When we asked a few hundred female students, mainly between 20 and 40, to write down their morning make-up habits, we got very diverse answers. For many of the students this act is very important for their appearance and self-esteem, ‘the most important 10 minutes of the day’, while others think it is a waste of time and money; for them it is better to look ‘natural’. Some women reported that they love to put on make-up, it is a cherished moment of stillness and self-absorption, while others said that they hate it as a stressing and demanding time-thief. They complained that they were usually hardly awake and that they should be running for the bus or subway. In some cases the stress got worse by small children, teenagers or a partner competing for the bathroom space. While some women felt that they were painting their face in order to emphasize their ‘true self’, others said that they painted a mask to hide themselves.
This routine can be intensely private and solitary, but also a collective act, going to make-up parties, a beauty salon or engaged in together with one’s best friend. Make-up also provides a popular topic for conversation between women, trading tips of new brands or techniques, commenting on the looks of others.
A detailed ethnography of make-up teaches us much about how routines are made and changed, according to the context. It also focuses on the ways in which a routine may move on a continuum from an insignificant mundane activity to an act with strong symbolic charges. On the one hand it can be experienced as a banal activity, on the other as a cultural practice full of meanings and evaluations concerning gender, body, power, control and the politics of beauty.
Even less striking routines, for example brushing your teeth, have a similar complexity, and are transformed by time and context. Just the same old routine, day after day, year after year – but yet not. The technology may change; you might experiment with a new toothpaste. At the same time many people look in the mirror at a person constantly changing, a face that some mornings seem very familiar and other days rather unfamiliar. Some people even feel that they are losing control of their life when they do not brush their teeth or have forgotten their brush. An act of personal hygiene is transformed into a kind of moral rearmament. And what about the feelings that are aroused when your partner never learns to put back the cap on the toothpaste tube?
My Routines, Your Bad Habits
Our interest is directed to situations where routines all of a sudden become visible. Changes in the life cycle may bring them up to the surface in different ways. One such transformation is couple making. Two individuals with each their own set of ingrained habits have to negotiate a shared household or everyday life. My normal routines are confronted with your strange habits.
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Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren