GUYLINER: A DoubleViking Exposé

FACT: GUYLINER RUINED SPIDER-MAN 3

I know, I know – in addition to guyliner, Peter Parker also brushes his hair forward and generally acts like a pathetically laughable douchebag. But none of these problems would have been noteworthy had it not been for the guyliner. At first, when Peter voluntarily brushes his hair over his eyes, it’s hard not to laugh – okay, maybe screenwriters Sam and Ivan Raimi thought that this hairstyle was more threatening than it really is, and they took it out of context. No biggie – we, as an audience, are willing to look past that.

But in the next scene, when Peter tries to look badass while eating milk and cookies, something is awry. Peter is wearing eyeliner. WHY? Okay, you can rationalize the hairstyle change because Peter is willingly rebelling against his formerly prim-and-proper self. That’s acceptable. But guyliner? You’re telling me that the evil, seductive powers of the alien symbiote caused Peter to walk down to a local pharmacy and buy a beauty product, all to show how he has changed as a person? If anything, Peter should (and otherwise does) get sloppier:  messy hair, a douchebaggy attitude and indifference to the feeling of others. But why would a devil-may-care asshole like post-symbiote Peter go to the trouble of applying makeup, of all things? It makes no sense. There are many things one can rationalize or forgive amongst Spider-Man 3’s many flaws. Guyliner is not one of them.

FACT: JARED LETO WAS COOL, PRE-GUYLINER

“Jared Leto” used to be a name that meant something. He was in American Psycho. Requiem for a Dream. Fight Club. Leto was in numerous kickass movies, and it appeared that he might be the next rising star of quasi-independent film.

Then he started wearing guyliner. He formed the band 30 Seconds to Mars and disappeared off the Hollywood radar for a year or so. And in his post-guyliner days, what films has Leto appeared in? Alexander, Lord of War and three other films nobody’s ever heard of. How does one go from getting the shit kicked out of them by Edward Norton to being Colin Farrell’s subservient boyfriend in a bad Oliver Stone movie? The only solace to be taken in Leto’s downfall is that it is now okay to despise him as a human being, which makes his onscreen suffering (an axe to the face in Psycho, near-death bludgeoning in Fight Club, and the amputation of an arm in Requiem) way, way more entertaining and hilarious than it really has any right to be.

FACT: GUYLINER IS THE NUMBER TWO MOST FREQUENTLY USED WEAPON OF EMOS AND SCENESTERS

Do you think “whining” and “having something legitimate to say” are synonymous? Do you simultaneously keep LiveJournal, Xanga, Facebook and MySpace accounts, all with different pictures of yourself? Do you listen to bands like The Smiths or Joy Division while pretending that (A) their music is actually enjoyable and (B) you knew about them before they were cool? Congratulations! You’re emo, and therefore -- out of righteous indignation -- you're probably not reading this exposé. Or you are reading it, and will subsequently write an angry LJ entry linking to this article as yet another example of homophobic, conservative society that just doesn’t get you, right before you once again declare yourself “not an emo, not a scenester,” remembering to follow said post with more pictures of yourself in emo and scenester poses.

Emo kids may be one of the top two easiest groups to mock on the planet (Scientologists being the other), but it has to be said: an entire subculture of American kids from the ages of 12-30 somehow managed to have such a lack of personality, such a desire to be seen as intelligent and interesting and deep, that they all decided to look and act exactly the same way. Guyliner is the number two most frequently used weapon of the emo/scenester, barely surpassed by the weapon that is this hairstyle.

FACT: GUYLINER IS, BY DEFINITION, A “BEAUTY PRODUCT”

Question: should men be beautiful? Answer: no. Men can be handsome, hunky, haggard, gruff, grizzled, buff, and slick, but they can not be beautiful. So why use a feminine beauty product like eyeliner? Women have cornered the market on absurd makeup tools – and if you ask them, most women don’t enjoy putting on eyeliner.  

They obviously want to make themselves look presentable, but their desire to wear eyeliner does not come from a genuine personal belief that eyeliner is pretty, but rather an adherence to the societal expectation that, for whatever reason, girls wear eyeliner and lipstick. To willingly take a completely feminine product that even women don’t like and use it within the male gender for the purposes of beautification is downright stupid.

FACT: GUYLINER AND SUCKY BANDS GO TOGETHER LIKE SUCKY BANDS AND BAND SLUTS

-Fall Out Boy

-The Killers

-30 Seconds to Mars

-Panic! At the Disco

-Green Day’s post-Dookie career

-My Chemical Romance 

These bands have two things in common. Three, if you count the copious amounts of undeserved band-whore sex they get.

FACT: JACK SPARROW IS THE ONLY MAN WHO CAN EFFECTIVELY PULL OFF GUYLINER TODAY

This is because the decided unmanliness of guyliner is completely counteracted by the undeniable, permanent badassity of being a fucking pirate.

FACT: GUYLINER WAS ORIGINALLY USED TO TERRIFY HOUSEWIVES, AND HAS SINCE BEEN PERVERTED

Before Pete Wentz and Jared Leto were using eyeliner as a substitute for personality, you know who used guyliner effectively? Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne, that’s who. These guys knew that guyliner didn’t make you look more attractive, and they didn’t put it on in wimpy measures simply so they could appear more feminine. No, Alice and Ozzy slathered the stuff on, to the point where they looked like goddamned demons.  

They knew that guyliner should be used -- if used at all -- to terrify, not to attract: conservative housewives across the country reeled in shock of the things Alice and Ozzy did. Part of this shock may be attributed to the whole “biting the heads off bats” thing, but another part of it was almost assuredly the guyliner. And as with tattoos and piercings and all the other things that used to be manly but now aren’t, the old generation has to watch the new generation take a symbol of anti-authoritarianism and independence and turn it into a fucking fashion statement.

FACT: COME AUTUMN, THERE WILL BE NO ESCAPE

There is currently little to no information available on or about a website called guyliner.com. The domain has been bought. A meager supply of information is present. But, like a lion in the tall grass of Africa, it waits. Patiently. Waiting for the right moment to strike and destroy everything that was once manly. Come the site’s ostensible autumn 2007 launch date, no one will be safe. Which is why we must arm ourselves now.

FACT: THERE IS NOT MUCH WE CAN DO

Considering that guyliner and its accompanying emo cultural movement get more and more widespread as time goes on, there’s really no way to stop this enemy’s inexorable march aside from simply waiting it out: in time, like all fads, guyliner will fade away and those who indulged in it will laughingly look back on the days they wore it, whimsically asking themselves, “What was I thinking?,” before laughing for a moment and realizing that they have now matured and are a more intelligent person.