Makeup, a domain where many of the "fundamental depth models which have generally been repudiated in contemporary theory" (Jameson 1984: 61) are very much alive. These include the "hermeneutical model of inside and outside," the "dialectical one of essence and appearance," the "existential model of authenticity and inauthenticity," and "the great semiotic opposition between signifier and signified" (ibid.). The makeup discourse would appear to have retained the rhetoric of modernity in a postmodern world

The world of beauty is one in which an imagined or desired self can be the truer self, the hidden self which has to break through to the visible material body

The dissimulation which was increasingly thought to be necessary in urban life was also threatening to the transparency that ideally characterized the honest man. Women, blushing to show true feeling, and increasingly making up that blush to stand for true feeling, mediated between the uncertain moral behavior of public space and the more predictable and controlled morals of the private domain. Thus we can say that makeup was already seen as something proffered to be read, something already understood as constructing a public self which might, or might not, accurately reflect a private self

Makeup advertising, a particularly gendered part of the consumer discourse, constructs women as objects while appealing to them as subjects. Although we might assume that makeup would be particularly amenable to a postmodernist discussion of a play with surfaces, it is, on the contrary, a domain which retains the rhetoric of modernity in a postmodern world. Mass- market make-over videotapes construct a public with a particular aesthetic- a community of women who learn to see themselves and others in culturally specific ways

The most beautiful face in the world? It's not Elizabeth Taylor's, not Christie Brinkley's, not Brooke Shields's-it's yours. This is not advertising copy- it's what I truly believe. The reason why your face is so beautiful is that it's unique. It has your incredible depth and personality written all over it. It has your creativity and radiance. Estee Lauder, 1985

paradoxical female world of discipline and indulgence, therapy and luxury