Makeup Is Basically Hypocrisy

I’m a makeup artist in New York and I feel makeup can be used to spiritually enhance a woman’s natural beauty.... But I notice the women at the Meditation Resort don’t wear makeup.

Makeup is the invention of the ugly people. It is not that makeup is ugly, but makeup itself is the invention of the ugly. The ugly feels inferior compared to the naturally beautiful — jealous, competitive. The ugly tries to compensate for it with artificial methods. The natural has no need to compensate. But naturally beautiful people are very few; hence makeup has become almost a routine thing.

For thousands of years, man has been trying to hide in every possible way all that is ugly in him — in the body, in the mind, in the soul. Even people who were naturally beautiful started imitating the ugly and the artificial, for the simple reason that the artificial can deceive. For example, breasts naturally are not as good looking as they can be made to look. Even if a woman has naturally beautiful breasts, she will start feeling that the women who have no natural beauty in their breasts can at least pretend and show that they are far more beautiful. So the naturally beautiful also start imitating.

Makeup, and the whole idea of makeup, is basically hypocrisy. One should love and accept one’s nature...and not only on the physical level, because that is where the journey starts. If you are false there, then why not pretend the same falseness as far as mind is concerned? Then what is wrong in pretending to be a saint, a sage, when you are not? The logic will be the same. And sometimes it happens that the pretender can defeat the real, because the pretender can practice, can rehearse, can manage and manipulate in many ways.

I am not saying that all that is not natural is bad.

Nature can be improved upon. That’s what intelligence is for, but it should not be against nature.

For example, the lips can be red through better food, through better exercise, through better medicine. That too is improving upon nature, but improving upon nature in a natural way. Putting on lipstick is cheap; it is not really improving. It is good for the stage.

Women can shave their legs and underarms. It is good, it is hygenic; nothing is wrong in it. Unless you take every care to clean your body.... If you take a bath every day and clean your body, then the hairs under your arms are not bad. There is nothing wrong about it. There is no need to remove them, they have their place. But if you are not taking a bath and if you are not being hygenic and clean, then certainly they will collect dust and they will collect perspiration and they will stink. Then it is good to remove them. I am not against removing them. It is beautiful to shave the hairs on your legs and give your legs a beautiful shape.

...You can deceive others, but how can you deceive people who are close to you? And is it right to deceive them? And if they love you because of your breasts, the moment they discover that the breasts are false — plastic or rubber — will their love remain? It will disappear. The whole of humanity has become false. The idea seems to be to deceive, to pretend.

Nature should be helped to go beyond itself, it should not be repressed. If nature is repressed, you start becoming schizophrenic. You start having double individualities: one that you are; one that you show to others. And you can get very messed up within yourself. Who are you? — this or that? It is not only a question of having two personalities, you will have to have many personalities. The mother will have one personality towards the child — she has to pretend to be a mother — and to the husband she has to pretend to be a wife. And to the lover she has to pretend to be a lover, and so on, so forth. So she will have many personalities around herself, and in the jungle of all these personalities her own individuality will be lost. She will find it very difficult to discover her original face.

You say to me, “Makeup can be used to spiritually enhance a woman’s natural beauty....”

That is sheer nonsense. Spirituality cannot be enhanced by any makeup.

Spiritual beauty has nothing to do with anything that can be done from the outside.

Spirituality is your original face; it is the discovery of your intrinsic nature. It has not to be tampered with, it has not to be painted, it has not to be arranged. It has no hairs on the legs because there are no legs, no armpits, no lips.

Your innermost being is pure consciousness. It needs no makeup.

My whole effort here is to help you to be yourself, to be totally free from personalities. Personality is the false thing that surrounds you, and individuality is the gift of existence. It is already there inside you. If you drop your personalities, you will discover it. The moment personalities are removed, it wells up.

Real life has to be natural, and the real life has to go one day beyond nature. But nature has to become its foundation — not against nature, not hiding it, but discovering the innermost core of nature.

Then is the transcendence, and that is the most beautiful experience. It beautifies you, your body, your mind, your soul. It not only beautifies you, it beautifies even people who come in contact with you. This beauty belongs to the beyond; it is called grace. Something descends from the above and floods you.


Osho, Come, Come, Yet Again Come