The cosmetics industry in the US is established to be worth $8 billion (thats billion, let it sink in) in profits annually. Sheila Jeffreys writes in the conclusion of Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West: For a culture of resistance to be created women [ME: thats women, us, let it sink in] need not only to recognize the harm to their health and status that beauty practices create [ME: read the entire book for in depth analysis of the chemical, psychological, and social harm these practices cause women], but to be prepared to abandon them. There are good reasons why even some feminists seek to justify beauty practices or downplay their significance. They may have, like most women, routinely watched what they ate, removed hair from their bodies and faces, worn feminine clothing as if it were natural, applied lipstick, for 30 or more years. The simple familiarity of beauty rituals might make them hard to identify as causes for concern, despite the physical and mental distress that they occasion, and the more and more serious forms that these practices are taking as botox takes over from anti-aging cream, liposuction from panty girdles, and Brazilian waxing is added to the shaving of armpits and legs. The feminist philosopher Sandra Bartky (1990) shows a sensitive awareness of why it can be difficult for women in general to criticize western beauty practices. She explains that women become locked into dependence on what she calls the fashion-beauty complex because it instills in them a sense of their own deficiencies, like the church in previous times and then presents itself as the only instrument able, through expiation, to take away the very guilt and shame it has itself produced [ME: and here you thought you were rebelling against the strictures and punishments of religious observance--but what rites do you still compulsively carry out in terms of making your appearance pleasing to men?] It offers body care rituals which are like sacraments [ME: and yes, also like preparing your body for the Mikveh, hate me if you like for saying it, but Im saying it anyway]. The effect is that women so locked into the fashion-beauty complex see feminism as both threatening profound sources of gratification and self-esteem and attacking those rituals, procedures, and instructions upon which many women depend to lessen their sense of bodily deficiency (p. 41).
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 16:39:11 +0000
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