In which Harriette needlessly advises the LW to be polite to jerks

[conuly]

DEAR HARRIETTE: I am a 23-year-old woman facing a dilemma within my friend group of four. Our group consists of two girls, including myself, and two guys. The other girl in our group enjoys wearing a significant amount of makeup. I don't mind this, as I believe everyone has the right to express themselves in a way that makes them feel confident and beautiful. However, our male friends consistently give her a hard time about her makeup choices. They go as far as telling her to take it off, claiming that she looks ugly with it on. This situation makes me uncomfortable, and I'm unsure about how to address it. I believe everyone has the right to make their own choices regarding their appearance without facing judgment from others. How can I approach my male friends to express my concerns about their comments without causing unnecessary conflict within our friend group? -- Friend Drama

DEAR FRIEND DRAMA: Speak directly to your male friends and ask them to back off. It's fine for them to have an opinion about your friend, but it's inappropriate to badger her about it. Insist that they let her be. Tone is everything. Since she loves makeup, they might want to give her some makeup lessons from a pro, but they should stop the name-calling now. That's not how friends treat each other.

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Comments

[conuly]

LW, don't waste your breath. Tell your friend she looks lovely and tell those jerks to fuck off. And then stop spending time with them, because they're terrible people.

[ysobel]

How can I approach my male friends to express my concerns about their comments without causing unnecessary conflict within our friend group?

Pro tip: there already IS unnecessary conflict. While you can't say "hey that's not ok, quit it" in a way that guarantees no hurt feelings, it's also not your job to manage their feelings for them. Better to dump the Grenade Of Discomfort in the lap of those acting shittily than leaving it with the makeup-wearing person getting bullied. If they want to not get told off for bullying, they can choose to behave better.

[melannen]

Honestly, "hey that's not ok, quit it" is probably the perfect script here, and as likely as anything to minimize hurt feelings. If they're not total jerks they may not realize it's not ok; some guys pick up that telling a woman she looks better without makeup is affirming and good and can't read the line when teasing stops being fun, so tell them it's not ok with minimum fuss. And if they are total jerks giving them the same "it's not OK, quit it" every time is probably the least likely to give them hooks for more drama.

[mrissa]

And "you look ugly" is not "you look better without it." It's just "you look ugly."

[azurelunatic]

Yeah, name the jackass behavior. "You're being a jackass to X. Stop commenting on her makeup and body."

[jamoche]

"they might want to give her some makeup lessons from a pro"

Which will be interpreted as "they're right, and OP is on their side".

[mrissa]

Yeah, why on earth is Harriette suggesting that? "You look ugly, stop wearing that" is not the behavior of a caring friend who thinks you have not achieved your contouring look exactly correctly, it's the behavior of a controlling dude who thinks he gets to pick what you do with your face. If it was the former it would be, "are you sure...it's supposed to...do that?" at most. At. Most.

[joyeuce]

That leapt out at me too. I don't see anything in the letter to suggest that LW thinks Friend is bad at choosing or applying makeup.

[cimorene]

Yeah. It's a hilariously wrong response from Harriette that wouldn't help and would be a terrible suggestion even if it were true that friend is objectively failing at fixable at makeup application techniques.

[cereta]

The thing is, I'm not even sure from the letter that the woman is wearing make-up badly, just that she wears a significant amount. "A significant amount" can mean many things, and some of those things can just be a matter of preference. Hells, I'm sitting here wearing foundation, eyebrow pencil, eyeliner, eyelid color, mascara, and lipstick, and I don't think I look like a clown or anything.

[conuly]

And to be clear, if you want to wear an extravagant amount of colorful and visible makeup, that's your right as a human. So long as you're happy with how you look then that's your business when you're off the clock. (If you're on the clock it may be your employer's business, especially if you have a front-facing job, but I'm all for a minimum of interference in how employees present themselves.)

[cereta]

That, too ;).

[watersword]

Was this written by a AI trained on redpill Reddit or something????

[ethelmay]

Yeah, my immediate thought was that they were negging her.

[full_metal_ox]

These are often the same sort of guys who complement what they regard as “natural” beauty.

Except that makeup-users in the audience could readily rattle off the fifteen products the model used to achieve that fresh-faced minimal look (and I wouldn’t put it past particular cognoscenti to be able to identify specific brands and colors.)

[firecat]

I’m annoyed that no mention was made of asking the makeup wearing girl what she wants done about this.