Mecano popularized a song like Maquillaje in the eighties that today would not pass the cut of political correctness, where a girl does not let her partner look at her until she has put on all the essential creams. It begins with “shadow here and shadow there” and ends with a stanza that says “Look now, look now, you can look / I've already put on my makeup / and if you see my image you're going to hallucinate / And you're going to want to kiss me”. It was not exactly a feminist theme, but it was sung by an entire generation in times when political correctness cared little. It is also true that, in forty years, men have filled the bathroom cabinets with as many anti-dark circle, anti-spot and anti-aging creams as our partners. And a TV3 make-up artist even told me that there are fewer and fewer men who, when they leave the set, ask for make-up remover wipes because they look better.
Well, makeup entered the campaign when Alberto Núñez Feijóo accused Yolanda Díaz of manipulating employment data: "Seeing the minister who is in charge of the occupation, there is no doubt that she knows a lot about makeup." Since metaphors are loaded by the devil and Twitter is the closest thing to Dante's hell, within five minutes smoke was rising on the social network where they called the PP candidate macho – and worse things.
The big parties are running out of arguments to attack each other. Ayuso, who loves trouble, came to ridicule the leader of Sumar after she showed that she irons to relax. The president of Madrid finds it disturbing that she, living in a 400-meter house paid for by everyone, irons. I don't know where the contradiction is, but the noise returned to the networks.
Going back to the macho use of makeup as an electoral weapon, I remember reading to Nora Ephron in The Neck Doesn't Deceive that her bathroom was invaded by vials of potions for the skin, hands, body, or feet. To conclude: “Remember when we were still young. There was only Nivea and life was much easier. And politics was cleaner, too, like a freshly washed face.
