Cracking the Cover Up
Image Courtesy: Strike Magazine Tallahassee
“Cover Up!” is commonly clamored by our caring mothers before we dare to show our shoulders to a world we entered bare. This has happened to us all when we were little when we just wanted to roll in the winter wind tides and thrash in the summer sun without a care in sight; until we got a sunburn, or caught hypothermia and cried all night. However, as we grew up and older, and a tad bit bolder, these fear-fueled scoldings began to funnel down to just us girls.
Image Courtesy: Rae Klein
The others? While boys transitioned from prey to predator, we were stuck with nothing to gain at the very bottom of the food chain. So, it seems only natural for our mothers to fear every lingering stare that impresses upon each scantily clad surface of our skin. But is their demand a warning or just another supporting pedestal of the manufactured patriarchy in place of natural freedom? They shout this saying with such tenacity as if our flesh should be shielded from the scum of the world, as though femininity must be separate from filth.
Image Courtesy: Rae Klein
However, say we look past it and heed this so-called warning. What happens when we armor ourselves in clothing, and our hunters can still sense insecurity in the deepened lines of our under-eyes, panic in our protruding pimples, and weakness in our uneven skin tone? We bury ourselves, we become Cover Girls.
Cover Girl is the ultimate camo against any hunter. Her claw-like mascara, contour that could cut, blinding blush highlighter, and rogue rouge lip, transform her from prey to predator in just an hour and a half (give or take depending on if she curls her hair—but maybe not because Cameron complimented her straightened hair at that one party a month ago).
In this eat-or-be-eaten world, to not be consumed by others we consume any and every product the mass marketers spoon-feed us. Interestingly, we chastise the East for the religious use of face coverings on women, calling the practice cruel and unethical, meanwhile, in the West, nearly every woman devotes herself to cover-up. Both cultures demand women to cover themselves, one is just more expensive to upkeep– just walk into your local Sephora and you’ll see what I mean.
Image Courtesy: Rae Klein
Ideally, the goal is to make the Cover Girl display face look effortless and natural yet also expensive and powerful. Flagging that she has the freedom to do her makeup for leisure, the money to buy those high-end products, and the natural beauty to make it all seem effortless We camouflage ourselves in concealer for 16 hours a day, and for those remaining eight hours we can sleep without daring to damage our skin so that it might be easier to cover up all over again in the morning. For those eight hours we are allowed to be free, but only in our dreams and with the sole company of our covers.
However, our cover-ups are not just limited to the confines of clothing and makeup, we subconsciously extend the boundaries of a Cover Girl within ourselves. We conceal the snorts in our chuckles, veil our, like, vernacular, and hide our ugly humor. In this apex assimilation, we all begin to blend together into one single girl, a covered girl. We are vulnerable in our vitality; the very things that show we are alive signal our fall from grace. From there, with our dropped dignity, the motherly call to “cover up” is echoed in our Cover Girl culture. So, does "cover-up” protect the Cover Girl or perpetuate the cycle of consumerism and patriarchy?
Strike Out,
Writer: Hope Fell
Editor: Noelle Knowlton
Graphic Designer: Camila Denker
Tallahassee