergic reaction. I’m sorry, did I miss the part about how Obama stealthily diced some red onions under the podium as he spoke? Better question: how do conservative commentators keep a straight face as they spin outlandish tall tales?  Even I tend to laugh a little when I know whatever’s coming out of my mouth is obvious bullshit.

Anyway, "fake crying" is virtually impossible. It's is an involuntary response from your parasympathetic nervous system. It’s the same system that causes you to sweat when you're anxious and blush when you’re embarrassed. Have you ever been so nervous your heart started pounding, or you felt sick to your stomach? That’s your sympathetic-parasympathetic nervous system talking—the same system that causes people to cry.

Apparently, it's caused by a rapid shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic brain activity. Crying is a sign that, emotionally, the person has given up hope or thrown in the towel--they've lost the big game, walked away from a bad relationship, or accepted that their loved one is dying. Humans have various strategies to suppress this reaction, but we're not very good at it. Crying is a primitive act, and not one controlled by the parts of the brain responsible for reason and emotional regulation.

In other words, accusing someone of generating "fake tears" is like accusing someone of producing "fake sweat." Even actors don't fake crying. The good ones are able to imagine themselves as the characters, creating emotional distress real enough to cry. The mediocre ones don’t shed any tears, they just mimic the sounds and gestures. In any case, real tears flow from real emotions.

This isn't just about Obama. Accusing someone of faking it is the hallmark of insincere (or as my mom calls them, "phony baloney") people feigning moral outrage to distract from their rancid motivations and lack of arguments. Everyone's favorite word these days is "crazy": it's evidently some men's go-to put-down to dismiss women who complain about sexism and being treated like shit. Is someone out there questioning the status quo or talking about injustice? They're crazy--and also, they're just faking it to get sympathy and attention by acting like big babies. 

The media has been at it for a while now, but this onion thing is really brazen. What happened to the Fox News we all used to know and love? 

I’ve been on Fox News as a commentator twice. I  started watching in the early 2000s, not necessarily because I was conservative, but because I was an aspiring journalist with a strong aversion to bullshit. (Or as some people call it, "spin" and "media bias." Same thing.) Fox News really did tell stories that no other network was covering. If you watched CNN between 2000 and 2004, you were basically having left-wing propaganda piped into your home, 1984-style. You had to go to Fox News to get the full story, because they really did strive to be "fair and balanced." (Now they’re just “the balance," indicating their coverage is openly biased toward the right.)

Liberal hate object Bill O’Reilly was actually my favorite host. Not only did he have a finely tuned bullshit detector common to the cranky Irishmen I grew up around, but he also tried to be fair to his guests. He cut Rosie O’Donnell a break for saying all gun owners should go to jail after the Columbine shooting. Why? Rosie explained that she erupted in outrage after seeing all those kids with “bloody, broken bodies.” Bill saw no reason to doubt her sincerity. There's no question that Rosie O'Donnell loves kids and wants to protect them. Just because you don't like the feelings someone expresses doesn't mean they’re not genuine.

Unfortunately, the fair and balanced network keeps slipping, from exposing bullshit to promoting it. This silly talk about onions suggests Fox News really is turning into the satirical Fox News from the movie "Idiocracy."