Cosmetics and Costumes

Our cosmetics and our costumes are so familiar to us that it is difficult to see the singular strangeness in the ways we make ourselves up. We emerge, all of us, out of our little night chambers, wherein we have temporarily lost our bearings in uncharted sleep, into the light of day, pausing to arrange our faces and clothe our bodies in a way that will naturalize us for the human company we intend to keep. Every day we achieve this dramatic transformation from nakedness into a socially serviceable appearance. Some days require several or even many changes of costume and of face, depending on the roles we are called upon to play.
In all of this we choose and select- grooming our bodies with more or less attention to the art of managing appearances. But our choices are always constrained by the affordances of our closets and cosmetic cabinets. These, in turn, are supplied from the vast but particular cultural wardrobe that is part of the large theater of our secular existence.