That inside-the-family joke came back to me recently when I was browsing the newspaper coupon inserts for products we might use. So many for hair color and makeup! But the one for an eye cosmetic made me think of another inside-the-family joke, about overdone eye makeup and false eyelashes which we call “caterpillar eyes.” You get the picture, I presume, with multiple black insect feet. This ad was for not one, but TWO products for “gorgeous eye looks.” One product was called the “lash blast amplify primer” and the other (to follow #1) the usual black sweep. Oh, “vegan” in origin, in case that concerns you.
A few days later the newspaper's entertainment insert featured the latest movie about a weird woman obsessed with Dalmatian dogs. You know the one: half of her hair black, the other white, and what we call (in the same jesting way) raccoon eyes. Yes, “Cruella.” Believe it or not, she's not an original. Probably an ancient, idol-worshiping queen named Jezebel was. Her story about challenging her prophets of Baal against Elijah's God took up quite a bit of space in 1 Kings 16-18. When her pagan priests “lost” the battle of the gods, she threatened to kill Elijah.
The rest of the story comes in 2 Kings 9 , fourteen years after her husband Ahab's death in battle. She wielded considerable influence over her son Jehoram, living in the palace. When war roared at the city's gates, she piled up her hair in the queenly fashion and painted her eyes with antimony, a metal we now know to be toxic but was prized for accenting one's eyes. The warrior who took the city, Jehu, wasn't impressed by Mrs. Raccoon Eyes, and she was killed. It gets gory from there, but the story is in 2 Kings 9:30-37.
As a product of the Depression and impoverished farm life, my mother didn't grow up with a lot of cosmetics savvy. Her motto would have been “A little powder and a little paint make a pretty little girl look like what she ain't.” She didn't have a chest of “war paint” in the bathroom drawers. She stretched out her tiny sample of lipstick from the door-to-door cosmetics salesperson as long as she could. Thus I grew up without a lot of makeup savvy and still am a minimalist. Maybe that's why I find double-duty eye makeup rather amusing. I still remember the day my teen daughter convinced me to have a “makeover” at a local cosmetics store. Oh, the array of products. I bought just a lipstick. As we got outside into the sunlight, my daughter turned to “painted”-me and said, “Mom, you look like a clown!”
I'm not against makeup and some of us need a lot of help! But I think the balance was expressed by a lady who was the opposite of Jezebel (and Cruella). The Bible calls her Mrs. Noble. She had a work ethic that went from sunrise to sundown. She raised kids who loved her. She didn't fret about the future and spoke with wisdom. Her husband said of her: “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Proverbs 31:30).
Yes, our cultures are thousands of years apart, but I think she would have put this whole cosmetics industry in perspective. Somehow, I don't see her viewing her world through caterpillar eyes.
(In thinking about cosmetics on Bible times, remember they didn't have handy bathing facilities to stay clean and, well, smell good. Thus perfumers and makers of cosmetics had essential businesses of their times. But there's a line where societal norms pass over to obsession. I think that's why the prophets mentioned overdone makeup in negative ways as symbols of national deterioration. Two more references on that: Jeremiah 4:30 and Ezekiel 23:40. None of the prophets wrote best-sellers, but they said what God felt needed to be said.)
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