Maltese women have so much to learn about the socio-cultural implications of make-up

Maltese women wear too much make-up. Worse, they think make-up is like clothes – that you can’t go out without it and if you do, you should be locked up.

I wonder what they think when they see all those women elsewhere, CEOs, politicians and ordinary office workers, all striding about with naked or near-naked faces.

I wonder if they ask themselves why it’s only showgirls and reality-show stars and models in magazines who have heavily disguised faces, and if they think that’s the norm and that everybody is meant to try to look like that.

The situation is so bad in Malta that now even the head of state, one of the few Maltese women who never had a problem leaving the house without make-up on, has been led to believe that heavy make-up is part of good grooming, rather than its precise opposite.

She’s suddenly wearing more and more make-up and it’s getting worse. Look at this photograph: pale silver eye-shadow worn from the eyebrow to the eyelashes, and – horrors – SHINY LIP GLOSS.

Lip gloss is only for very young girls who are still at school and for porn stars who want to maximize the effect of their lip implants. Sometimes it will be used in a fashion context, on models (but rarely) but you will never see it used in real life.

Nobody wears shiny lipgloss. It is horrendous and sends out all the wrong messages. This is when you are young. When women are middle-aged or have got their bus-pass already, lipgloss just makes them look crackers, the equivalent of those old ladies who, when I was a child, wore heavy rouge that made them look crazy.

And above all this, the head of state should NEVER wear shiny lip-gloss. Or pale silver eyeshadow from eyebrows to eyelashes, either.