FACT: female styling reached its apex in the 1960’s.

Everything came together perfectly.  Some of the Barbie Doll blandness of the 50’s was gone, the flowing, frizzy excesses of the 70’s were yet to come, and in this golden moment, women’s styling managed to be sexy, but not trashy, independent yet feminine, geometric and playful.

And just all around super, super cool, and super, super hot.

Can we not all agree, if the sound went out on our televisions, we’d still be glued to Mad Men?  There’s a reason for that (and it’s not just to promote smoking among young women).

If I had to point to any one element which captures the magic of the 60’s style – and I do have to do point – if nothing else, to make the rest of the world understand – it’s the eye makeup.

Now you might think, “okay, fine, Alfredo has a thing for heavy masacara.  Maybe he saw one too many reruns of Batman with Julie Newmar as Catwoman or That Girl with Marlo Thomas.”

(my God look at this Amazon specimen: she could crush poor Robin with one masterful snap of the thighs!)

Maybe Alfredo was rebelling against the blue eyeshadow so in vogue when he was a little boy in the late 1970’s.

(check it out, is this woman not the poor man’s Betty Draper?)  Or perhaps Alfredo just has weird issues with old pictures he found of his mother when she worked for Lufthansa airlines in the 60’s.

Maybe.  Maybe.  But I submit to you that there is more to it than that.  They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that it is subjective.  “They” are wrong.  There are some instances, assuming your beholding eyes function properly, where it must be admitted that some things are simply more beautiful than others.

I know what you’re thinking: you could put Audrey Hepburn in a burlap bag and she’d still look amazing.  Of course she would, but… (sorry, couldn’t find any pix of her in burlap bags, but perhaps a little comparison would be instructive)….there’s this….

And here’s a current skank defiling that glorious image…

Getting mascara right is not easy.   It’s a minefield.

A little too much and it becomes clownish…

…or you risk evoking a cute, but vicious critter…

…now don’t get me wrong.  I have a thing for goth girls – but if you’re gonna go down that road, you must own it and make it your own.  Don’t be timid, go baroque…

…and it’s not just a time warp thing.  For your consideration, I submit…

…but look how easily it can go horribly wrong….

…the fake eyelashes are there, the beehive is there, the restrained color palette is there….and yet.

I’d like to think I’m not blind to my biases.  Looking at all these images, I guess I do like a nicely plucked eyebrow.  But this is not to be confused with thinness of eyebrow.  You can be plucked, yet very full, yet insanely alluring.  Edie, if you please….

And while that bottom left picture doesn’t quite show it all, you can see a little of the black and white stripes running up the side of her tank top.  Maybe it’s my architecture background, but did I also mention I have a thing for bold, rectillinear patterns on gorgeous women?

Let me just close with this point: yeah, obviously I have a thing for the 60′s.  But it’s not some 2-d vision of docile, subservient femininity.  I submit to you that all these women – no matter how sculpted their eyebrows, no matter how many coats of mascara applied – project both strength and feline grace.

As a final illustration, I’d like to present Tura Satana, the gang leader in Russ Meyer’s “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill!” This correctly made up woman could take out Catwoman and Robin with her left pinkie and dispatch you with her thumb while touching up her eyeliner and downing a shot of rye.

Don’t know about you, but I am feeling seriously empowered….a little scared…and, uh, a tad randy.