I found Zahra Hankir’s new book Eyeliner: A Cultural History to be a fascinating and entertaining read. That’s quite an accomplishment, because I wouldn’t think of myself as the audience for such a book. I honestly had almost never consciously noticed eye makeup, though I’m sure at some level the artful illusion of it subtly registered in my mind. Those aren’t the details I notice; I tend to look into a person’s eyes rather than at the face as a whole. Even with myself: many times I’ve checked myself in the mirror before going out without even noticing some smudge of dirt or a blood-crusted razor cut. I’d only looked into my eyes to see if there was life in there, and neglected to actually examine my face.
The book mentions so many cultural eyeliner images...yet not one of them brought an image to my visually stunted memory. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “known aesthetically for her signature dark eyeliner and red lipstick.” Aaliyah in the 2002 movie Queen of the Damned and Bette Davis in the 1938 movie Jezebel “were made up in eyeliner.” In the television series Orange is the New Black, “rebellious female inmates at a New York prison creatively and consistently trace their eyes with pigment.” In the Netflix short series The Queen’s Gambit, “the troubled chess player portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy draws lines that grow more dramatic as she becomes progressively more unhinged.” In the television series The Crown, “Princess Diana, prior to being interviewed by the BBC’s Panorama program about Prince Charles’s infidelity, applies black eyeliner heavily to her bottom waterline, giving her eyes a somber, mournful appearance.”
Oh, to be so attuned to these visual details! They just pass me by. I racked my brain and could only dredge up Daryl Hannah’s character of Pris in Blade Runner, and the horrifying visual of Kim Guilfoyle, Donald Trump, Jr.’s girlfriend, as she holds forth on television with her racoon eyes and bloated Clutch Cargo lips.
But don’t let my list of pop culture references above deter you from this book. It is actually a deep dive into history, sociology and culture. The book’s first and longest chapter focuses on Queen Nefertiti of Egypt. Nefertiti’s history is elusive and contested: the facts surrounding her reign, her ethnic background and origin, and her later life are spotty, and her tomb remains undiscovered. But what we do have is the 3300-year-old, 19-inch tall, 44-pound stucco-coated limestone bust uncovered from the sands of Egypt by a German archeologist in 1912. The discovery has influenced fashion and makeup ever since.
All features considered, the allure of the queen’s eyes—framed with thick black lines—is unparalleled. The lines are perfectly symmetrical, meeting at the edges of the eyes to form her trademark flicks. From a strictly aesthetic perspective, the tracing defines and widens the windows into Nefertiti’s soul, lending them a fresh-looking yet sultry appearance….Nefertiti’s image is orchestrated to signal the two keys of charisma: receptivity and formidability, says Caroline Keating, a professor at Colgate University who studies facial cues and charisma. In addition, her bust “plays with themes of femininity and power, crossing socially prescribed gender boundaries in many cultures, then and now. Perhaps that is part of the fascination with her—her image violates gender stereotypes, but not too much….Nefertiti’s eyes, in particular, “feel like front gates,” Keating says. “She can let you in or close you out.” Meanwhile, she adds, her kohl “seems designed to signal power through nonverbal means. The line along the bottom lends a more powerful, cat-eyed look. Less of a line along the bottom would be a less intimidating look.
I really need to start being more observant of eyeliner!
Via Nefertiti, we learn of the waves of Egypt-inspired fashion trends starting in the 1920s and resurging nearly every decade, with Nefertiti’s face always a large part of the fascination. Movie actresses popularized the look, with icons like Theda Bara, Josephine Baker, Clara Bow and Greta Garbo sporting smoky eyes. We learn much about the history of the make-up industry: Helena Rubenstein launched Egyptian Kohol Jet Grains in 1907, Guerlain introduced the Lynx kohl pencil in 1920, and Maybelline first sold an eye pencil in 1929 as part of ‘multistep eye makeup kit’ with eyelash darkener and eye shadow. Elizabeth Arden around the same time touted kohl as the “superfine powder ancient as the Sphinx yet new as tomorrow on Wide Western Eyes.”
Regarding those Wide Western Eyes, we also delve into the racist intimations behind these fashion crazes, couching them in terms of emulating the exotic, foreign look of non-white people. We also learn of the many poor and Black women entrepreneurs in the 1920s who opened small businesses capitalizing on the desire for exotic looks, selling their products door-to-door, by mail order, and to local beauty salons.
We learn how American women considered wearing make-up as part of their patriotic duty in the fight against Hitler, who disapproved of made-up women. Makeup buying and use surged again in the years after World War Two, with movie stars like Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren sporting “their famously classic, gentle cat-eye looks.” And Marilyn Monroe’s makeup artist “used a brown eye pencil and eyeshadow to give her a ‘bedroom eyes’ look, as well as white eyeliner on her lower waterlines for a more ‘awake’ or ‘bright-eyed’ look.”
And we learn of the greater embrace in the 1960s of the beauty choices of women of color.
After decades of flirting with the idea, magazines and makeup companies began to suggest that the looks of women of color and their darkened and ‘exotic’ eyes were not only desirable and achievable, but also aspirational.
And we learn how Black culture has sought to reclaim Nefertiti as their own, from Jazz pianist Cecil Taylor’s 1963 album Nefertiti, the Beautiful One has Come, to Miles Davis’ Nefertiti album in 1968, to Tina Turner’s 1984 I Might Have Been Queen, to Queen Latifah sporting a Nefertiti-style headpiece in her 1989 Dance for Me music video through Michael Jackson’s 1992 Remember the Time music video, featuring the model Imam as Nefertiti.
And all that is in the Nefertiti chapter! In the book, we also learn about Wodabe culture in Chad, where young men don eye makeup and perform ritualistic dances. to win over potential brides. We also hear the story of Mahsi Amina, the young Iranian woman who was detained by the morality police for breaking Islamic dress code. She subsequently died in police custody. She was not overtly political, but she did practice and supported a slightly less restrictive though still conservative style.
In the photo, twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Amini is clearly done up. Her lips and nails are painted burgundy, her eyelashes are curled, and her cheekbones are contoured. Eyeshadow and eyeliner accentuate the Kurdish Iranian woman’s smoky eyes. And her hijab is arranged loosely around her face, exposing her neck, and revealing a dark head of hair and the tip of a French braid.
Her death in 2022 set off protests in Iran, which were met by lethal force, as well as around the world. Zahra Hankir traces the history of women in Iran, from the slow gains in freedom up through the time of the Shah, the Islamic Revolution that undid all those gains, and the subtle, covert ways in which women have fought back by pushing the limits of allowed dress and makeup.
The eye makeup of the Kumari, the child goddess of Nepal whose image in the header I captured in Kathmandu in 2000, is based on the eye stylings of the storytellers of Kerala, India, featured in another chapter in the book. The author also takes us from Jordan to Mexico, showing how eyeliner figures in ethnic pride and cultural survival around the world. And the book ends with following the life, spectacular career and the makeup expression of the late singer Amy Winehouse, who died of alcohol poisoning at the age of 27.
In short, this close focus on eyeliner opens a world of history, global culture, politics and pop culture. It is truly a wonderful read. And for what it’s worth, I have indeed become more attuned the magnificent artistry of eye makeup.
THIS WEEK’S NEW NONFICTION
A quiet week in the publishing world, but here are few highlights.
- The Black Joy Project, edited by Kleaver Cruz. The brainchild of educator and activist Kleaver Cruz, The Black Joy Project is an extension of a real-world initiative of the same name. It has become a source of healing and regeneration for Black people of all backgrounds and identities. International in the scale, fist-raising in the prose, and chock-full of gorgeous works by dozens of acclaimed artists, The Black Joy Project does what no other book has ever done. In words and art, it puts joy on the same track as protest and resistance … because that is how life is actually lived. Uprisings in the street, with music as accompaniment. Heartbreaking funerals followed by second line parades. Microaggressions in the office, then coming home to a warm hug and a garden of lilacs. From the bustling streets of Lagos to hip-hop blasting through apartment windows in the Bronx. From the wide-open coastal desert of Namibia to the lush slopes of Jamaica’s Blue Mountains. From the thriving tradition of Candomblé in Bahia to the innovative and trendsetting styles of Soweto, and beyond, Black Joy is present in every place that Black people exist.
- How Migration Really Works: The Facts About the Most Divisive Issue in Politics, by Hein de Haas. As debates on immigration have reached fever pitch, so has political and media fearmongering. But what are the facts behind the headlines? Drawing on three decades of research, migration expert Hein de Haas destroys the myths that politicians, interest groups, and media spread about immigration. He reveals:
- Global migration is not at an all-time high
- Climate change will not lead to mass migration
- Immigration mainly benefits the wealthy, not workers
- Border restrictions have paradoxically produced more migration
"A powerful debunking of myths about global migration, and an indictment of the political dishonesty that generates them."-- The Guardian
"Authoritatively written... a valuable book that, whatever one's views on immigration, will challenge many of the reader's idées reçues and leave them better informed."-- The Times
"Compelling . . . it engages with the arguments behind the myths . . . How Migration Really Works ultimately uses its convincing research to ask us to worry less about migration. In doing so, it instead alights upon global inequality as the true cause for concern."-- Chatham House, The World Today
- The Waltz of Reason: The Entanglement of Mathematics and Philosophy, by Karl Sigmund.
“Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here,” Plato warned would-be philosophers. Mathematician Karl Sigmund agrees. In The Waltz of Reason, he shows how mathematics and philosophy together have shaped our understanding of space, chance, logic, cooperation, voting, and the social contract. Sigmund shows how game theory is integral to moral philosophy, how statistics shaped the meaning of reason, and how the search for a logical basis for math leads to deep questions about the nature of truth itself. But this is no dry tome: Sigmund’s wit and humor shine as brightly as his erudition.
“An erudite, witty, tongue-in-cheek and wide-ranging discourse on philosophy and mathematics, a Gödel, Escher, Bach for the 21st century.”—Christof Koch, PhD, author of The Feeling of Life Itself
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