My wife and I had an interesting discussion the other night as she was cleaning off her makeup for the day, in preparation for bed. I commented (as any good engineer should) that this seemed a bit of a waste of time. Fortunately, my wife has a very natural look and doesn't need makeup, in my opinion. Hence the comment that she was not optimizing her time (I'm betting if you ask just about any engineer's wife about how he's tried to optimize her life, you'll get the eye-rolling of a lifetime).
Anyway, it got me to thinking - what is the origin of makeup? Who was the first person to think of doing that to themselves? There's actually a lot of things that I wonder about how they got started. Smoking (OK, Bob Newhart covered that one); eating cooked meat ("Hey - Fluffy just fell into the fire. Hey - it actually smells pretty good. Hey - I think I'll try just a bite"); being a Democrat; skydiving; etc. etc.
Anyway, back to the makeup question - I can't envision how that got started. I think a woman is going to have to explain that one. I can, however, fully understand what happened next, and how it propagated.
- Woman puts on makeup. Probably used berries for color, maybe nice smelling plants.
- Man notices her. She's colorful, and smells vaguely of food.
- Wife of man notices husband noticing other woman. Wife: "What you look at? You think she look good?"
- Now, you have to remember that man was not evolved back then. They didn't have a lot of experience. They had not invented the campfire discussion or men's support groups yet. So, in his simpleminded way, he just answered honestly.
- Man: "Yeah, she look nice. Smell good too".
From this point forward until the next morning, the Man had very little recollection of events. He just remembers a big clanging sound, and then many little lights going off in his head. Next thing he knows, he wakes up in the early morning, face down in the mud outside the cave where he was standing the night before, with a few of his belongings that he thought he left in the cave now apparently just tossed outside.
At any rate, from that point on more and more women started wearing makeup, and it just snowballed into a custom. Women realized it wasn't all that fun, and that it took a lot of time, but they saw it as a competitive necessity.
They got their revenge however - how do you think ties came about?
