September 24, 2014 • 44 mins
Why do women care so much about their eyelashes? From science and ancient history to to a mascare inventor named Rimmel, Cristen and Caroline get deep about these not-so-superficial hairs.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House top
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristine. Today we are talking about something
that a lot of women and some men are dusted
with and emphasize and altar and tweak. We're talking about eyelashes,
(00:28):
the blinky hairs on our faces. What they mean, what
we use them for, and how we decorate them with
the number one cosmetic in America, which is mascara. Yeah,
and why eyelashes, long, lustrous eyelashes are considered such a
feminine beauty trait. Why are we so obsessed with our eyelashes?
(00:49):
Why Why am I so obsessed with my eyelashes? Caroline,
I don't know. Why are you? Because they are considered
I think of feminine beauty trade eight. I mean it's
the first cosmetic that I really started wearing on the
regular in high school. And if I wear anything, if
(01:09):
I could only wear one thing out of my house
makeup wise, it would be mascara. Yeah. I don't like to.
I I forget to put mascara on sometimes, Like I'll
put everything else on and I'll get to work and
look at myself in the bathroom mirror and be like,
why do I look strange? Something is a miss on
my face? And then I realized it's because I didn't
(01:31):
make my eyelashes look a mile long. They're just like
my normal, stumpy lashes. And it's one of those things
where it's such a given that women care about their eyelashes.
We will use mascara, And it seems like such a
given that women will pay attention to their eyelashes, they
(01:51):
will use a lot of mascara. This is something that
we will care a lot about, and yet rarely do
we ever stop and ponder, why why about this? You know,
the strange set of hairs growing out of our eyelids.
I distinctly remember being an early teen and reading like
(02:12):
Team magazine or seventeen or whatever, and they had they
would have like comments from boys being like, boys are
wondering about this about you, And one of them, one
of the guys said, I distinctly remember this, said I
don't understand why girls were all that black gunk around
their eyes. And I remember thinking like, yeah, you don't
get it, do you, buddy? But of course I don't
(02:33):
even know if I knew, like to back that up
with anything. I just knew like we do because we
like it. Yeah, and we should and and it makes
us beautiful and feminine, right right? Uh, Well, first of all,
why don't we kick off wisdom? Eyelash science just a
brief primer on why we have these blinky hairs to
(02:53):
begin with. And they are our eyeball protectors. They keep
dust and debris out of our eyes. And they're also
kind of like our eye whiskers. Yeah, if things get
too closed, it'll irritate the eyelash and we'll close our
eyes instinctively. They said a little signal saying, hey, hey,
(03:14):
something too, something too close to your eye whole. Yeah,
so it's you going too the eye doctor. When they
put that thing right up against your eye, that's torture. Yeah.
Or when they when they blow the air into your eyeball,
your eyelashes like emergency, stop everything. Follow up podcast on
Christen and Caroline's horror stories from the Eye Doctor. Right. So,
(03:36):
I know that when I was younger, my mother always
berated me, like, don't don't tug your eyelashes, they'll never
grow back. But that's how you get the eye lash
hairs that you can blow off to make wishes. I know. Well,
so it took me like a long time to all
of a sudden be like, let me think critically about
what my mother said. But anyway, so, eyelashes developed pretty
early actually when you are in uteroe sometime between twenty
(03:58):
two and twenty eight weeks, and as a person outside
of the uterus, they are continuously shedding and growing. So
my mother was so wrong that that thing that she
told me was wrong that they won't go back. Did
she also tell you in the same sentence that if
you cross your eyes, they'll get stuck. I don't. I'm
sure she did. I'm sure she like said it and
(04:20):
then was horrified and thought about how like, oh I
thought I would never say that, but I'm turning into
my mother. Um. They actually grow for three months before
they fall out, so that's I think that's a lot
shorter period than your head hair. Uh. And they can
take seven eight weeks to grow back if you pull
them out of your face. So I mean your mom
was then kind of onto something. Yeah, they all grow back,
(04:42):
but just slowly. Right. Did you ever know anyone who
cut their eyelashes off a kid? I feel like I
I know someone or maybe it was my mom telling
me some horror story about why I shouldn't use scissors.
I need to figure that out. There was some some
uh some cautionary tale I was told at some point
(05:03):
as a child about some other child who cut off
over eyelashes, and it was bad news. Um. But there
are a number of medications and health conditions that can
cause people's eyelashes to fall out, things like styes, siasis,
and thyroid conditions. And that's just three of a laundry
list of things that we could go through. But we'll we'll,
(05:26):
We'll save you the listening time, right. And another another
factor is age. Follicles can slow or stop producing hair
altogether as you age. Um. But so you know, eyelashes,
they sound like they're pretty utilitarian. They they serve a purpose.
They're just on our face to protect our eyeballs. There
are eye whiskers. I think that is the cutest thing
(05:47):
that could as the potential to sound gross, I feel like,
but I think it's cute. I like it. I just
picture like kitten whiskers anyway. UM. So if they're so utilitarian, though, like,
why are we why are we so obsessed with emphasizing them? Well,
Caroline it's the most appropriate explanation for a lot of
(06:07):
these things because we've just done it for a really,
really really long time, so let's just keep doing it right. Well,
in the ancient Middle Eastern general people were blending minerals
with oils and fats to darken their eyelashes and eyebrows,
and they used coal as well. In ancient Egypt, though
playing up the eyes was not just for women, it
(06:27):
was the thing that everybody was doing. Um. They would
make coal from villena, which is lead sulfide, malachite, and
other minerals mixed with animal fats and I'm just like
imagining that getting into my eye and just I feel
like it would burn. But they would line their eyes
in the cati style that we think of from like
Cleopatra and whatever, for both spiritual and practical purposes. Yeah.
(06:53):
On the practical side, this would reduce glear from the sun,
kind of like the way that football players have the
eye black that they wear sometimes. And it also helped
keep insects away because galena was an effective insect repellent
and disinfectant, which now I'm wondering why my messcara is
not also an effective insect repellent, because that seems sandy.
(07:16):
But when it comes to malachite, that other ingredient that
they would mix into the coal, it was believed to
be a gift from Hath or the goddess of love,
So naturally you would want to put it on your
eyes because it was also an aphrodisiac. Right, So, I mean,
everybody's putting on I makeup and they're like, this is
(07:38):
so handy. This very utilitarian, practical thing is also for
sexy time. But it wasn't just for adults and sexy
things kids, but also have their eyes smeared with coal
to both. They thought it would both strengthen eyesight and
protect them from evil spirits. And in terms of spirits,
it also represented protection from basically like the eye um,
(08:01):
but it represented the eye of Horace and replicated images
of raw the sun god Caroline. Yet again, follow up question,
why does my mess hera not also repel insects but
also protect me from evil spirits? I would buy that mascara.
That's an incredible claim. The FDA might have a problem
with them. And if we move over to India, there
(08:25):
was a similar trend, a cosmetic trend of lining the
eyes as well with dark coal. And it actually gets
to mention in the Kama Sutra, which was written in
the fourth century, that provided a recipe for what it
called quote an uncan of adornment that has the effect
of making a person look lovely. So from the time
(08:46):
of the Kama Sutra, this was a makeup tip. Hey,
you want to look pretty well. It also cooled the
eye area and reduced glare from the sun. So again,
just like in ancient Egypt, there was a practice, a
purpose and a spiritual slash sexy time purpose. Yeah, there
was a religious significance of men and children applying coal
(09:08):
during a traditional ceremony called the serma. Yeah. And in
ancient Rome women would darken their eyelashes and the whole
eye area really with burnt cork. And if you move
into the Middle Ages and then the Renaissance and then
further into the Elizabethan area, total break with history because
(09:30):
this is when we see eyes really becoming d emphasized,
to the point where some women got rid of their
brows and lashes all together in favor of highlighting the chests,
which I get that's still the thing that people do,
but also the forehead. Look at my beautiful forehead. I
wonder if they were like minds of five head. Look
(09:50):
at this big five head, though, don't you find me attractive?
But by the time we get to the nineteenth century,
cosmetics were becoming more and more popular among Europeans and Americans,
and this was when big names in cosmetics began to emerge.
Because you have women going d i y with their mascara.
(10:12):
They would darken their eyelashes and eyebrows using homemade methods
like ashes and even still that ancient Roman method of
using the burnt cork to darken their eyelashes as well.
But then in eighteen thirty Eugene Remel came around and
made things a little bit easier, right, A couple of
decades after moving from France to London with his pop,
(10:35):
he actually developed an eyelash darkener using coal dust and
petroleum jellies, so not using animal fats this time. And
it was so successful that Remmel became synonymous with mascara
in a number of different languages. So we have Remal
initially to think for this earliest kind of mascara as
(10:57):
we start to think of it today. Though mascara was
not necessarily for everyone at least according to Madame Lola
Montez right in eighteen fifty eight. Uh, there's this book
published that I am absolutely going to go back and
read more of when I have time. Uh. It's Madame
Lolamantez is the Arts of Beauty or Secrets of a
(11:22):
Lady's Toilet with hints two gentlemen on the art of fascinating.
A book for your fellow too, that's right. Uh yeah,
So this was the stage name by the way of
Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Countess of Landsfield. But she
she had some pretty darn strong opinions on on I
make up, where she basically was like, hey, some of
(11:44):
you can pull this off, some of you can't. Don't
even try. When talking about fair skinned and fair haired women,
you know, think of your friends who have very light
eyelashes or eyebrows, and they might want to emphasize them
so that you know they don't maybe don't look as pale.
She warned them against participating in this whole eye makeup thing.
She said, but take this fair creature and draw a
(12:05):
black line over her softly tinkshirt eyes, staining their beamy
fringes with a somber hue, and how frightfully you have
mutilated nature. She was very in favor. She's like, well,
you know, there are these women. They already have dark
hair and dark lashes. That's fine, they can roll with it.
But you fair haired ladies, you stay away from that
burnt cork. Well. She also had a tip for keeping
(12:26):
your lashes long and strong, which, yeah, it doesn't make
any sense and it's terrible in your mother, whoever told
you the story, would not approve you. Just trim them.
Get some tiny scissors and trim those eyeball whiskers. She said,
it is within the power of almost every lady to
have long and strong eyelashes by simply chipping with scissors
(12:48):
the points of hair once in five or six weeks,
which actually today if you use latisse you do have
to do. Because they grow so long and so strong
they will bad cure glasses if you wear them, so
you have to trim them very carefully. To me, that
that feels creepy, like if my lashes were so long,
(13:10):
I feel like I would be distracted. Oh, I wouldn't mind.
I love long lashes. Well, somebody else who love long
lashes was Mabel Mabel Williams in nineteen fifteen. She inspired
her brother tom Lyle Williams, who later started the company Maybel,
(13:32):
which was named after his sister. Inspired by Mabel's use
of a burnt cork and vasoline to darken her eyes,
a trick she stole from Photoplay magazine, who stole it
from ancient history. Uh. He ended up developing a mail
order formula for cake mascara, although at the time it
wasn't called mascara yet. All of this stuff was still
being just called eyelash darkener. So this original Mabelne mascara,
(13:56):
which like you said, was not being called mascara yet,
it looked world of like a compacted blush or eyeshadow
as you would see it today. And the way you
would apply this eyelash darkener was by taking the wand
that it came with. You would wet the wand and
then run it over the cake mascara and then wanted
(14:18):
over your eyes. Which is funny because I feel like
there are a lot of modern day beauty tips where
they say, hey, take this cake of eyeshadow and wet
your brush and you can get a fabulous dark line
on your eyes and that's like ladies. They were already
doing that in Age of Gals. What's old is new.
But by nineteen sixty six Maybeling, that little company started
(14:40):
by Tom Williams, was earning more than twenty five million
dollars a year. Yeah. And by the way, it was
in nineteen thirty three that we started calling it mascara
instead of eyelash darkener. But when it comes to false lashes,
which are having a huge moment right now, uh, it
was in nineteen fifteen that the first fake eyelashes, the
(15:03):
first falsees were developed at the order of film director
David Griffith, who was working on this film called Intolerance
Loves Struggle Through the Ages, And obviously it's nineteen fifteen.
It is a silent film, and he wanted his lead actress,
Sena Owen to have lashes long enough that they would
(15:24):
brush her cheeks when she would blink. So she needed
really long lashes, so he got a wig maker to
glue tiny strips of hair to her eyelids. But at
that point it was still just a Hollywood magic trick.
It wasn't until the nineteen forties that false eyelashes became
available to the public. Yeah, and then of course they
(15:46):
had a huge reignition of popularity in the nineteen sixties
with all that strong, dark, thick eye makeup. And I
mean I wear him every Halloween. I can't say that
I like rock fake lashes any other time time. Well,
that might be good because all that glue near yr
New year gentle lashes. I don't want to rip out
(16:07):
any of my eyelid whiskers, that's right, because they take
seven weeks to grow back. Um. But if we go
back though to the nineteen thirties, there were some bumps
along the road in our development of mascara and false lashes,
because this was this was sort of the downside to
our long standing obsession with darkening these hairs on our eyelids.
(16:29):
In the nineteen thirties, women were getting maimed and blinded,
and one even died from using this product called lash
Lure eyelash and brow dye because it contained highly toxic
substance that would tinden the hair but also cause irritation
and ulcers. And so with that, eyelashed dies were banned
(16:50):
in several states. Yeah, it's around this time that we
get the Food and Drug Act and the f D
A and the Federal Trade Comission actually have to start
approve being claims and advertising and things like that, because
you don't really want ulcers that blind you. Yeah, if you,
I'm just warning you. You can google image lash lore
(17:12):
eyelash to see what it did to some of these women.
But I'm warning you that's it's not pretty. No. And
in the nineteen thirties and forties we start to see
the development of eyelash curlers. The first one was actually
curl lash that's a K that is with a K,
and that was not a product of the Kardashian family
empire K for cookie. Uh. Yes, So we get eyelash
(17:34):
curlers and waterproof mass scara that was developed. I think
there was one Austrian actress that patented a version of
waterproof mascara. Yeah, and apparently because a lot of these
cosmetics come out of film and stage acting. And I
think it was the Austrian actress who're talking about was
a stage stage actress who needed a mascara that could
(17:59):
withstand her sweating under stage lights. But a lot of
the early waterproof mascara's would stay on, but they also
contained an adhesive so that after the actresses were done.
If they left it on too long, their eyelets would
get kind of stuck together, So it took some time
to develop what a freaking nightmare Um. In nineteen fifty eight,
(18:23):
Revlon launched their mascara in a tube with a spiral
wand and this was there were a couple other people
doing it at the same time. I don't think it
was just Revlon Um, but they ended up following it
up in nineteen sixty one with the first colored mascara, which,
you know, all these things have obviously retained popularity. I
just saw some magazine like another recommendation for Um colored mascara,
(18:47):
which I used as a kid too, not a kid,
like a surly teenager. But anyway, in nineteen seventy one,
maybe Lene, it's still around launches. It's insanely popular Great
Lash mascara, which sally uses my mother, and by two
thousand two, one tube of Great Lash mascara was selling
every one point five seconds. And what continues to fascinate
(19:10):
me when it comes to mascara is how it seems
like any time you see a commercial for mascara, they've
come out with some kind of new innovation, like they're
constantly improving and improving and improving on these mascaras, which
obviously dubious marketing claims, but it just speaks to what
(19:31):
a massive market force, like our demand for mascara that
will perfectly elongate our lashes and make them look full
and not get clumpy and do all of these things.
How how huge of a force that is. Well, one
of the guys who works in the cosmetics industry who
was in one of these articles that we read, was
talking about how even people in the industry were taken
by surprise at the length that women were willing to
(19:55):
go to achieve this ideal lash and that included like
doing like a hundreds ropes of mascara on each eye
and they end up coming out with they're like, Okay, well,
there's obviously a demand. That's not a problem. We just
need to put some products in front of these women
that they'll go for, and that includes things like the
vibrating uh mascara one. Yeah, so you know how they
(20:19):
tell you when you put on mascara to sort of
wiggle the wand back and forth and drag it up. Yes, well,
this thing if you're hardcore enough about your makeup, and
he specifies that he said, this is obviously not for
your average woman putting mascara on in the morning before
she dashes out the door to work. This is for
somebody who is hardcore and to makeup, and it's definitely
going to spend a lot of time getting ready, and
so the wand vibrates as you put on the mass era.
(20:39):
Could you just use an old electric toothbrush? Get your
get your nineties cake, I Darkenner, Yeah, what's your what's
your electric trooth? What your electric toothbrush? Put it in there.
Than I think it's perfect. We're onto something. We are
on something, probably very dangerous um And I mean I've
(21:02):
also found myself standing in the drug store cosmetic aisle
just staring at mascara's How do you how do you pick?
I don't know. I mean, how many conversations have you
had with other women about their preferred mascara? Are the
ones that they swear by? But then you use and
you're like, but this, no, this isn't doing what I need.
(21:23):
And then in I feel like every single edition of
every single mainstream women's magazine, there is at least one
feature on some new mascara that you have to try. Yeah, Well,
you know, I just don't. I've been burned before, Kristen.
And I don't mean literally like with lash floor. I
mean that I will see some mascara that's been really
(21:44):
hyped up, and I don't want to pick on any
brands or whatever, but I'll see something's been like super
hyped up across magazines and I'll say, well, God, if
it's so great, I'll give it a shot. And then
I've been severely disappointed because either it's completely under my
eyes by the end of the day or I can't
get it off even though it's not waterproof except etcetera, etcetera.
So I have found a brand that I have used
since high school and even the same type, like subtype
(22:07):
of mascara in that brand, and I'm not going to
give it up because it's too scary out there in
the mascara world. There's any choices well, and it's so
easy for us as consumers to make those choices because
like things like uh, YouTube a lipstick, well now polish,
it's one of those small luxury items that we we
(22:27):
don't mind parting with it just a few dollars just
to just to try it out. Although some can get
quite expensive, but it's genius. I mean it's it's honestly
a genius product because it constantly keeps women guessing and
spending usually insignificant enough sums of money that will just
continue doing it. Well. That's like with lipstick. You know,
(22:48):
we've talked about the lipstick index on the podcast before
about like during the recession and during times of of
economic downturn. You know, everybody's trying to save money and
they're down on their luck, but you're still going to
go to the store pick up a lipstick or in
this case, a mascara because it's a way to to
make yourself feel pretty. And I feel like you're still
participating in a beauty ritual, but not spend a hundred
(23:08):
dollars like you might on a fancy haircut. But if
you want to spend not just a hundred, but hundreds
of dollars on your eyelashes these days, you certainly can
by getting eyelash extensions, which started in Japan and then
started getting really popular in the States in two thousand five.
And you go there. There are actual eyelash beauty bars
(23:31):
that you can go to these days where for a
few hundred dollars or maybe more. You can lay down
for an hour or two and have someone hand stitch
eyelashes fake eyelashes into your real eyelashes. Yeah, and it's funny.
There were two different articles that we looked at, uh
where women gave a first person account of trying this
(23:54):
out and how. One woman gave a hilarious account of
like who in her life ranked them and who in
her life noticed at first and her boyfriend. She said
like something like her boyfriend rolled over and was just
going looks like your face. Another woman was called out
at her son's soccer game for having incredibly long lashes,
and the other woman assumed she'd done like a walk
(24:14):
of shame or something because it looked like she was
still wearing so much makeup. Yeah, but I can't say
that I would do that. There's something that's scary. I
don't have that much disposable income. A. But B I'm
scared about adhesives on my eyelashes. Yeah, it seems like
a pretty daunting procedure to go through just for lashes
(24:38):
because the only last for a few weeks max um.
But if you want something that lasts a bit longer
and also have more disposable income to spend. There's always Latise,
which hit the market in two thousand and eight, and
I remember first seeing ads for Latisse and laughing about
how ridiculous it seemed like, was like, Oh, really, are
(25:01):
we really being sold longer lashes? Come on, this is
gonna tank? No, I was. I was so wrong with
Caroline rep shields doesn't lie clear, James? Oh yeah, clear, Dames?
Does it too? Um? Yeah, this is It's a glaucoma
drug that they found had the incredible side effect of
making lashes longer. But like christ And said earlier, you
(25:21):
definitely got a trim those babies or else they will
just keep growing and and bringing us up today, like
concluding our timeline, basically, the mascara industry is nothing to
sniff at. An international serve in two thousand two found
that women worldwide are using mascarat, Mabelin remaining the best
selling brand, and it's the mascara market itself, just by itself,
(25:46):
is a four point one billion dollar industry, and I
have a feeling that that number is even bigger today
because that was reported on in two thousand nine, So
I can only imagine that the number continues to up
and up and up, and you will see trend pieces
pop up every now and then about how guys are
also getting in on the eyelash game. There's actually something
(26:09):
called brand eye Lure that makes false eyelashes specifically for guys,
which are designed to be subtle and give guys what
they call a Hollywood gaze, So so the male gaze. Yeah, yeah, Well, Caroline,
we've gone through the history of mascara and we've talked
(26:31):
about how we've done it forever, but that still doesn't
answer the question of why we pay so much attention
to these puppies, because it has to be more than
just tradition. There has to be something behind this idea
that bolder, more voluminous, longer, more lush eyelashes will make
us more attractive. It's definitely related to the Kammas suitor
(26:52):
recommending it oh spicy, and we'll get into that spiciness
when we come right back from a quick break. So
there's this book called Love Signals, A Practical Field Guide
to the Body Language of Courtship by David Givens and
(27:13):
Grain of Salt just Grain of Salt. But Givens claims
that we spend so much time on our lashes because
it's all about sex signaling. It's about sex, right right, Yeah,
he talks about a good old rapid eye blink or
eyelash flutter means that you've raised the blinkers level of
(27:36):
psychological arousal. And so he says that batting the eyelashes
is a familiar flirting cue seen around the world, and
wearing mascara or artificial lashes embellishes that, Hey, I find
you sexy. Blink see I I find though, anecdotally, that
whenever I catch myself blinking rapidly, it's because I'm startled
(27:57):
and shocked by something some wires crossed. The Yeah, so
that makes me fun on a date. And so by
extension of that, Gibbons says, of course women wear mascara
or artificial lashes to embellish the blink. But even though
we think of sort of in a trophy kind of
(28:19):
way of batting your eyelashes as being a very feminine queue,
it's a signal that we are trying to catch your
attention or curry favor. Studies show, according to Gibbons, that
both sexes blink faster with partners they like. So, yeah,
pay attention. I don't. I'm gonna now start tracking my
(28:40):
eye blinking when I'm on a date with my boyfriend. Well,
Givens actually recommends that people do that. Oh, pay attention
to your blinkingly Yeah, like not well, not your own,
but your dates, like not counting them because you'd be
like I want to, but but sitting there and maybe
talk about maybe if they're looking away, see how often
they're blinking, if they're looking at the way it or something.
But then when they look back at you, if all
(29:01):
of a sudden they're blinking a lot, take note because
body language cues again grain of salt um. But he
also talks in his book about how and this is
getting away from eyelashes, but in general, he talks about
how people tend to find moving faces more attractive, like
(29:22):
facial movements and facial expressions make you more attractive in
the eye of the beholder. And so he says that
it's basically seeing big spider eyelashes. Blinking and moving uh
is part of prioritizing movement the visual system prioritizing movement
on the face, and that fluttering your long lashes can
(29:42):
catch and keep eye contact well. And there's also when
it comes to how we often use mascara to darken
our lashes. That does tend to make the whites of
our eyes look brighter. So there are theories that we
use mascara stone much. We were so into darkening our
(30:02):
lashes because by whitening the whites of our eyes it
makes us look healthier. And Margot Demelo, who wrote Faces
around the World, a cultural encyclopedia of the human face,
says that eyelashes, just eyelashes themselves, are considered a sign
of femininity also because they make the eyes look larger.
(30:23):
And this gets into evolutionary theories about how men straight
men are attracted to almost baby face looking women, not
because of infantilizing purposes, but because there's this idea that
babies evolved their super baby cuteness to specifically to keep
(30:44):
fathers invested in them for the long term, and so
over time that translated to their attraction to their female mates.
And bigger eyelashes make it looks like you have bigger eyes,
which makes you look sort of younger, healthier. I look
really young. My eyes are super wide, haroline s eyes
(31:06):
are huge, and I'm scared. No, I I definitely like
all of this stuff resonates in my brain because on mornings,
especially like this morning, I was super tired and I'm
just I find myself putting on a ton more mascara
when I feel like I look tired or feel tired,
because I just I almost want the mascara to just
lift lift my eyes open and keep them open, give
(31:29):
me baby eyeballs. That's all we need. And I also
wonder too if by enhancing our eyes and making them
look larger, sort of creating this optical illusion around our
own eyes is one example two of what's called a
super normal stimulus, which you hear a lot about when
it comes to why women look sexy in high heels,
(31:51):
because it creates what's called a super normal stimulus, sort
of an exaggerated signal in the case of high heels,
of making our hips shift and making our butts bounce
a little bit, which is already a signal of youth, fertility, etcetera, etcetera.
So mascara might be creating one of those supernormal stimuli
(32:15):
in our eyeball region as well. So there's all sorts
of evolutionary theories behind why we do it, although I
wonder yet again, you know, evolution. Why why couldn't Why
couldn't you have made health in fertility as strong of
the signal for men just so that they had to
wear all this stuff too. They did in Egypt. But
(32:35):
I think I wonder if that's more though, that it
was that hot, dry climate, that it was more of
the enhancing the utilitarian functions of mascara to keep stuff
out of our eyes, to deflect the sun's rays. Could be,
I mean, but it is interesting, just like total side
note that this practice does go back so long, forever
(32:58):
people have been doing this, and you do have rocker guys,
you know those rocker tips, some goth dips, one of
my ex boyfriends, one of Caroline's six boyfriends, who will
rock some guyliner and some mascara from time to time.
And hey guys, I mean Johnny Depp in Pirates of
the Caribbean. Yeah, alright, messy, handsome, sloppy, handsome. Um, but
(33:21):
eyelashes are definitely tied into gender cues. Uh. I mean,
you could just ask any child reading a comic book.
My dad used to joke when I was growing up
and had goldfish. He used to joke about, like, well,
how can you tell which fish is the girl fish,
she has eyelashes. Um, but no, that's a thing. That's
really a thing. Um. There are plenty of comic book
(33:42):
and comic strip examples, including characters like Mini Mouse versus
Mickey Mouse or Petunia the Pig versus Porky, who were like,
here is a woman creature that has eyelashes, because you can't,
and especially in a children's cartoon like Disney or something,
it's not like you can put bodacious breasts on a
(34:03):
duck or whatever and have it be normal for kids.
So they had to emphasize some sort of like secondary,
non threatening sex characteristic. Yeah, and that was something that
Trina Robbins wrote about over in Image and Narrative. And
I wonder sort of based off that, if Barbie wasn't
so curvaceous and had such prominent boobs, if maybe she
(34:26):
would have had more prominent eyelashes, because she doesn't have.
I mean, your eyes don't blink. But I'm just saying
this is a total side theory. I'm now starting to
think way too much about eyelashes. But I hadn't realized before.
I hadn't put that to the two and two together
in terms of oh long eyelashes gender q for you know,
these cartoons that cannot be voluptuous because when things like
(34:51):
many Mouse and and all of these characters are first
being drawn early on in the twentieth century, it's you know,
women in our culture had been darkening their eyes forever.
And so it's obviously not that if Mickey Mouse were
a real boy, he wouldn't have eyelashes, because boys have eyelashes,
but you do. The cartoonists had to find a way
to indicate, to give that gender cue two children to know, hey,
(35:14):
this is a girl mouse, and kids do pick up
on those gender cues, even down to the eyelashes from
a very young age. Arizona State University psychologist Carol Martin
actually noticed this effect of gender schema on her four
year old niece because she she observed that when her
niece drew stick figures, the women had eyelashes, but the
(35:38):
men didn't. Well again, I mean, if they're stick figures
and you're a kid, and you're like, I know, you
look like a person, but I don't know how to
translate you looking like that to my piece of paper.
I can just draw sticks. It's like, I I need
you to know that this is a woman person eyelashes,
give her some eyelashes. And considering all that we've now
talked about, Caroline, it seems like the trajectory of our
(36:01):
concern over our eyelashes has only gone up and up
and up and up. It's never dropped off at any
point to the so today we have these expensive false eyelashes,
you know, treatments that we can go get them sewn
into our faces, or we can get all these high
end mascara's. Um it's never really dropped off to where
(36:23):
today there's Latisse, there's the eyelash extensions that you can
get hands sewn into your eyelashes. They're all sorts of
mascara's out there. And there are false slashes, which are
so huge right now. I was actually in a cosmetic
store this past weekend and took a while just staring
(36:43):
at all of the different varieties of the false flashes.
But speaking of false slashes, before we close out this podcast,
real talk for a minute, we need to address the
fact that those false flashes are being often made by
women who are being paid just next to nothing, absolutely nothing. Yeah.
(37:06):
The Guardian did an article on this, looking at women
in Indonesia in particular because that's where the huge industry
is and the factories are. Um that pointed out that,
for instance, with the brand eye Lures Katie Perry range
of false eyelashes, the women who are making those in
Indonesia start on about fifty pounds a month, whereas the
(37:29):
lashes sell for just under six pounds in in the UK.
And there are a ton of cosmetics and fashion names
that have factories in Perba Lingo, which is in Central Java, Indonesia,
and a lot of these companies gravitate towards this region
because of the very low legal minimum wage, and these
(37:52):
women just aren't making any money. And I keep saying
these women because about the workers and these factories making
our false eyelashes that I go by on how queen
them are women? Well, and the fact too that you
have all sorts of cosmetic companies that are in per Bolinga,
including brands like Loreale, mac Makeup Forever and Mabelin it's
probably not just the false flashes that are being made
(38:15):
for you know, next to nothing. And the women working
in these factories, going back to the false eyelashes will
make as little as seven cents for every pair that
they make but women working from home will make them
who make them will make about two cents prepare. So
I wonder if we need to do a follow up
(38:35):
episode on this talking about how our cosmetics industry here
affects how that affects the women who are actually making
these cosmetics and probably not going out to buy the
newest mask era, the newest lipstick and get their nails
done and ever have false eyelashes stone into their eyes. Yeah,
(38:55):
I mean, this is certainly something that makes sense because
but I have never really thought about when I go
pick up a pair every year for Halloween of false
eyelashes where they come from. I just think, oh, it's
just the factory. It cranks them out somewhere in New
Jersey or something that the eyelash factory. Obvious little lash factory.
(39:16):
I'll go there. Hopefully it's not as creepy as the
chocolate factory. Who really wank up? But yeah, I mean
it's something to think about as we as we celebrate
and examine our our eyelash habits. Yeah, and and also
like consider how far we have gone this is. I mean,
it's a global industry. It's massive, and there are people
(39:36):
on both ends of it. Both on the production side
and on the side that we're talking about in terms
of going and consuming it. So with that, we want
to hear from you. We want to hear all of
your eyelashy thoughts. Are you like Caroline and me and
have spent a lot of time considering your mascara and eyelashes?
(39:57):
Let us know mom Stuff at how stuffworks dot com
And if there are any eyelash conscious guys out there,
I specifically want to hear from you, because what do
you do if you're a guy? Do you can you
get away with wearing mascara to make them look longer?
Do you even care? I just want to know. Mom
Stuff at how stuffwork dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
(40:17):
messages on Facebook, and we have a couple of messages
to share with you right now. So we've got a
couple of letters here from some guy listeners about our
episode on modesty. Joshua writes, I'm one of your newer
listeners and I binge listened to you and the rest
(40:38):
of How Stuff Works while I'm at work, and right
now I'm listening to your modesty episode and wanted to
share my thoughts as the father of two young boys,
it is important I feel that women be taught to
dress for the environment they're in, and dressing modestly is
also important. However, it's also the responsibility of young men
to treat women with respect, no matter what they're wearing. Locally,
(41:00):
there's been a kerfuffle about what young ladies wear in
schools and the double standards in terms of what the
different genders can wear. Two things would help alleviate the
issue surrounding dress codes and how young men and lesbian
young women are quote distracted by their classmates. One. Education,
it's important that young people understand what is happening to
them as they grow up and begin to notice potential partners.
(41:22):
This way, they can be shown what appropriate behavior is.
To change the dress code of high school to reflect
a business casual atmosphere. This will instill a sense of
appropriateness for when your young people get into the real world. Personally,
I'm in the modest hottest camp, which may have something
to do with my Protestant upbringing. I intend to show
my boys that a woman is beautiful no matter how
(41:43):
she dresses, and that she should be treated as a
person who is no less or greater than they are.
So thanks Joshua, and thanks for raising your boys upright. Well.
I have a letter here from Peter also about our
modesty episode. Um he says, h. I think when a
lot of men weigh in on this subject, they don't
(42:03):
have a clear understanding of how random and indiscriminate male
gaze and harassment can be. I'm assist gendered man who
presents himself in a very feminine way. I have long hair,
and by both men and women's clothing. I don't often
get much of a hassle for it, but one experience
sticks out of my mind. About a year ago, I
was walking home from class on a rainy day when
a man float his car next to me and, assuming
I was female, began cat calling me. He offered me
(42:26):
a ride, He repeatedly asked for my number, asked if
I had a boyfriend. If you're male, this is something
you are never taught how to deal with. You hear
stories about cat calling and harassment, but you never understand
how invasive it is until you experienced at firsthand. I
couldn't even process what was going on. I get mis
gendered by cashiers on an almost weekly basis, but this
was another level of upsetting. He followed me for about
(42:48):
a block before I finally got the nerve to tell
him off properly. I spent the rest of the week
obsessing over it, wondering what I did wrong? Was it
something I was wearing? Was it the way I walked?
After I got my thoughts together and consulted female friends
about what happened, their response was a unanimous no. He
just thought you were a girl. That is why you
were cat called. They proceeded to share their stories with
me of the workplace, in the classroom. It was happening
(43:11):
to them every single day. I could barely take it
after it happened once, so to all of the other
men in the audience. If a woman in your life
tells you about how someone harassed or please don't make
it about modesty. Until you've walked a day in a
woman's shoes or in my case, a woman's pants, I
don't think you're going to understand quite how complicated and
personal this topic gets. No matter what you look like
(43:31):
or what you're wearing. If some jerk thanks you're a woman,
they're probably going to think is totally okay to invade
your privacy and to make advances on you. Thank you
for another excellent podcast, and here's hoping my terrible experience
can be put to good use. So thank you so much, Peter, Yeah,
and thanks to everybody who's written into us. Mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot com is our email address
(43:52):
if you want to get in touch with us via
social you can find all of our links to that
stuff as well as all of our blogs, dios, and podcasts,
which also include all of our sources so you can
follow along with us. All that's over at stuff mom
Never Told You dot com for more on this and
(44:12):
thousands of other topics. Doesn't have stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House top
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristine. Today we are talking about something
that a lot of women and some men are dusted
with and emphasize and altar and tweak. We're talking about eyelashes,
(00:28):
the blinky hairs on our faces. What they mean, what
we use them for, and how we decorate them with
the number one cosmetic in America, which is mascara. Yeah,
and why eyelashes, long, lustrous eyelashes are considered such a
feminine beauty trait. Why are we so obsessed with our eyelashes?
(00:49):
Why Why am I so obsessed with my eyelashes? Caroline,
I don't know. Why are you? Because they are considered
I think of feminine beauty trade eight. I mean it's
the first cosmetic that I really started wearing on the
regular in high school. And if I wear anything, if
(01:09):
I could only wear one thing out of my house
makeup wise, it would be mascara. Yeah. I don't like to.
I I forget to put mascara on sometimes, Like I'll
put everything else on and I'll get to work and
look at myself in the bathroom mirror and be like,
why do I look strange? Something is a miss on
my face? And then I realized it's because I didn't
(01:31):
make my eyelashes look a mile long. They're just like
my normal, stumpy lashes. And it's one of those things
where it's such a given that women care about their eyelashes.
We will use mascara, And it seems like such a
given that women will pay attention to their eyelashes, they
(01:51):
will use a lot of mascara. This is something that
we will care a lot about, and yet rarely do
we ever stop and ponder, why why about this? You know,
the strange set of hairs growing out of our eyelids.
I distinctly remember being an early teen and reading like
(02:12):
Team magazine or seventeen or whatever, and they had they
would have like comments from boys being like, boys are
wondering about this about you, And one of them, one
of the guys said, I distinctly remember this, said I
don't understand why girls were all that black gunk around
their eyes. And I remember thinking like, yeah, you don't
get it, do you, buddy? But of course I don't
(02:33):
even know if I knew, like to back that up
with anything. I just knew like we do because we
like it. Yeah, and we should and and it makes
us beautiful and feminine, right right? Uh, Well, first of all,
why don't we kick off wisdom? Eyelash science just a
brief primer on why we have these blinky hairs to
(02:53):
begin with. And they are our eyeball protectors. They keep
dust and debris out of our eyes. And they're also
kind of like our eye whiskers. Yeah, if things get
too closed, it'll irritate the eyelash and we'll close our
eyes instinctively. They said a little signal saying, hey, hey,
(03:14):
something too, something too close to your eye whole. Yeah,
so it's you going too the eye doctor. When they
put that thing right up against your eye, that's torture. Yeah.
Or when they when they blow the air into your eyeball,
your eyelashes like emergency, stop everything. Follow up podcast on
Christen and Caroline's horror stories from the Eye Doctor. Right. So,
(03:36):
I know that when I was younger, my mother always
berated me, like, don't don't tug your eyelashes, they'll never
grow back. But that's how you get the eye lash
hairs that you can blow off to make wishes. I know. Well,
so it took me like a long time to all
of a sudden be like, let me think critically about
what my mother said. But anyway, so, eyelashes developed pretty
early actually when you are in uteroe sometime between twenty
(03:58):
two and twenty eight weeks, and as a person outside
of the uterus, they are continuously shedding and growing. So
my mother was so wrong that that thing that she
told me was wrong that they won't go back. Did
she also tell you in the same sentence that if
you cross your eyes, they'll get stuck. I don't. I'm
sure she did. I'm sure she like said it and
(04:20):
then was horrified and thought about how like, oh I
thought I would never say that, but I'm turning into
my mother. Um. They actually grow for three months before
they fall out, so that's I think that's a lot
shorter period than your head hair. Uh. And they can
take seven eight weeks to grow back if you pull
them out of your face. So I mean your mom
was then kind of onto something. Yeah, they all grow back,
(04:42):
but just slowly. Right. Did you ever know anyone who
cut their eyelashes off a kid? I feel like I
I know someone or maybe it was my mom telling
me some horror story about why I shouldn't use scissors.
I need to figure that out. There was some some
uh some cautionary tale I was told at some point
(05:03):
as a child about some other child who cut off
over eyelashes, and it was bad news. Um. But there
are a number of medications and health conditions that can
cause people's eyelashes to fall out, things like styes, siasis,
and thyroid conditions. And that's just three of a laundry
list of things that we could go through. But we'll we'll,
(05:26):
We'll save you the listening time, right. And another another
factor is age. Follicles can slow or stop producing hair
altogether as you age. Um. But so you know, eyelashes,
they sound like they're pretty utilitarian. They they serve a purpose.
They're just on our face to protect our eyeballs. There
are eye whiskers. I think that is the cutest thing
(05:47):
that could as the potential to sound gross, I feel like,
but I think it's cute. I like it. I just
picture like kitten whiskers anyway. UM. So if they're so utilitarian, though, like,
why are we why are we so obsessed with emphasizing them? Well,
Caroline it's the most appropriate explanation for a lot of
(06:07):
these things because we've just done it for a really,
really really long time, so let's just keep doing it right. Well,
in the ancient Middle Eastern general people were blending minerals
with oils and fats to darken their eyelashes and eyebrows,
and they used coal as well. In ancient Egypt, though
playing up the eyes was not just for women, it
(06:27):
was the thing that everybody was doing. Um. They would
make coal from villena, which is lead sulfide, malachite, and
other minerals mixed with animal fats and I'm just like
imagining that getting into my eye and just I feel
like it would burn. But they would line their eyes
in the cati style that we think of from like
Cleopatra and whatever, for both spiritual and practical purposes. Yeah.
(06:53):
On the practical side, this would reduce glear from the sun,
kind of like the way that football players have the
eye black that they wear sometimes. And it also helped
keep insects away because galena was an effective insect repellent
and disinfectant, which now I'm wondering why my messcara is
not also an effective insect repellent, because that seems sandy.
(07:16):
But when it comes to malachite, that other ingredient that
they would mix into the coal, it was believed to
be a gift from Hath or the goddess of love,
So naturally you would want to put it on your
eyes because it was also an aphrodisiac. Right, So, I mean,
everybody's putting on I makeup and they're like, this is
(07:38):
so handy. This very utilitarian, practical thing is also for
sexy time. But it wasn't just for adults and sexy
things kids, but also have their eyes smeared with coal
to both. They thought it would both strengthen eyesight and
protect them from evil spirits. And in terms of spirits,
it also represented protection from basically like the eye um,
(08:01):
but it represented the eye of Horace and replicated images
of raw the sun god Caroline. Yet again, follow up question,
why does my mess hera not also repel insects but
also protect me from evil spirits? I would buy that mascara.
That's an incredible claim. The FDA might have a problem
with them. And if we move over to India, there
(08:25):
was a similar trend, a cosmetic trend of lining the
eyes as well with dark coal. And it actually gets
to mention in the Kama Sutra, which was written in
the fourth century, that provided a recipe for what it
called quote an uncan of adornment that has the effect
of making a person look lovely. So from the time
(08:46):
of the Kama Sutra, this was a makeup tip. Hey,
you want to look pretty well. It also cooled the
eye area and reduced glare from the sun. So again,
just like in ancient Egypt, there was a practice, a
purpose and a spiritual slash sexy time purpose. Yeah, there
was a religious significance of men and children applying coal
(09:08):
during a traditional ceremony called the serma. Yeah. And in
ancient Rome women would darken their eyelashes and the whole
eye area really with burnt cork. And if you move
into the Middle Ages and then the Renaissance and then
further into the Elizabethan area, total break with history because
(09:30):
this is when we see eyes really becoming d emphasized,
to the point where some women got rid of their
brows and lashes all together in favor of highlighting the chests,
which I get that's still the thing that people do,
but also the forehead. Look at my beautiful forehead. I
wonder if they were like minds of five head. Look
(09:50):
at this big five head, though, don't you find me attractive?
But by the time we get to the nineteenth century,
cosmetics were becoming more and more popular among Europeans and Americans,
and this was when big names in cosmetics began to emerge.
Because you have women going d i y with their mascara.
(10:12):
They would darken their eyelashes and eyebrows using homemade methods
like ashes and even still that ancient Roman method of
using the burnt cork to darken their eyelashes as well.
But then in eighteen thirty Eugene Remel came around and
made things a little bit easier, right, A couple of
decades after moving from France to London with his pop,
(10:35):
he actually developed an eyelash darkener using coal dust and
petroleum jellies, so not using animal fats this time. And
it was so successful that Remmel became synonymous with mascara
in a number of different languages. So we have Remal
initially to think for this earliest kind of mascara as
(10:57):
we start to think of it today. Though mascara was
not necessarily for everyone at least according to Madame Lola
Montez right in eighteen fifty eight. Uh, there's this book
published that I am absolutely going to go back and
read more of when I have time. Uh. It's Madame
Lolamantez is the Arts of Beauty or Secrets of a
(11:22):
Lady's Toilet with hints two gentlemen on the art of fascinating.
A book for your fellow too, that's right. Uh yeah,
So this was the stage name by the way of
Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Countess of Landsfield. But she
she had some pretty darn strong opinions on on I
make up, where she basically was like, hey, some of
(11:44):
you can pull this off, some of you can't. Don't
even try. When talking about fair skinned and fair haired women,
you know, think of your friends who have very light
eyelashes or eyebrows, and they might want to emphasize them
so that you know they don't maybe don't look as pale.
She warned them against participating in this whole eye makeup thing.
She said, but take this fair creature and draw a
(12:05):
black line over her softly tinkshirt eyes, staining their beamy
fringes with a somber hue, and how frightfully you have
mutilated nature. She was very in favor. She's like, well,
you know, there are these women. They already have dark
hair and dark lashes. That's fine, they can roll with it.
But you fair haired ladies, you stay away from that
burnt cork. Well. She also had a tip for keeping
(12:26):
your lashes long and strong, which, yeah, it doesn't make
any sense and it's terrible in your mother, whoever told
you the story, would not approve you. Just trim them.
Get some tiny scissors and trim those eyeball whiskers. She said,
it is within the power of almost every lady to
have long and strong eyelashes by simply chipping with scissors
(12:48):
the points of hair once in five or six weeks,
which actually today if you use latisse you do have
to do. Because they grow so long and so strong
they will bad cure glasses if you wear them, so
you have to trim them very carefully. To me, that
that feels creepy, like if my lashes were so long,
(13:10):
I feel like I would be distracted. Oh, I wouldn't mind.
I love long lashes. Well, somebody else who love long
lashes was Mabel Mabel Williams in nineteen fifteen. She inspired
her brother tom Lyle Williams, who later started the company Maybel,
(13:32):
which was named after his sister. Inspired by Mabel's use
of a burnt cork and vasoline to darken her eyes,
a trick she stole from Photoplay magazine, who stole it
from ancient history. Uh. He ended up developing a mail
order formula for cake mascara, although at the time it
wasn't called mascara yet. All of this stuff was still
being just called eyelash darkener. So this original Mabelne mascara,
(13:56):
which like you said, was not being called mascara yet,
it looked world of like a compacted blush or eyeshadow
as you would see it today. And the way you
would apply this eyelash darkener was by taking the wand
that it came with. You would wet the wand and
then run it over the cake mascara and then wanted
(14:18):
over your eyes. Which is funny because I feel like
there are a lot of modern day beauty tips where
they say, hey, take this cake of eyeshadow and wet
your brush and you can get a fabulous dark line
on your eyes and that's like ladies. They were already
doing that in Age of Gals. What's old is new.
But by nineteen sixty six Maybeling, that little company started
(14:40):
by Tom Williams, was earning more than twenty five million
dollars a year. Yeah. And by the way, it was
in nineteen thirty three that we started calling it mascara
instead of eyelash darkener. But when it comes to false lashes,
which are having a huge moment right now, uh, it
was in nineteen fifteen that the first fake eyelashes, the
(15:03):
first falsees were developed at the order of film director
David Griffith, who was working on this film called Intolerance
Loves Struggle Through the Ages, And obviously it's nineteen fifteen.
It is a silent film, and he wanted his lead actress,
Sena Owen to have lashes long enough that they would
(15:24):
brush her cheeks when she would blink. So she needed
really long lashes, so he got a wig maker to
glue tiny strips of hair to her eyelids. But at
that point it was still just a Hollywood magic trick.
It wasn't until the nineteen forties that false eyelashes became
available to the public. Yeah, and then of course they
(15:46):
had a huge reignition of popularity in the nineteen sixties
with all that strong, dark, thick eye makeup. And I
mean I wear him every Halloween. I can't say that
I like rock fake lashes any other time time. Well,
that might be good because all that glue near yr
New year gentle lashes. I don't want to rip out
(16:07):
any of my eyelid whiskers, that's right, because they take
seven weeks to grow back. Um. But if we go
back though to the nineteen thirties, there were some bumps
along the road in our development of mascara and false lashes,
because this was this was sort of the downside to
our long standing obsession with darkening these hairs on our eyelids.
(16:29):
In the nineteen thirties, women were getting maimed and blinded,
and one even died from using this product called lash
Lure eyelash and brow dye because it contained highly toxic
substance that would tinden the hair but also cause irritation
and ulcers. And so with that, eyelashed dies were banned
(16:50):
in several states. Yeah, it's around this time that we
get the Food and Drug Act and the f D
A and the Federal Trade Comission actually have to start
approve being claims and advertising and things like that, because
you don't really want ulcers that blind you. Yeah, if you,
I'm just warning you. You can google image lash lore
(17:12):
eyelash to see what it did to some of these women.
But I'm warning you that's it's not pretty. No. And
in the nineteen thirties and forties we start to see
the development of eyelash curlers. The first one was actually
curl lash that's a K that is with a K,
and that was not a product of the Kardashian family
empire K for cookie. Uh. Yes, So we get eyelash
(17:34):
curlers and waterproof mass scara that was developed. I think
there was one Austrian actress that patented a version of
waterproof mascara. Yeah, and apparently because a lot of these
cosmetics come out of film and stage acting. And I
think it was the Austrian actress who're talking about was
a stage stage actress who needed a mascara that could
(17:59):
withstand her sweating under stage lights. But a lot of
the early waterproof mascara's would stay on, but they also
contained an adhesive so that after the actresses were done.
If they left it on too long, their eyelets would
get kind of stuck together, So it took some time
to develop what a freaking nightmare Um. In nineteen fifty eight,
(18:23):
Revlon launched their mascara in a tube with a spiral
wand and this was there were a couple other people
doing it at the same time. I don't think it
was just Revlon Um, but they ended up following it
up in nineteen sixty one with the first colored mascara, which,
you know, all these things have obviously retained popularity. I
just saw some magazine like another recommendation for Um colored mascara,
(18:47):
which I used as a kid too, not a kid,
like a surly teenager. But anyway, in nineteen seventy one,
maybe Lene, it's still around launches. It's insanely popular Great
Lash mascara, which sally uses my mother, and by two
thousand two, one tube of Great Lash mascara was selling
every one point five seconds. And what continues to fascinate
(19:10):
me when it comes to mascara is how it seems
like any time you see a commercial for mascara, they've
come out with some kind of new innovation, like they're
constantly improving and improving and improving on these mascaras, which
obviously dubious marketing claims, but it just speaks to what
(19:31):
a massive market force, like our demand for mascara that
will perfectly elongate our lashes and make them look full
and not get clumpy and do all of these things.
How how huge of a force that is. Well, one
of the guys who works in the cosmetics industry who
was in one of these articles that we read, was
talking about how even people in the industry were taken
by surprise at the length that women were willing to
(19:55):
go to achieve this ideal lash and that included like
doing like a hundreds ropes of mascara on each eye
and they end up coming out with they're like, Okay, well,
there's obviously a demand. That's not a problem. We just
need to put some products in front of these women
that they'll go for, and that includes things like the
vibrating uh mascara one. Yeah, so you know how they
(20:19):
tell you when you put on mascara to sort of
wiggle the wand back and forth and drag it up. Yes, well,
this thing if you're hardcore enough about your makeup, and
he specifies that he said, this is obviously not for
your average woman putting mascara on in the morning before
she dashes out the door to work. This is for
somebody who is hardcore and to makeup, and it's definitely
going to spend a lot of time getting ready, and
so the wand vibrates as you put on the mass era.
(20:39):
Could you just use an old electric toothbrush? Get your
get your nineties cake, I Darkenner, Yeah, what's your what's
your electric trooth? What your electric toothbrush? Put it in there.
Than I think it's perfect. We're onto something. We are
on something, probably very dangerous um And I mean I've
(21:02):
also found myself standing in the drug store cosmetic aisle
just staring at mascara's How do you how do you pick?
I don't know. I mean, how many conversations have you
had with other women about their preferred mascara? Are the
ones that they swear by? But then you use and
you're like, but this, no, this isn't doing what I need.
(21:23):
And then in I feel like every single edition of
every single mainstream women's magazine, there is at least one
feature on some new mascara that you have to try. Yeah, Well,
you know, I just don't. I've been burned before, Kristen.
And I don't mean literally like with lash floor. I
mean that I will see some mascara that's been really
(21:44):
hyped up, and I don't want to pick on any
brands or whatever, but I'll see something's been like super
hyped up across magazines and I'll say, well, God, if
it's so great, I'll give it a shot. And then
I've been severely disappointed because either it's completely under my
eyes by the end of the day or I can't
get it off even though it's not waterproof except etcetera, etcetera.
So I have found a brand that I have used
since high school and even the same type, like subtype
(22:07):
of mascara in that brand, and I'm not going to
give it up because it's too scary out there in
the mascara world. There's any choices well, and it's so
easy for us as consumers to make those choices because
like things like uh, YouTube a lipstick, well now polish,
it's one of those small luxury items that we we
(22:27):
don't mind parting with it just a few dollars just
to just to try it out. Although some can get
quite expensive, but it's genius. I mean it's it's honestly
a genius product because it constantly keeps women guessing and
spending usually insignificant enough sums of money that will just
continue doing it. Well. That's like with lipstick. You know,
(22:48):
we've talked about the lipstick index on the podcast before
about like during the recession and during times of of
economic downturn. You know, everybody's trying to save money and
they're down on their luck, but you're still going to
go to the store pick up a lipstick or in
this case, a mascara because it's a way to to
make yourself feel pretty. And I feel like you're still
participating in a beauty ritual, but not spend a hundred
(23:08):
dollars like you might on a fancy haircut. But if
you want to spend not just a hundred, but hundreds
of dollars on your eyelashes these days, you certainly can
by getting eyelash extensions, which started in Japan and then
started getting really popular in the States in two thousand five.
And you go there. There are actual eyelash beauty bars
(23:31):
that you can go to these days where for a
few hundred dollars or maybe more. You can lay down
for an hour or two and have someone hand stitch
eyelashes fake eyelashes into your real eyelashes. Yeah, and it's funny.
There were two different articles that we looked at, uh
where women gave a first person account of trying this
(23:54):
out and how. One woman gave a hilarious account of
like who in her life ranked them and who in
her life noticed at first and her boyfriend. She said
like something like her boyfriend rolled over and was just
going looks like your face. Another woman was called out
at her son's soccer game for having incredibly long lashes,
and the other woman assumed she'd done like a walk
(24:14):
of shame or something because it looked like she was
still wearing so much makeup. Yeah, but I can't say
that I would do that. There's something that's scary. I
don't have that much disposable income. A. But B I'm
scared about adhesives on my eyelashes. Yeah, it seems like
a pretty daunting procedure to go through just for lashes
(24:38):
because the only last for a few weeks max um.
But if you want something that lasts a bit longer
and also have more disposable income to spend. There's always Latise,
which hit the market in two thousand and eight, and
I remember first seeing ads for Latisse and laughing about
how ridiculous it seemed like, was like, Oh, really, are
(25:01):
we really being sold longer lashes? Come on, this is
gonna tank? No, I was. I was so wrong with
Caroline rep shields doesn't lie clear, James? Oh yeah, clear, Dames?
Does it too? Um? Yeah, this is It's a glaucoma
drug that they found had the incredible side effect of
making lashes longer. But like christ And said earlier, you
(25:21):
definitely got a trim those babies or else they will
just keep growing and and bringing us up today, like
concluding our timeline, basically, the mascara industry is nothing to
sniff at. An international serve in two thousand two found
that women worldwide are using mascarat, Mabelin remaining the best
selling brand, and it's the mascara market itself, just by itself,
(25:46):
is a four point one billion dollar industry, and I
have a feeling that that number is even bigger today
because that was reported on in two thousand nine, So
I can only imagine that the number continues to up
and up and up, and you will see trend pieces
pop up every now and then about how guys are
also getting in on the eyelash game. There's actually something
(26:09):
called brand eye Lure that makes false eyelashes specifically for guys,
which are designed to be subtle and give guys what
they call a Hollywood gaze, So so the male gaze. Yeah, yeah, Well, Caroline,
we've gone through the history of mascara and we've talked
(26:31):
about how we've done it forever, but that still doesn't
answer the question of why we pay so much attention
to these puppies, because it has to be more than
just tradition. There has to be something behind this idea
that bolder, more voluminous, longer, more lush eyelashes will make
us more attractive. It's definitely related to the Kammas suitor
(26:52):
recommending it oh spicy, and we'll get into that spiciness
when we come right back from a quick break. So
there's this book called Love Signals, A Practical Field Guide
to the Body Language of Courtship by David Givens and
(27:13):
Grain of Salt just Grain of Salt. But Givens claims
that we spend so much time on our lashes because
it's all about sex signaling. It's about sex, right right, Yeah,
he talks about a good old rapid eye blink or
eyelash flutter means that you've raised the blinkers level of
(27:36):
psychological arousal. And so he says that batting the eyelashes
is a familiar flirting cue seen around the world, and
wearing mascara or artificial lashes embellishes that, Hey, I find
you sexy. Blink see I I find though, anecdotally, that
whenever I catch myself blinking rapidly, it's because I'm startled
(27:57):
and shocked by something some wires crossed. The Yeah, so
that makes me fun on a date. And so by
extension of that, Gibbons says, of course women wear mascara
or artificial lashes to embellish the blink. But even though
we think of sort of in a trophy kind of
(28:19):
way of batting your eyelashes as being a very feminine queue,
it's a signal that we are trying to catch your
attention or curry favor. Studies show, according to Gibbons, that
both sexes blink faster with partners they like. So, yeah,
pay attention. I don't. I'm gonna now start tracking my
(28:40):
eye blinking when I'm on a date with my boyfriend. Well,
Givens actually recommends that people do that. Oh, pay attention
to your blinkingly Yeah, like not well, not your own,
but your dates, like not counting them because you'd be
like I want to, but but sitting there and maybe
talk about maybe if they're looking away, see how often
they're blinking, if they're looking at the way it or something.
But then when they look back at you, if all
(29:01):
of a sudden they're blinking a lot, take note because
body language cues again grain of salt um. But he
also talks in his book about how and this is
getting away from eyelashes, but in general, he talks about
how people tend to find moving faces more attractive, like
(29:22):
facial movements and facial expressions make you more attractive in
the eye of the beholder. And so he says that
it's basically seeing big spider eyelashes. Blinking and moving uh
is part of prioritizing movement the visual system prioritizing movement
on the face, and that fluttering your long lashes can
(29:42):
catch and keep eye contact well. And there's also when
it comes to how we often use mascara to darken
our lashes. That does tend to make the whites of
our eyes look brighter. So there are theories that we
use mascara stone much. We were so into darkening our
(30:02):
lashes because by whitening the whites of our eyes it
makes us look healthier. And Margot Demelo, who wrote Faces
around the World, a cultural encyclopedia of the human face,
says that eyelashes, just eyelashes themselves, are considered a sign
of femininity also because they make the eyes look larger.
(30:23):
And this gets into evolutionary theories about how men straight
men are attracted to almost baby face looking women, not
because of infantilizing purposes, but because there's this idea that
babies evolved their super baby cuteness to specifically to keep
(30:44):
fathers invested in them for the long term, and so
over time that translated to their attraction to their female mates.
And bigger eyelashes make it looks like you have bigger eyes,
which makes you look sort of younger, healthier. I look
really young. My eyes are super wide, haroline s eyes
(31:06):
are huge, and I'm scared. No, I I definitely like
all of this stuff resonates in my brain because on mornings,
especially like this morning, I was super tired and I'm
just I find myself putting on a ton more mascara
when I feel like I look tired or feel tired,
because I just I almost want the mascara to just
lift lift my eyes open and keep them open, give
(31:29):
me baby eyeballs. That's all we need. And I also
wonder too if by enhancing our eyes and making them
look larger, sort of creating this optical illusion around our
own eyes is one example two of what's called a
super normal stimulus, which you hear a lot about when
it comes to why women look sexy in high heels,
(31:51):
because it creates what's called a super normal stimulus, sort
of an exaggerated signal in the case of high heels,
of making our hips shift and making our butts bounce
a little bit, which is already a signal of youth, fertility, etcetera, etcetera.
So mascara might be creating one of those supernormal stimuli
(32:15):
in our eyeball region as well. So there's all sorts
of evolutionary theories behind why we do it, although I
wonder yet again, you know, evolution. Why why couldn't Why
couldn't you have made health in fertility as strong of
the signal for men just so that they had to
wear all this stuff too. They did in Egypt. But
(32:35):
I think I wonder if that's more though, that it
was that hot, dry climate, that it was more of
the enhancing the utilitarian functions of mascara to keep stuff
out of our eyes, to deflect the sun's rays. Could be,
I mean, but it is interesting, just like total side
note that this practice does go back so long, forever
(32:58):
people have been doing this, and you do have rocker guys,
you know those rocker tips, some goth dips, one of
my ex boyfriends, one of Caroline's six boyfriends, who will
rock some guyliner and some mascara from time to time.
And hey guys, I mean Johnny Depp in Pirates of
the Caribbean. Yeah, alright, messy, handsome, sloppy, handsome. Um, but
(33:21):
eyelashes are definitely tied into gender cues. Uh. I mean,
you could just ask any child reading a comic book.
My dad used to joke when I was growing up
and had goldfish. He used to joke about, like, well,
how can you tell which fish is the girl fish,
she has eyelashes. Um, but no, that's a thing. That's
really a thing. Um. There are plenty of comic book
(33:42):
and comic strip examples, including characters like Mini Mouse versus
Mickey Mouse or Petunia the Pig versus Porky, who were like,
here is a woman creature that has eyelashes, because you can't,
and especially in a children's cartoon like Disney or something,
it's not like you can put bodacious breasts on a
(34:03):
duck or whatever and have it be normal for kids.
So they had to emphasize some sort of like secondary,
non threatening sex characteristic. Yeah, and that was something that
Trina Robbins wrote about over in Image and Narrative. And
I wonder sort of based off that, if Barbie wasn't
so curvaceous and had such prominent boobs, if maybe she
(34:26):
would have had more prominent eyelashes, because she doesn't have.
I mean, your eyes don't blink. But I'm just saying
this is a total side theory. I'm now starting to
think way too much about eyelashes. But I hadn't realized before.
I hadn't put that to the two and two together
in terms of oh long eyelashes gender q for you know,
these cartoons that cannot be voluptuous because when things like
(34:51):
many Mouse and and all of these characters are first
being drawn early on in the twentieth century, it's you know,
women in our culture had been darkening their eyes forever.
And so it's obviously not that if Mickey Mouse were
a real boy, he wouldn't have eyelashes, because boys have eyelashes,
but you do. The cartoonists had to find a way
to indicate, to give that gender cue two children to know, hey,
(35:14):
this is a girl mouse, and kids do pick up
on those gender cues, even down to the eyelashes from
a very young age. Arizona State University psychologist Carol Martin
actually noticed this effect of gender schema on her four
year old niece because she she observed that when her
niece drew stick figures, the women had eyelashes, but the
(35:38):
men didn't. Well again, I mean, if they're stick figures
and you're a kid, and you're like, I know, you
look like a person, but I don't know how to
translate you looking like that to my piece of paper.
I can just draw sticks. It's like, I I need
you to know that this is a woman person eyelashes,
give her some eyelashes. And considering all that we've now
talked about, Caroline, it seems like the trajectory of our
(36:01):
concern over our eyelashes has only gone up and up
and up and up. It's never dropped off at any
point to the so today we have these expensive false eyelashes,
you know, treatments that we can go get them sewn
into our faces, or we can get all these high
end mascara's. Um it's never really dropped off to where
(36:23):
today there's Latisse, there's the eyelash extensions that you can
get hands sewn into your eyelashes. They're all sorts of
mascara's out there. And there are false slashes, which are
so huge right now. I was actually in a cosmetic
store this past weekend and took a while just staring
(36:43):
at all of the different varieties of the false flashes.
But speaking of false slashes, before we close out this podcast,
real talk for a minute, we need to address the
fact that those false flashes are being often made by
women who are being paid just next to nothing, absolutely nothing. Yeah.
(37:06):
The Guardian did an article on this, looking at women
in Indonesia in particular because that's where the huge industry
is and the factories are. Um that pointed out that,
for instance, with the brand eye Lures Katie Perry range
of false eyelashes, the women who are making those in
Indonesia start on about fifty pounds a month, whereas the
(37:29):
lashes sell for just under six pounds in in the UK.
And there are a ton of cosmetics and fashion names
that have factories in Perba Lingo, which is in Central Java, Indonesia,
and a lot of these companies gravitate towards this region
because of the very low legal minimum wage, and these
(37:52):
women just aren't making any money. And I keep saying
these women because about the workers and these factories making
our false eyelashes that I go by on how queen
them are women? Well, and the fact too that you
have all sorts of cosmetic companies that are in per Bolinga,
including brands like Loreale, mac Makeup Forever and Mabelin it's
probably not just the false flashes that are being made
(38:15):
for you know, next to nothing. And the women working
in these factories, going back to the false eyelashes will
make as little as seven cents for every pair that
they make but women working from home will make them
who make them will make about two cents prepare. So
I wonder if we need to do a follow up
(38:35):
episode on this talking about how our cosmetics industry here
affects how that affects the women who are actually making
these cosmetics and probably not going out to buy the
newest mask era, the newest lipstick and get their nails
done and ever have false eyelashes stone into their eyes. Yeah,
(38:55):
I mean, this is certainly something that makes sense because
but I have never really thought about when I go
pick up a pair every year for Halloween of false
eyelashes where they come from. I just think, oh, it's
just the factory. It cranks them out somewhere in New
Jersey or something that the eyelash factory. Obvious little lash factory.
(39:16):
I'll go there. Hopefully it's not as creepy as the
chocolate factory. Who really wank up? But yeah, I mean
it's something to think about as we as we celebrate
and examine our our eyelash habits. Yeah, and and also
like consider how far we have gone this is. I mean,
it's a global industry. It's massive, and there are people
(39:36):
on both ends of it. Both on the production side
and on the side that we're talking about in terms
of going and consuming it. So with that, we want
to hear from you. We want to hear all of
your eyelashy thoughts. Are you like Caroline and me and
have spent a lot of time considering your mascara and eyelashes?
(39:57):
Let us know mom Stuff at how stuffworks dot com
And if there are any eyelash conscious guys out there,
I specifically want to hear from you, because what do
you do if you're a guy? Do you can you
get away with wearing mascara to make them look longer?
Do you even care? I just want to know. Mom
Stuff at how stuffwork dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
(40:17):
messages on Facebook, and we have a couple of messages
to share with you right now. So we've got a
couple of letters here from some guy listeners about our
episode on modesty. Joshua writes, I'm one of your newer
listeners and I binge listened to you and the rest
(40:38):
of How Stuff Works while I'm at work, and right
now I'm listening to your modesty episode and wanted to
share my thoughts as the father of two young boys,
it is important I feel that women be taught to
dress for the environment they're in, and dressing modestly is
also important. However, it's also the responsibility of young men
to treat women with respect, no matter what they're wearing. Locally,
(41:00):
there's been a kerfuffle about what young ladies wear in
schools and the double standards in terms of what the
different genders can wear. Two things would help alleviate the
issue surrounding dress codes and how young men and lesbian
young women are quote distracted by their classmates. One. Education,
it's important that young people understand what is happening to
them as they grow up and begin to notice potential partners.
(41:22):
This way, they can be shown what appropriate behavior is.
To change the dress code of high school to reflect
a business casual atmosphere. This will instill a sense of
appropriateness for when your young people get into the real world. Personally,
I'm in the modest hottest camp, which may have something
to do with my Protestant upbringing. I intend to show
my boys that a woman is beautiful no matter how
(41:43):
she dresses, and that she should be treated as a
person who is no less or greater than they are.
So thanks Joshua, and thanks for raising your boys upright. Well.
I have a letter here from Peter also about our
modesty episode. Um he says, h. I think when a
lot of men weigh in on this subject, they don't
(42:03):
have a clear understanding of how random and indiscriminate male
gaze and harassment can be. I'm assist gendered man who
presents himself in a very feminine way. I have long hair,
and by both men and women's clothing. I don't often
get much of a hassle for it, but one experience
sticks out of my mind. About a year ago, I
was walking home from class on a rainy day when
a man float his car next to me and, assuming
I was female, began cat calling me. He offered me
(42:26):
a ride, He repeatedly asked for my number, asked if
I had a boyfriend. If you're male, this is something
you are never taught how to deal with. You hear
stories about cat calling and harassment, but you never understand
how invasive it is until you experienced at firsthand. I
couldn't even process what was going on. I get mis
gendered by cashiers on an almost weekly basis, but this
was another level of upsetting. He followed me for about
(42:48):
a block before I finally got the nerve to tell
him off properly. I spent the rest of the week
obsessing over it, wondering what I did wrong? Was it
something I was wearing? Was it the way I walked?
After I got my thoughts together and consulted female friends
about what happened, their response was a unanimous no. He
just thought you were a girl. That is why you
were cat called. They proceeded to share their stories with
me of the workplace, in the classroom. It was happening
(43:11):
to them every single day. I could barely take it
after it happened once, so to all of the other
men in the audience. If a woman in your life
tells you about how someone harassed or please don't make
it about modesty. Until you've walked a day in a
woman's shoes or in my case, a woman's pants, I
don't think you're going to understand quite how complicated and
personal this topic gets. No matter what you look like
(43:31):
or what you're wearing. If some jerk thanks you're a woman,
they're probably going to think is totally okay to invade
your privacy and to make advances on you. Thank you
for another excellent podcast, and here's hoping my terrible experience
can be put to good use. So thank you so much, Peter, Yeah,
and thanks to everybody who's written into us. Mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot com is our email address
(43:52):
if you want to get in touch with us via
social you can find all of our links to that
stuff as well as all of our blogs, dios, and podcasts,
which also include all of our sources so you can
follow along with us. All that's over at stuff mom
Never Told You dot com for more on this and
(44:12):
thousands of other topics. Doesn't have stuff works dot com
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