A hand on the washstand, lips half open, drawing on lipstick. The concentrated profile, the slightly stretched posture, the look of checking oneself in the mirror. Makeup is grooming meant not to be seen, yet the moment it is seen it gives off an intense intimacy. Meiku fetish (makeup fetish) is the term for finding strong sexual or aesthetic appeal in the act of applying or fixing makeup, or in the face made up by it.

A three-layered structure of appeal

What the makeup fetish targets is not uniform; it splits into at least three layers. The first is taste for “the face as the result of being made up”, drawn to the completed form itself, the drawing of the eyeline, the colour of the cheek, the gloss of the lipstick. The second is taste for “the gesture of making up”, feeling visual pleasure in the run of movements themselves, raising the lashes with a curler, blending concealer, laying colour on the lips. The third is taste for “the collapse of makeup”, feeling intense sexual arousal in the process by which sweat, tears, saliva, and bodily fluids run the eyeline, smear the lipstick, and strip the foundation.

The three layers, rather than completing themselves alone, often exist in layers within a single enthusiast. An aesthetic interest in the whole time-axis of makeup, completed beauty, the process of making, the ending of the collapse, is the essence of the makeup fetish.

Gestures at the mirror and intimacy

The act of making up belongs by nature to the private time before going out. There is a kind of sense of intrusion in another entering a scene seen only by family or a lover. Situations such as having makeup fixed before one’s eyes, being turned to mid-makeup, or being embraced from behind while making up are stock sexual scenes referred to repeatedly in speaking of the makeup fetish.

The gaze through the mirror is also a large element. The one making up looks at herself in the mirror, and the observer sees that figure directly or through the mirror. The structure of gazes crossing in three directions (self to mirror, observer to self, observer to mirror-image) creates a peculiar psychological tension on both the observed and the observing side.

The aesthetic of makeup collapse

What holds a special place within the makeup fetish is taste for collapse. Tears run the eyeline into black streaks down the cheeks; an intense act spreads lipstick around the mouth; sweat warps the foundation and bare skin shows through. These “collapsing makeups” hold their own sexual sign-value as an intermediate state between ordered beauty and bare skin.

In live-action adult works, staging that deliberately collapses the actress’s makeup at the climax of a scene is established as a fixed form. Eye makeup run, lipstick stretched, sweat and makeup mixed on the forehead. The process of being collapsed from a perfectly ordered state by deliberate sexual pressure functions as a visual sign of sexual conquest.

The before-and-after gap

There is also a form in which the makeup fetish connects with “gap”. A situation allowing comparison of the three stages, the bare face before makeup, the half-done face mid-makeup, and the completed face, produces the wonder of multiple faces existing within a single person. The bare face just on waking, the completed face just before going out, the face partway through removing makeup on returning home. The sense of monopolising the different-hour faces of the same partner becomes a sign of the intimacy peculiar to a lover or spouse.

Conversely, the scene of a lightly-made woman appearing in unusually heavy makeup, the “makeup of a day with intent”, is also a turning point the makeup fetish loves. The gap with the usual itself is read as a sexual signal.

Adjacent taste cluster

The makeup fetish is adjacent to face-area partialisms: the lip fetish, lipstick fetish, eyelash fetish, and pale-skin fetish. Where attachment to the gesture and tools of makeup (cosmetics, mirror, makeup brush) is strong, it takes a form close to an accessory fetish, with high affinity to dress-line tastes such as bodikon and glasses. The type that loves the makeup-fixing scene also overlaps the frame of “gesture fetish” and “act fetish”.

See also

• Lips
• Pale-Skin Fetish
• Glasses Fetish
• Bodikon