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Men and Maybelline

Question:

Is it sinful for a man to wear makeup?

Answer:

No. There are many legitimate reasons a man may wear makeup, which include covering skin blemishes or surgical scars, covering tattoos he no longer wants to display, appearing on stage or on television or in any other artistic performance that requires makeup, or wearing a costume for a Halloween party or masquerade.

If what you have in mind is when some men wear cosmetics for the purpose of presenting themselves to be women, the moral issue is not a man wearing makeup but a man attempting to become a woman. In regards to that concern, in 2012 Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said:

People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. . . . From now on he is merely spirit and will. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be. . . . When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being.

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