'Nature loves a color display. Clowns and mimes are magic.' -Jan Epton Seale, The Makeup Poem
I am kikay. I’m not exactly proud of it but it is the truth. I like pink and purple colors and I have tons of make-up. You should see my makeup kit, its actually a tool kit (bought at SM for only 69 pesos!) whose weight is probably comparable to my dad’s own tool kit with his hammers and nails inside. I like make-up and I am not alone. There are lots of women like me who are avid users of Avon Colors (one month to pay kasi), Ever Bilena (Cheaper and can be bought at your nearest Hortaleza Branch, and what have you’s. Yes, we exist...even in the activist circle. Yes, we are kikay and we are activists. Some people might think that somehow that doesn’t follow. Hell, most people have a pre-conceived notion that activists should look like a hippie junkies (in short, smelly?), a too-late-for-the-seventies flowerchild, with a large dose of the peasant-look effect (same people who thinks that hygiene is bourgeoise). We on the otherhand, like dresses and skirts. We sometimes even dare to wear them on mobs and it has never hampered us from being militant. Hell, we are as militant as the other guy, in his maong pants and batik shirt... we just choose to do it with style. We are quite easy to spot. We are the ones you borrow cologne, powder, or hand sanitizers from when you feel a little greasy due to the dust during mobilizations. We are the people you borrow shampoo, soap, and toothpaste from during overnights when you have forgotten to be hygienic enough to bring your own. And yes, we are the ones who use technologically-made feature enhancing products that make us feel better... stronger. No harm with that or is there? We don’t. Though others believe otherwise. An ex-comrade (a guy, of course) once commented (while I was coloring my eyes with my blue eyeliner) that how dare I use cosmetics when I perfectly know that makeup are mere traps set-up by this capitalist system that make women believe that beauty at face value is of the essence. Moreover, he added, it was pointless, if not downright stupid, specially for a conscious element to be influenced by carefully thought-of advertisements that imposes beauty as important and that we are in a way advocating that women should make “becoming beautiful” her life’s quest. I wonder where he gets these appalling accusations. We are kikay and we acknowledge the fact that there is an element of fancifulness in being kikay that we accept. But what we cannot accept is the sweeping statement that in being kikay we have advocated “becoming beautiful” as a life quest for women. We are kikay because we feel good about ourselves by being kikay. When we are wearing a skirt, we feel feminine and it’s our way of embracing our femininity. When we put lipstick, we decide what character we are going to play for the rest of the day whether we are going for the dainty-all-day persona with pink lipstick or a supervixen stance with a dark red one or maybe a little more earthy with brown. When we put our eyeliners and mascaras, it’s a sort of make our eyes look sharper, making us appear to be tougher. Now, what is wrong with that? I’d rather end this piece with another couple of lines borrowed from the poem I have quoted from at the beginning of this piece.
'This is closet art. Men without are not better than women with.'
